[转载]走近中国的“同妻”和“同夫”

张北川说明：5月13日，《纽约时报》国际生活版刊出该报驻京记者Didi Kirsten Tatlow（狄雨菲）女士的报道《Shining a Light on Gay-Straight Marriages in China》。14日，该报中文版发出《走近中国的“同妻”和“同夫”》。15日，我国的《参考消息》和《环球时报》分别以《中国“同直婚姻”潜伏复杂因素》、《透视中国“同直婚姻”现象》为题，转摘了《纽约时报》文章。经狄雨霏女士同意，现将她提供的中英两种文本的该文刊于我的博客。谨此向狄雨霏女士致谢！　　　　

走近中国的“同妻”和“同夫”

                                                   狄雨霏2015年05月14日
      中国有数百万异性恋者与同性恋者结成夫妇，青岛大学医学院附属医院的医学研究工作者张北川了解了其中一些故事。大部分故事都涉及欺骗，有时还会有暴力和性传播疾病。但本周接受邮件采访时，张北川说他在考虑这种婚姻带来的欺骗、情感及身体上的痛苦是不是可能在——慢慢地——减少。
    “自2013年开始向我咨询至今的一位妻子告诉我，就在5月里，她的正上高中的女孩严厉斥责了她丈夫，”张北川写道。“那位女儿对她丈夫说，‘你害了我妈妈这么多年。我完全不歧视同性恋，但你们出来结婚害人，这是非常卑鄙的’。”
       对于张北川来说，这种开放的交流说明，至少从年轻人身上来看，“中国正在发生巨大变化。”
       在中国，由异性恋者与同性恋者组成的夫妇大约涉及4000万人，大多数有关此类婚姻的研究都侧重于异性恋女性，她们不知道自己嫁的是男同性恋者，认为自己是受害者。但中国研究人员已经开始关注另一个性别：娶了女同性恋的异性恋男性，这是说明时代变化的另一个迹象。
       在中国，嫁给男同性恋的异性恋女性被称为同妻——由中国对男同性恋的称呼“同志”和“妻子”两个词语结合而成。娶了女同性恋的异性恋男性被称为同夫——“同志的丈夫”。
       在过去三年中，社会学家唐魁玉带领哈尔滨工业大学的一组研究人员，发表了大约10篇有关异性恋者-同性恋者婚姻的论文。但在12月，唐魁玉和他的学生、该校研究员于慧发表了一篇学术论文，罕见地将同夫纳入研究范围。
        一篇题为《“同妻”“同夫”婚姻维持与解体的比较》的观察报告写道：
      “同夫问题的严重性不言而喻。同夫并不在少数，只是由于男性相对于女性较少在网上互动诉苦、部分同夫并不清楚自己同夫身份等多种原因，同夫群体不像同妻群体集中出现于网络中。”
       由于很难找到愿意自由讨论自己的婚姻状态的人，研究人员表示，他们主要利用网络资源，比如那些帮助人们寻找性伴侣的自助小组或网站。研究人员承认，这致使他们的数据偏向于那些清楚自己的情况，而且可能正在寻求改变的人。他们采访到了200名同妻，但只采访了10名同夫。
       但哈尔滨工业大学的研究人员写道，总的来说，同夫在很多方面似乎比同妻的境遇好。
       他们发现，与异性恋女性因为同性恋丈夫而感染性传播疾病相比，异性恋男性因为同性恋妻子而感染性传播疾病的几率较低。同夫婚姻中伴侣间的性行为更多，其原因可能是男性要与态度勉强的女性发生性行为，要比反过来容易得多。
       同夫离婚会更容易，往往也会更快选择这么做，因为他们普遍比女性更有经济保障。如果他们在生命的晚些时候发现妻子是同性恋，相对而言，他们比较容易再婚和生育子女，而对于与同性恋男性结婚的较为年长的女性而言，组建新家庭往往比较困难。
        他们写道，因为这些原因，同夫比同妻提出离婚的可能性也更高，所以减少了此类婚姻的数量。
      “目前我国对于‘同夫’问题还没有进行专题性研究，因此对于‘同夫’群体数目没有统一准确的调查与统计数据，”唐魁玉和他的团队写道。“但可推断我国‘同夫’群体数量可以达到200至400万，这已是最保守估计。”
        据张北川估计，巨大的社会压力已经导致80%的同性恋男性（大约1600万人）与女性结婚。家人对他们繁衍后代的期望也是压力的来源之一，尤其当他们与当今中国许多处于适婚年龄的男性一样，是家中独子的时候。
        这些婚姻背后有一系列复杂因素，其中包括中国有数十年历史的独生子女政策、对养老问题的担忧，甚至包括对合法生活和工作地进行限定的户籍制度。唐魁玉说，这些因素都促使同性恋——不论男女——结了婚，并保持着结婚状态。
        研究员的一篇论文提到了一名与城市男同性恋结婚的农村女性——她这样做是为了得到梦寐以求的城市户口。后来，当她质问他的性取向时，他反驳道：“你不就是想要一张城市户口吗？如果我不是同性恋你觉得我会娶你吗？”
       唐魁玉说：“在中国的话，现实问题的考虑的影响，那肯定是比在西方国家大得多。”
       张北川同意：“中国的男同群体和西方不同，”那里的男同性恋可能会保持单身，或者在同性婚姻合法的地方，与另一名男性结婚。“中国的男同群体也是带有农业社会的烙印。”
       唐魁玉和他的团队说，在中国，同性恋与异性恋伴侣结婚的其他原因还包括：
       ——许多人在结婚之后才知道自己是同性恋，因为中国文化不愿意谈论性，而且学校里也缺乏性教育。
       ——由于同性婚姻和代孕都不合法，许多人就选择了结婚生小孩，这不仅是因为他们的家庭希望他们这样做，而且还因为他们担心自己会孤独终老。
       ——由于社会安全体系建立在子女将作为家中老人的主要依靠的观念之上，许多人会害怕没有子女的生活，以及随着年老而到来的贫穷。
    狄雨霏(Didi Kirsten Tatlow)，《纽约时报》驻京记者。
    Vanessa Piao对本文有研究贡献。
    翻译：陈柳、许欣
   《纽约时报》文章中文链接：http://cn.nytstyle.com/living/20150514/t14marriages/

