一个国家对富人和权势男性的愤怒在一起常春藤名校的惊人强奸指控后彻底爆发。
A nation’s frustration with rich and powerful men boils over after a stunning rape allegation at an Ivy League college.
如果这是美国普通的一周，那种自满的“兄弟式”电视橄榄球解说本会大多被忽略不计。
It was the kind of smug dude-bro TV football commentary that would have gone mostly unnoticed if this had been an ordinary week in America.
在亚马逊Prime视频的《周四橄榄球之夜》节目中，争议性简直是轻描淡写的四分卫德肖恩·沃森率领克利夫兰布朗队取得了一场惊天逆转。而传奇解说员、81岁的阿尔·迈克尔斯和他的搭档柯克·赫布斯特雷特看到了NFL最爱的剧情线：一个救赎弧光。
On Amazon Prime’s Thursday Night Football, the controversial-is-an-understatement quarterback Deshaun Watson was leading his Cleveland Browns to an upset victory. And the legendary 81-year-old sportscaster Al Michaels and his sidekick Kirk Herbstreit saw the NFL’s favorite storyline, a redemption arc.
“如果你关注橄榄球，你就知道这个故事——我们不必把德肖恩·沃森的事全盘托出，”迈克尔斯说。
“If you follow football, you know the story — we don’t have to go through the whole Deshaun Watson thing,” Michaels said.
你信不信“尴尬癌”都会犯？那个“不敢说其名的德肖恩·沃森的事”，是指二十多名女性在按摩治疗过程中遭受性侵和骚扰所提起的一堆民事诉讼指控。尽管德克萨斯州两个大陪审团均拒绝起诉沃森，但他被NFL罚款500万美元并遭遇长时间禁赛——这还不足以阻止迈克尔斯和赫布斯特雷特在周四公开为他的复出喝彩。
Do you believe in cringe? Yes! The “whole Deshaun Watson thing” that dare not speak its name is the stack of civil-lawsuit assault allegations by more than two dozen women of sexual assault and harassment during massage therapy sessions. Although two Texas grand juries declined to indict Watson, he was fined $5 million by the NFL and served lengthy suspensions — not enough to deter the comeback that Michaels and Herbstreit openly celebrated on Thursday.
迈克尔斯看到了沃森赢回克利夫兰球迷的路径——“赢球是最好的除臭剂，”他引用已故的约翰·麦登的话说——赫布斯特雷特表示赞同。“考虑到你列举的德肖恩·沃森的那些事，这是个极端案例，”他说，“但如果你能在第三档进攻中推进，完成传球，带领球队取得胜利，嘘声就会变成欢呼声。”但这一次，全国电视上的疑似性侵辩护言论引发了社交媒体的轩然大波。
Michaels saw a pathway for Watson to win back the Cleveland fan base — “Winning is the best deodorant,” he said, quoting the late John Madden — and Herbstreit agreed. “This is an extreme case because of what you laid out with Deshaun Watson,” he said, “but if you convert on third downs, you hit passes, you lead this team to victories, those boos turn into cheers.”But this time, a seeming sexual-assault apologia on national TV sparked a social-media furor.
因为这绝非美国普通的一周。“德肖恩·沃森的事”重新浮出水面，正值公众对康奈尔大学2024年七名男本科生涉嫌轮奸案调查失误的愤怒之中。
Because this was no ordinary week in America. “The whole Deshaun Watson thing” resurfaced amid public rage over the botched investigation into a 2024 gang-rape allegation against seven male undergrads at Cornell University.
诚然，案件本身那些基本的、令人毛骨悚然的事实，理应成为一条重大新闻。两年前的这个月，化名“简·多伊”的女子、当时还是康奈尔大学大二学生，去了一所兄弟会会所，在那里被人下了氯胺酮，并——根据她最近提起的诉讼——在丧失行为能力、无法表示同意的情况下，经历了一系列性行为，而这些行为竟在该兄弟会的群组 Snapchat 中被鼓励。
To be sure, the basic horrifying facts of the case merited a major news story. Two years ago this month, the woman known as “Jane Doe,” a then-Cornell sophomore, visited a fraternity house where she was drugged with ketamine and — according to her recent lawsuit — was incapacitated and incapable of consenting during a series of sex acts that were encouraged in the fraternity’s group Snapchat.
这件事在纽约州伊萨卡的校园里酝酿了近 24 个月，直到该女子提起诉讼——她后来离开了康奈尔，而学校拒绝退还学费——以及学生自办报纸《康奈尔每日阳光报》的女主编们进行了一番执着的深度调查报道，才彻底爆发。这些因素引发了公愤：为何没有刑事指控，校方调查却让几名兄弟会成员仅受到轻微处分便了事，以及过往发生过多起类似事件的投诉。
The story simmered on the Ithaca, N.Y. campus for nearly 24 months before it exploded with the lawsuit by the woman — who subsequently left Cornell, which refused to refund her tuition — and some dogged investigative reporting by the female top editors of the student-run Cornell Daily Sun. That fueled outrage over the lack of criminal charges, a university probe that let several frat brothers off with a seeming wrist-slap, and complaints about numerous similar incidents in the past.
但这场校园痛苦之所以能登上《纽约时报》头版、电视新闻头条，并进入更广泛的国民视野，更深层的原因在于：它成为了近十年来积压的公众愤怒的宣泄口。
But the bigger reason why this collegiate anguish exploded across the front page of the New York Times, the top of TV newscasts, and the wider national consciousness is because it became the outlet for nearly a decade of pent-up public rage.
