There is a rash of men explaining vaginas to me.
有一片男人向我解释阴道。That is what I have decided to name a collective of mansplainers. A murder of crows, a parliament of owls, a rash of mansplainers. In medicine a rash can be a mild annoyance that goes away and never returns. A rash can also portend a serious medical condition, even something malignant.
一片，我决定用这个字眼来形容男性说教者(mansplainer)的群体。一杀乌鸦，一众猫头鹰（英语中乌鸦的集合名词是murder，即“谋杀”；猫头鹰的集合名词是parliament，即“议会”。——译注），一片男性说教者。在医学上，一片皮疹可能是小恙，自己会消失，永远不再出现。但皮疹也可能预示着严重疾病，甚至是恶性疾病。There have always been a few men here and there explaining vaginas to me. I have suffered fools eager to use pickup lines about being an amateur gynecologist, detailing their imagined superior knowledge of female anatomy and physiology. Men who think sitting beside them at a bar and smiling — because if you don’t smile, you get told to smile — is an invitation to tell you how they will make you scream and moan.
不管在哪儿，总有一些男人向我解释阴道。我曾经遇见过一些傻瓜，他们最喜欢的搭讪方式是声称自己是业余妇科医生，详细讲述他们一厢情愿认为很渊博的女性解剖学和生理学知识。那些男人认为，女人在酒吧里坐在他们身边微笑——因为如果你不笑，就会有人会叫你笑——就是邀请他们讲述自己如何能让女性尖叫和呻吟。
I know that many other women have had their vaginas explained to them, because for the past 25 years my career has been dedicated to treating vaginal and vulvar problems. I have listened to women with completely normal exams weep that they have been told that they do not smell or taste correctly. That they are too wet, or too loose, or too gross.
我知道，其他很多女性也遇到过男人向她们解释阴道的情况，因为在过去的25年里，我的事业就是致力于治疗阴道和外阴问题。一些检验完全正常的女人向我哭诉说，她们被告知自己阴道的气味和味道不对。它们太湿了，太松了，或者太恶心了。These women all shared something: They were told these things by men. While I admit this is anecdotal data, my years of listening to secret shame about healthy vaginas and vulvas seems to suggest it is largely, if not entirely, male partners who exploit vaginal and vulvar insecurities as a weapon of emotional abuse and control.
这些女人有一个共同点：那些话都是男人们告诉她们的。我承认这些都是道听途说的数据，但这么多年来我听到的关于健康阴道和外阴的秘密羞耻感似乎表明，将女性对阴道和外阴的不安全感用作情感虐待和控制的武器的，大多——甚至全部——是她们的男性伴侣。But it was the Vicks VapoRub that put me over the edge.
不过，最让我受不了的是维克斯达姆膏(Vicks VapoRub)。Around the internet I am known as the gynecologist who debunks unnecessary and often harmful vaginal trends. Vaginal steaming, douches, glitter, tightening sticks — these are all born from the same need to tame the normal female genital tract. Whether these products are sold by big companies or a lone purveyor on Etsy, whether sold as medicinal in drugstores or marketed under the guise of “natural” and artisanal by brands like Goop, the intent is the same: to monetize intimate fears about intimate places. The idea is to profit from our society’s inability to have public, non-sophomoric discussions about the vagina and vulva. These products and their messages are no different from the Lysol ads of the 1950s telling women they could be like the “the girl he married” again.
在互联网上，人们知道我就是那个揭穿不必要的、往往有害的阴道潮流的妇科医生。阴道熏蒸、灌洗、增亮、收紧棒——这些都是出于调教女性正常生殖道的需要。不管这些产品是大公司还是Etsy上的商家销售的，不管是在药店以医疗用途出售的，还是以Goop这样的品牌打着“天然”和手工艺的幌子销售的，其意图都是一样的：利用对私密部位的私密恐惧牟利。都是利用我们的社会无法公开地对阴道和外阴进行透彻的讨论这一点谋取利益。这些产品以及它们所传递的信息，与20世纪50年代那些告诉女性她们可以再次变回“他当初娶的女孩”的Lysol广告是一样的。Now, apparently, folks were suggesting that it was a good idea to put a mentholated petroleum product in one’s vagina. (It is not.)
而现在，看来有人认为，把一种含有薄荷醇的石油产品放在阴道里是一个好主意。（并不是。）Fed up, I wrote the story of how a man had tried to shame me about my healthy vagina. Once, I had dated a man who told me I would be desirable, if only my hair were straight, or if only I lost the weight, or if only I dressed differently. The metric for my supposed perfection kept changing, so it was a herculean task to keep up with my failings, which I now gather was the point.
我受够了，于是写文章讲述了一个男人试图用我健康的阴道羞辱我的故事。有一次，我和一个男人约会，他对我说，如果我的头发是直的，或者如果我能减减肥，或者如果我能变换穿衣风格，那么我一定会很迷人。关于那些假想中我的完美状态的标准一直在变，所以弥补我的不足是一项艰巨的任务。现在，我明白过来，重点就是要说明这个。But while I may not have complete confidence in my appearance, I have professional confidence in spades. There are few people, if any, who know more about the lower genital tract than I do. So when this man began to tell me how my healthy vagina could be better, I dumped him.
不过，虽然我对自己的外貌没有完全的信心，但我对阴道有专业的信心。几乎没有人比我更了解下生殖道了。所以当这个男人对我说，我健康的阴道可以变得更好时，我就把他甩了。It didn’t seem weird or overly personal to write this one paragraph about my experience. I talk about vaginas all day long. It is the inability to talk about vaginas without shame that is at the very core of genital-tract profiteering. If a gynecologist who specializes in vulvar and vaginal health can’t talk about it, then who can? I have revealed details of my son’s death, and that feels far more intimate and emotionally daring to me.
