国人的隐私和社会包容度

Reactions toward China's best-known sexologist's disclosures about her personal life are testament to the growing acceptance of other people's private lives.
公众对中国最著名的性学家李银河公开其个人生活的反应说明了社会对他人私生活的包容度正不断提升。

Li Yinhe has been leading the life of a pioneer in more ways than one. For one, she is China's No.1 sexologist - at least in terms of name recognition - and she is also frequently in the headlines because of many other things.
在中国，李银河在诸多方面都是一个先锋式的人物。首先，她是中国首屈一指的性学家，至少从知名度来看是如此的。此外她因各种事情常常见诸新闻头条，颇具争议性。

Li was the wife of Wang Xiaobo, a trail-blazing author who was among the first to live outside the state-sponsorship system. Besides his magnum opus - The Trilogy of Ages, i.e. Golden Age, Silver Age and Bronze Age - he penned many influential essays championing independence of thinking and helped his wife with her field investigation of sex-related topics. The fruits of their joint study surfaced in his literary works as well, for example, East Palace, West Palace.
李银河的丈夫王小波是中国首批独立于国家资助体系之外的作家之一。除了时代三部曲，即《黄金时代》、《白银时代》、《青铜时代》之外，他还写了众多富有影响力的文章，倡导人们独立思考。他还帮助李银河在性学领域进行性相关主题的调查研究。他们夫妻合作的成果同样也体现在他自己的作品中，如《东宫西宫》。

Since Wang died of a heart attack on April 11, 1997, Li has been holding up his banner and carrying on his legacy in a spirit similar to that of the surviving wives of Richard Wagner and Amadeus Mozart.
自从王小波1997年4月11日因心脏病逝世后，李银河就象理查德·瓦格纳和莫扎特的妻子一样，继承丈夫的思想衣钵。

Li herself published many tomes in the 1990s, which are groundbreaking in the area of sex research in China. But she did not catch public attention until she swerved from the purely academic to being something of an activist. She has been relentlessly promoting personal liberties in the private arena, calling for the legalization of gay marriages, etc, even though her voice is usually met with silence from legislators and all kinds of nasty words from the online public.
李银河自己在1990年代也发表过一些作品，在当时的中国性学领域具有开创性。不过，她并未引起人们的注意。直到后来她从纯学术领域转向社会活动领域，才逐渐被人知晓。多年来，尽管立法者一再无视她的声音，网络上对她充满污言秽语，李银河也一直坚持不懈倡导私人生活领域的个人自由，提倡同性婚姻合法化。

Considering the ferocity of the feedback in the past decade, Li must have been mentally prepared when she announced recently the most striking news about her own private life. On December 18, she wrote in her microblog that she has a domestic partner who is physically female but psychologically male.
有鉴于在过去十年中，公众如猛虎般的态度，在公开其私人生活时，她必定做好了思想准备。2014年12月18日，李银河在其微博上公布其生活伴侣是一个生理为女性，心理为男性的人。

"I'm not a lesbian, not that I'm morally superior," she wrote. "Seventy percent of China's homosexual population ends up getting married to the opposite sex because of outside pressure. I married Wang Xiaobo out of love and it was consensual."
“我并非是同性恋，而且我并没有觉得我在道德上更优越感。”她写道，“不像中国七成同性恋都会出于环境压力勉强与异性结婚那样，我跟王小波因爱而婚，双方自愿”。

Li goes on to define the new person in her life as a "transsexual", the "T" in LGBT. "They are different from lesbians in that they identify themselves as male, so they are attracted to heterosexual females, not to lesbians."
她表示，她的伴侣是一个“跨性别恋者”，就是LGBT（女同性恋、男同性恋、双性恋和跨性别恋者）中的T（跨性别恋者）。"这些跨性别恋者与女同性恋者不同的是，虽然在生理上是女性，他们对自己的性别认同是男性，因此，他们对于异性恋者的女性具有性吸引力，而对女同性恋者没有性吸引力。"

Forestalling gossip
为制止流言蜚语

This fine detail is probably murky to a lot of non-professionals. Rumors of her sexuality had been swirling for a while and she had written about it in detail in her upcoming autobiography. She decided to release this chapter ahead of time to forestall any more gossips, some of which are "vicious", she said.
这个小细节对于非专业人士而言，可能是模糊的。外界对她的性取向的传言有了一阵子，她在自己即将出版的自传中详细写了这部分内容。她决定提前公开这一章节的内容，以制止流言蜚语，因为她认为这些流言中有些到了“恶毒”的程度。

Li describes how she first met this "man", who pursued her not long after her husband's death. For me, the revelation of this small detail shows either her naivete or her integrity. She could have been vague about the time they first met because to be wooed even when she was still in mourning would not cast her in a sympathetic light.
李银河在微博中写到她与这个“男人”的初次见面。他在王小波死后不久就开始追求李银河。对我而言，这个细节显示出了她的天真或正直。李银河本可以不用清楚交代她与其伴侣的初次见面时间，因为她被这个“男人”追求的时候还处于悼念亡夫期间。

But then, that is typical Li Yinhe, whose lack of Chinese-style tact has made many uncomfortable, even those who support her.
但这就是李银河本来的样子啊。她少了点中国人的圆滑，也因此令很多人感到不悦，即便是那些支持她的人也会如此。

I had assumed that one has to undergo a sex-change surgery to be categorized as the other sex, but it seems that psychology alone would count in this case. I'm no expert on such issues, so I tend to trust Li. Homosexual or not, she has the right to live her life as she sees fit.
我认为，一个人只有通过变性手术才能划分为另一个性别，但在这个案例中，心理性别转变也能算作是性别身份转变。我并非是这方面的专家，因此，我相信李银河的说法。无论是否是同性恋，她都有权选择过自己认为合适的生活。

But some online responses laugh at her for propagating sex-related knowledge. For them, these are "the birds and bees" that should not be addressed openly. Of course, Li is not the only one in China who advocates sex education, but there is always a segment of society that is suspicious and the top researcher's private life, now in the daylight, dovetails nicely with their suspicions.
然而，一些网友因为李银河宣传性知识而嘲笑讥讽她。对这些人来说，不应该公开讨论这些性事。当然了，李银河并非是中国唯一一个在倡导性教育的人，但社会上总有那么一部分人疑神疑鬼，现在这位研究者的私人生活公之于众，正好迎合了这些人的怀疑。