Shining a Light on Gay-Straight Marriages in China

                                                          By  DIDI KIRSTEN TATLOW
                             MAY 13, 2015 7:56 AM May 13, 2015 7:56 am 7 Comments
        Zhang Beichuan, a medical researcher at the Affiliated Hospital of Qingdao University, collects stories about some of the millions of Chinese heterosexuals who are married to homosexuals. Most of these tales involve deception, and sometimes violence and sexually transmitted diseases. But in an email interview this week, Mr. Zhang wondered whether the deception, and the emotional and physical suffering it brings, might — slowly — be diminishing.
     “A woman I have been corresponding with for two years told me just this month that her high school-aged daughter, who knows the truth of her parents’ marriage, confronted her father about it,” Mr. Zhang wrote. “That girl told her father, ‘All these years you hurt my mom. I’m not at all prejudiced against homosexuals, but when people like you marry and hurt others, it’s really despicable.’ ”
       To Mr. Zhang, this very open exchange suggested that, at least among younger people, “China is undergoing enormous changes.”
       Most research into marriages between straight and gay partners in China, which have been estimated to involve about 40 million people, has focused on straight women who unwittingly married gay men and came to see themselves as victims. But in another sign of changing times, Chinese researchers have begun focusing on the other side of the gender coin: straight men married to lesbians.
        Straight women married to gay men are known in China as tongqi (pronounced “tongchee”), which is taken from the Chinese slang for a gay person, tongzhi, or “comrade,” and qizi, meaning “wife.” Straight men married to lesbians are called tongfu, or “comrade’s husbands.”
Over the past three years, a team of researchers at the Harbin Institute of Technology, led by the sociologist Tang Kuiyu, has published about 10 papers on straight-gay marriages. In December, however, together with Yu Hui, a fellow researcher at the institute, Mr. Tang and his students published a rare?academic paper?that widens the focus to include tongfu.
         One observation of the paper, titled “Staying Together and Splitting Up: A Comparison of Tongqi and Tongfu”:
        “The situation of tongfu is very difficult. There are many of them, but because they are less likely to take their complaints online, and because some tongfu aren’t even aware that they are tongfu, they aren’t represented in self-help groups to the same degree as tongqi.”
         Because of the difficulty of finding subjects willing to talk freely about their marriages, the researchers say they drew heavily on online resources, such as self-help groups or sites for people seeking sex partners. The researchers acknowledge that that skewed their data toward those who were aware of their situation and perhaps were seeking a change. Although they were able to interview 200 tongqi, they interviewed only 10 tongfu.
        Yet over all, it seemed that the tongfu were better off than the tongqi in many respects, the Harbin researchers wrote.
        Straight men were less likely to contract sexually transmitted diseases from their lesbian wives, they found, than their female counterparts were from their gay husbands. There was more sex between spouses in tongfu marriages, if only because a man can more easily obtain sex from a reluctant woman than the other way around.
        Tongfu found it easier to divorce and were quicker to do so, because they generally were more financially secure than the women. If they found out about their wife’s homosexuality later in life, it was relatively easy to remarry and have a child, whereas an older woman married to a gay man might find it harder to start a new family.
        For all these reasons, tongfu were also more likely to initiate divorce than tongqi, shrinking the numbers of such marriages, they wrote.
      “No one in China has really studied tongfu, so there are no figures on the phenomenon,” Mr. Tang and his team wrote. “But we believe that it must be a group that numbers between two million and four million men, according to the most conservative estimates.”
        Mr. Zhang estimates that powerful?social pressures lead 80 percent of gay men, or about 16 million, to marry women. These include family expectations to produce an heir, especially when they themselves, like many men of marrying age today in China, may be an only son.
        Beneath such marriages lies a complex knot of factors, including China’s decades-old one-child policy, concerns over old-age support and even the official residence system, which governs where people may legally live and work. These all drive gay people, whether male or female, to marry and then stay married, Mr. Tang said.
        One of the researchers’ papers cites a country woman who married a gay city man, thereby obtaining a coveted urban residence permit. When she later confronted him about his sexuality, he retorted: “Why are you complaining? You married me for my permit, didn’t you?”
        Said Mr. Tang: “In China, practical concerns definitely play a much larger role compared with Western countries.”
         Mr. Zhang agreed: “Chinese male homosexuals are not the same as in the West,” where gay men may remain single or, where it is legal, marry other men. “They carry within them the influence of an old, agricultural society.”
         Other reasons gay people marry straight partners in China, according to Mr. Tang and his team:
         — Many do not know they are gay until after they marry, due to a cultural reluctance to discuss sexuality, and a lack of sex education at school.
         — With both same-sex marriage and surrogate motherhood illegal, many choose to marry and have a child not just because their families expect them to, but because they fear growing old alone.
         — Because the social security system is based on the assumption that children will be their elders’ primary support, many people fear a childless life and the poverty that may come in old age.
Vanessa Piao contributed research.
         英文链接：http://sinosphere.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/05/13/shining-a-light-on-gay-straight-marriages-in-china/?module=BlogPost-Title&version=Blog Main&contentCollection=World&action=Click&pgtype=Blogs&region=Body