『双语』华盛顿邮报：美国人对性行业的五大误解

最近发现华盛顿邮报的Five Myths专栏非常有趣，每期都由各个领域的专家发表5个大众对特定领域的迷思（Myth，有人意译作迷思，虽然很贴切，但我觉得可能很多人不知道这个词，所以我觉得说误解好了，更直接）。我打算挑一些自己感兴趣的翻译，今天选的这篇是关于美国色情业的，说的是美国人对性工作者的误解。  其实中国人对美国性行业也是有误解的，最主要的就是好多人都觉得美国卖淫是合法的。其实美国可以合法卖淫的州就只有内华达，而且也不是哪儿都可以，而是只有在特定区域才行。其他的地方，就都是非法交易。这也是美国对色情业可能有下面这些误解的原因之一吧，毕竟也都是听说的多……  

全文有点长：   Five myths about prostitution 关于色情业的五大误解  By Sudhir Venkatesh 作者：Sudhir Venkatesh   

Sunday, September 12, 2010 2010年9月12日，周日  Last weekend, Craigslist, the popular provider of Internet classified advertising, halted publication of its "adult services" section. The move followed criticism from law enforcement officials across the country who have accused the site of facilitating prostitution on a massive scale. Of course, selling sex is an old business -- most say the oldest. But as the Craigslist controversy proves, it's also one of the fastest changing. And as a result, most people's perceptions of the sex trade are wildly out of date.    

上周，知名互联网分类广告网站Craiglist宣布将停止“成人服务”板块。这一举动的起因是全国各地司法机构对其大规模促进卖淫活动的指责。诚然，色情业可谓源远流长，有人甚至说这是最古老的职业。但借由这次Craigslist引发的大争议，我们可以看到这也是一项日新月异的行当。而且正因为如此，大部分人对性交易的观点也大多已经过时了。 

 1. Prostitution is an alleyway business. 卖淫者总躲在隐蔽小巷  It once was, of course. In the late 1800s, as Northern cities boomed, the sex trade in America became synonymous with the seedy side of town. Men who wanted to find prostitutes combed alleys behind bars, dimly lit parks and industrial corridors. But today, only a few big cities, such as Los Angeles and Miami, still have a thriving outdoor street market for sex. New York has cleaned up Times Square, Chicago's South Loop has long since gentrified, and even San Francisco's infamous Tenderloin isn't what it used to be.   

曾几何时这一说法完全无误。19世纪晚期，随着北方城市的蓬勃发展，美国的色情业总是跟乌烟瘴气的落后城区联系在一起。想要找妓女的男人总要去酒吧后面的小巷、昏暗的公园以及工业区的街道旁狩猎。但纽约早就清理了时代广场，芝加哥也净化了南环线，甚至连旧金山臭名昭著的田德隆地区都已经不再是那个样子了。  These red-light districts waned in part because the Internet became the preferred place to pick up a prostitute. Even the most down-and-out sex worker now advertises on Craigslist (or did until recently), as well as on dating sites and in online chat forums. As a result, pimps' role in the sex economy has been diminished. In addition, the online trade has helped bring the sex business indoors, with johns and prostitutes increasingly meeting up in bars, in hotels, in their own homes or in apartments rented by groups of sex workers. All this doesn't mean a john can't get what he's looking for in the park, but he had better be prepared to search awhile.   

这些红灯区的没落某些程度上是因为互联网，因为现在互联网才是招妓的最佳场所。即使最落魄的性工作者也会在Craigslist上发广告（当然今后就难了），还有那些交友网站还有在线聊天论坛。结果就是皮条客在色情业中的作用被大大减弱了。此外，在线交易也让色情业从室外走进了室内。越来越多的恩客跟妓女会在酒吧、宾馆、自家甚至妓女们合租来的公寓里见面。当然这并不代表说嫖客们再也不能去公园找猎物了，只是说可供选择的数量已经大大减少了。  Although putting numbers on these trends is difficult, the transition from the streets to the Internet seems to have been very rapid. In my own research on sex workers in New York, women who in 1999 worked mostly outdoors said that by 2004, demand on the streets had decreased by half.   