写下我的这段个人经历并不奇怪，它也不完全是个例。我整天都在谈论阴道。正是因为人们不具备在不感到羞耻的情况下谈论阴道的能力，才有人利用生殖道牟利。如果一名专门研究外阴和阴道健康的妇科医生不能谈论它，那么还有谁能呢？我已经透露了我儿子的死亡细节，对我来说，那更私密，在情感上更需要勇气。What happened next was an article showed up in the The New York Post with the incorrect headline “My boyfriend dumped me because of my vagina smell,” accompanied with a big picture of me. The article itself was accurate — easy enough, since it was essentially quotations from my blog.
之后，《纽约邮报》上出现了一篇文章，它有一个错误的标题：“我男朋友因为我的阴道有味把我甩了”，还附上了我的一张大照片。那篇文章本身没问题——这不难办到，因为它实际上就是摘抄我的博客。And then the men came. They came to share their opinions regarding my vagina, writing on my blog and at me on Twitter. They flocked to my Instagram and my Facebook. One group of gentlemen, in at least their 40s, even decided that this story of me being dumped supposedly because of my vagina was worthy of a laugh on their podcast.
然后，那些男人就出现了。他们开始分享他们对我的阴道的看法，在我的博客和Twitter上留言。他们在我的Instagram和Facebook上大量涌现。一群至少40多岁的绅士甚至认为，我因为阴道而被抛弃的故事，可以称为他们的播客上的笑料。This rash bombarded me in both public and private comments. Men wondered if I had washed “that thang yet?” One man wrote that I “must be INTO smelly ones! How nice for you — we prefer FRESH as a daisy ones!” Another man warned me that “We men had a meeting, all 3.5 billion of us.” At the meeting they had apparently decided to “double down on calling out” my smelly vagina.
这一片男人在公开和私人评论里轰炸我。他们想知道我是否洗过“那个部位”。一个男人写道，我“一定非常喜欢有味儿的！你倒好了——我们更喜欢像雏菊一样清新的！”另一个男人警告我说：“我们男人开了个会，35亿男人都参加了。”在会上，他们显然决定“加倍努力批判”我的臭阴道。A man said I should call my ex and thank him “for alerting me to my smelly vagina.” There was also the #notallmen contingent, who felt it was impossible that my personal experience and 25 years as a gynecologist could offer any evidence that men ever try to control women by preying on insecurities. Obviously it was just my vagina that stank.
一个男人说，我应该给我的前任打电话，感谢他“提醒我阴道有味”。还有一个名为#notallmen（并非所有男人）的群体认为，我的个人经历和25年的妇科从医经验不可能提供任何证据，证明男性试图利用不安全感控制女性。很明显，发臭的只是我的阴道。More men sought me out to explain vaginas to me. They gave me false information on how to clean and prep them (for men, of course), and told me how gross my vagina must be, and hurled insults that I cannot print here.
有更多的男人找到我，向我解释阴道。他们向我提供了关于如何清洗以及（当然是为男人）准备阴道的错误信息，对我说，我的阴道一定很恶心，他们对我说的那些侮辱性的话语，我不能在这里刊登出来。The state of my healthy vagina brought more scorn from men than anything I have ever written about — and I write about second trimester abortions, so that is saying something.
我的健康阴道所招致的男人的嘲笑，超过了我写过的任何内容——我写过关于怀孕中期堕胎的文章，而引起了轰动的却是这个。To the women who have been told they were too wet, too dry, too messy, too smelly, too gross, too saggy or too bloody, I have heard you. I know you stand in drugstores wondering why there are all these hygiene products if they are unnecessary. I know you stare into the internet and wonder, if celebrities say they steam their vaginas, or have 10-step vaginal prep regimens, then maybe vaginal neglect really is a flaw that ruins relationships.
那些被告知阴道太湿、太干、太脏、太臭、太恶心、太松弛或太充血的女人，我听到了你们的声音。我知道你们站在药店里，搞不清为什么会有那么多卫生产品——如果它们没必要的话。我知道你们盯着互联网，想知道，如果名人说她们熏蒸阴道，或者有10步阴道准备法，那么，对阴道的忽视也许真的是破坏恋爱关系的一个缺陷。All I can say is, if you have a medical concern, see a doctor. And: If someone speaks to you about your body with anything but kindness and concern, it is he who has a problem. And: The vagina is like a self-cleaning oven.
我只能说，如果你有医疗问题，那么去看医生吧。如果有人不是带着善意和关心谈论你的身体，那么，有问题的是他。阴道就像一个带有自我清洁功能的烤箱。
To the rash of mansplainers and The New York Post, thank you. This experience proves that shaming women about physiologically normal and functioning vaginas is epidemic. The cure for this rash is information. You can either listen and learn or you can take a seat in the back of class and shut up. The era in which men can shame women for their perfectly healthy vaginas is now coming to an end.
对《纽约邮报》上的那片男性说教者皮疹，我要谢谢你们。我这次的经历证明，让女性对生理上和功能上正常的阴道感到羞耻是一种流行病。治疗这种皮疹的方法是获得信息。你们要么倾听、学习，要么坐在教室后面，闭上嘴巴。男性可以让女性为完全健康的阴道感到羞耻的时代现在结束了。