虽然这些交易的具体数量很难估计，但从街道到互联网的这种转移显然非常迅速。在我个人对纽约性工作者的研究中，我发现1999年还基本都在户外揽客的妓女到了2004年就发现街边的生意少了一半。  

2. Men visit sex workers for sex. 男人找性工作者只为性  Often, they pay them to talk. I've been studying high-end sex workers (by which I mean those who earn more than $250 per "session") in New York, Chicago and Paris for more than a decade, and one of my most startling findings is that many men pay women to not have sex. Well, they pay for sex, but end up chatting or having dinner and never get around to physical contact. Approximately 40 percent of high-end sex worker transactions end up being sex-free. Even at the lower end of the market, about 20 percent of transactions don't ultimately involve sex.   
很多时候，他们招妓是为了聊天。我曾经花了十多年研究纽约、芝加哥以及巴黎的高端性工作者行业（所谓高端，就是那些每“节”可以赚到250美元的）。让人吃惊的发现之一就是很多男人付钱给女人不是为了上床。当然他们买的时候说是要性，但最后却只聊天吃饭，而没有身体接触。几乎四成的高端性工作者的生意都不会涉及性爱。即使在低端性行业，也大约有2成交易最后不会上床。  Figuring out why men pay for sex they don't have could sustain New York's therapists for a long time. But the observations of one Big Apple-based sex worker are typical: "Men like it when you listen. . . . I learned this a long time ago. They pay you to listen -- and to tell them how great they are." Indeed, the high-end sex workers I have studied routinely see themselves as acting the part of a counselor or a marriage therapist. They say their job is to feed a man's need for judgment-free friendship and, at times, to help him repair his broken partnership. Little wonder, then, that so many describe themselves to me as members of the "wellness" industry.   

想说清楚男人为什么花钱买性又不做，即使对纽约心理医生来说也很困难。但一个纽约性工作者的说法非常典型：“男人喜欢被聆听……我很久之前就明白了这个道理。他们付钱给你是为了让你听他们说话——然后告诉他们他们太棒了。”事实也是如此，我研究的高端性工作者们认为自己扮演的角色之一就是心理医生跟婚姻咨询师。他们说自己的工作就是满足男人对无条件无指责的友谊的渴望，甚至有时候要帮他修复婚姻。难怪有这么多人对我说她们其实从事的是“保健”行业。  


3. Most prostitutes are addicted to drugs or were abused as children. 大多数妓女有毒瘾或者童年时被虐待  This was once the case, as a host of research on prostitution long ago confirmed. But the population of women choosing sex work has changed dramatically over the past decade. High-end prostitutes of the sort Eliot Spitzer frequented account for a greater share of the sex business than they once did. And as Barnard College's Elizabeth Bernstein has shown, sex workers today tend to make a conscious decision to enter the trade -- not as a reaction to suffering but to earn some quick cash. Among these women, Bernstein's research suggests, prostitution is viewed as a part-time job, one that grants autonomy and flexibility.   

早些年这种说法可能成立，很久之前就有研究证实了这一点。但过去十年来，选择色情行业的女性有着重大的改变。那种Eliot Spitzer（纽约前州长）频频光顾的高级妓女占据了色情业越来越大的份额。今天的性工作者决定入行之时，一般想的不再是破罐子破摔，而是因为钱好赚。根据一项Bernstein的研究，这些女性把卖淫当作一项兼职，一项有着极大自主权，时间地点又很自由的兼职。  These women have little in common with the shrinking number of sex workers who still work on the streets. In a 2001 study of British prostitutes, Stephanie Church of Glasgow University found that those working outdoors "were younger, involved in prostitution at an earlier age, reported more illegal drug use, and experienced significantly more violence from their clients than those working indoors."   

这些女性跟已经日渐稀少的，依然在街边接活的流莺有着重大区别。根据一项2001年针对英国妓女的研究，格拉斯哥大学的Stephanie Church发现，在室外接活比那些在室内工作的妓女“年纪更小，更早就出来做皮肉生意，有更多毒品问题，也更容易遭到客人拳脚相加。”  

4. Prostitutes and police are enemies. 妓女跟警察是天敌  When it comes to the sex trade, police officers have in recent decades functioned as quasi-social workers. Peter Moskos's recent book, "Cop in the Hood: My Year Policing Baltimore's Eastern District," describes how police often play counselor to sex workers, drug dealers and a host of other illegal moneymakers. In my own work, I've found that cops are among the most empathetic and helpful people sex workers meet on the job. They typically hand out phone numbers for shelters, soup kitchens and emergency rooms, and they tend to demonstrate a great deal of sympathy for women who have been abused. Instead of arresting an abused sex worker, police officers will usually let her off with a warning and turn their attention to finding her abusive client.   


说到性行业，最近几十年来警察充当的其实更像是社工的角色。Peter Moskos的新书《片警：我在巴尔的摩东区执勤的一年》中描述的就是警察如何辅导性工作者、毒贩以及其他赚不干净钱的人。在我自己的工作中，我也发现警察可谓是性工作者在工作时能遇到的最为善解人意与乐于助人的角色了。他们通常都会给一些收容所、发粥所以及急诊室的电话号码，而且对被虐待女性也总是非常同情。一般不会逮捕被虐待的妓女，反而会警告一下就放她们走，全力去抓捕那些虐待她们的客人。  Unfortunately, officers say it is becoming more difficult to help such women; as they move indoors, it is simply more difficult to locate them. Of course, many big-city mayors embrace this same turn of events, since the rate of prostitution-related arrests drops precipitously when cops can't find anyone to nab. But for police officers, it makes day-to-day work quite challenging.   

不过据警方说，这样帮助受虐妓女的机会是越来越少了，原因就是她们的交易转入了室内，就很难被发现了。当然许多大城市的市长都会对此欣然接受，毕竟警察抓不到人的时候，跟妓女有关的案件数量就可以大大减少了。但对警察来说，这给他们的日常工作制造了不少麻烦。  Officers in Chicago and New York who once took pride in helping women exit the sex trade have told me about their frustration. Abusive men can more easily rob or hurt a sex worker in a building than on the street, they say. And while cops may receive a call about an overheard disturbance, the vague report to 911 is usually not enough to pinpoint the correct apartment or hotel room. There are few things more dispiriting, they say, than hearing of a woman's cries for help and being unable to find her.   

曾经帮助妓女脱离这行的芝加哥跟纽约的警察们告诉我现在他们觉得很挫败。他们说，跟在街道上比，虐待狂在室内可以更容易地抢劫或者殴打妓女。而当他们接到这种情况的报案时，报警电话里总是很难说清他们所在的具体公寓或者宾馆房间号码。他们说，听到一个女人哭着求助，却怎么都找不到她，这总让他们沮丧到极点。  

5. Closing Craigslist's "adult services" section will significantly affect the sex trade. 关闭Craigslist的“成人服务”板块可以大规模减少性交易  Although Craigslist offered customers an important means to connect with sellers of sexual services, its significance has probably been exaggerated.   

虽然Craigslist充当了嫖客与妓女间的重要沟通渠道，但它的重要性可能被放大了。  Even before the site's "adult services" section was shut down, it was falling out of favor among many users. Adolescent pranksters were placing ads as hoaxes. And because sex workers knew that cops were spending a lot of time responding to ads, they were increasingly hesitant to answer solicitations. I found that 80 percent of the men who contacted women via Craigslist in New York never consummated their exchange with a meeting.   
远在这个网站的“成人服务”板块被关闭前，就已经慢慢被众多用户放弃了，反而成了青少年恶作剧的园地。因为性工作者们已经知道，会有很多警察对上面的广告进行回复，她们对这些援助越来越厌倦。我发现在Craigslist上跟女人联系的纽约男人中有八成都没有最终见面。  How the sex trade will evolve from here is anyone's guess, but the Internet is vast, and already we are seeing increasing numbers of sex workers use Twitter and Facebook to advertise their services. Apparently, the desire to reveal is sometimes greater than the desire to conceal.   

性交易将从这里转向到哪个方向没人能预测，但互联网是巨大的，现在就已经有越来越多的性工作者用Twitter跟Facebook做广告了。显而易见，曝光的欲望远远大于遮盖的欲望。  (全文完)  ---------------------------  原文链接：华盛顿邮报五大误解专栏  作者邮箱：su185@columbia.edu  Sudhir Venkatesh is a professor of sociology at Columbia University and the author of "Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets."      



接昨天的那个上篇：  Five myths about prostitution 关于色情业的五大误解  By Sudhir Venkatesh 作者：Sudhir Venkatesh   
Sunday, September 12, 2010 2010年9月12日，周日Sudhir Venkatesh是哥伦比亚大学社会学教授，著有《一日黑帮老大：离经叛道的街道社会学》
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