愤怒于我们那些享有盛誉、曾受信任的机构——从康奈尔到美国国家橄榄球联盟（NFL）——表现出的关切，更多地倾向于维护年轻男性未来在橄榄球场上完成关键进攻、或在即将到来的华尔街职业生涯中发行首次公开募股（IPO）的能力，而非女性受害者因性侵而遭受的终身创伤折磨。
Rage that our prestigious and formerly trusted institutions from Cornell to the NFL act with greater concern toward preserving young men’s future ability to convert third downs, or issue IPOs in their looming career on Wall Street, than the tortured lifetime of trauma for the female victims of an assault.
愤怒于 2017 年 #MeToo 运动所承诺的——揭露、制裁并污名化根深蒂固的性骚扰与性侵文化——却被父权制的反扑彻底粉碎。这种反扣达到顶峰，表现为一位美国总统连任，他面临的性不端指控比橄榄球运动员沃森还多，且曾被民事陪审团裁定在百货商店试衣间性虐待一名女子的责任成立。
Rage that the promise of 2017’s #MeToo movement that sought to call out, sanction, and stigmatize an entrenched culture of sexual harassment and assault was crushed by the patriarchy’s pushback. That peaked with the reelection of an American president who has more sexual misconduct allegations than football’s Watson, and who was found by a civil jury to be liable for abusing a woman in a department-store dressing room.
愤怒在于，一所常春藤盟校的大多数被控轮奸者，并未被踢出通往扭曲国家最高层的“滑翔道”——这个国家不再由“全民自由与正义”治理，而是由“精英完全免责”统治——在那里，世界首位万亿富翁可以在自己的社交媒体平台上喷吐种族主义污秽言论，总统家族靠出售美国褪色的威望赚取数十亿美元……却从未有人为此追责。
Rage that most of the accused gang-rapists at an Ivy League university were not knocked off the glide path toward the highest levels of a warped nation no longer governed by liberty and justice for all but by total elite impunity — where the world’s first trillionaire can spew racist filth on his own social-media platform and a president’s family makes billions of dollars by selling the tarnished prestige of the United States …… and nothing is ever done about it.
“尽管批评者歇斯底里地指责，#MeToo运动从来不是要毁掉无辜男性的生活，”总部设在费城的作家阿曼达·马科特在《沙龙》网站上写道。“从非常真实的意义上说，这场运动旨在让竞技场趋于平坦，而这个竞技场对受害者极度倾斜，几乎让正义无法实现。”如今，正义感觉比以往任何时候都更遥远，不仅在康奈尔大学，不仅在性别政治这块坑洼不平的竞技场上。整个21世纪，最强大的社会运动往往似乎凭空而起，因为它们汇聚了现代美国人需要发泄的长期积压的挫败感。
“Despite the hysterical claims of its critics, #MeToo was never about ruining the lives of innocent men,” the Philadelphia-based writer Amanda Marcotte wrote for Salon. “In a very real sense, the movement was about leveling the playing field, which is so dramatically tilted against victims that it makes justice nearly impossible to achieve.”Today, justice feels further away than ever, and not just at Cornell, and not just on the jagged playing field of sexual politics. Throughout the 21st century, the most powerful social movements have tended to come out of nowhere, because they funnel the pent-up frustrations of modern Americans that need to go somewhere.
2011年席卷全国的“占领华尔街”抗议，可以说不是针对某一具体问题，而是针对一个日益不平等、不公正的美国的一切问题，源于人们意识到即使是像奥巴马这样标榜“希望与变革”的总统，也缺乏带来希望或变革的能力。同样，2020年大规模的“黑人的命也是命”游行，不仅是对明尼阿波利斯警察谋杀乔治·弗洛伊德的震惊视频的回应，更是对警察暴行和推动种族平等努力倒退的长期压抑挫败感的爆发。
The nationwide Occupy protests in 2011 arguably weren’t about anything but rather everything in an increasingly unequal and unfair America, with the realization that even a “hope and change” president like Barack Obama lacked the ability to bring either hope or change. Likewise, the massive Black Lives Matter marches of 2020 weren’t just the response to the shock video of a Minneapolis cop murdering George Floyd, but the result of repressed frustration over police brutality and over backsliding on efforts to promote racial equality.
如今，康奈尔案件提醒我们，竞技场不再只是倾向于权势者和权势者的子女，而已变成一座垂直的悬崖。它象征着一个国家的道德腐烂，那里“鱼烂从头”。
Now, the Cornell case is here to remind us that the playing field is no longer merely tilted toward the powerful and the children of the powerful, but it has become a vertical cliff. And it symbolizes the moral rot of a nation where that fish now stinks from the head.
这个星期三将正好是全国得知时任候选人特朗普曾公开吹嘘他可以抓住女性的私处，因为“当你是明星时，她们会让你这么做”的第10年。他照样当选了。2024年10月19日，一名康奈尔大学的兄弟会成员在Snapchat上发帖宣传“免费[特朗普用过的同一个词]在楼上”，因为他肯定觉得当你是美国统治阶级的未来之星时，她们也会让你这么做。
This Wednesday will mark exactly 10 years since the nation learned that then-candidate Trump had openly bragged that he could grab women by their private parts, because “when you’re a star they let you do it.”He was elected anyway. On Oct. 19, 2024, a Cornell fraternity brother hopped on Snapchat to advertise “free [same word that Trump used] upstairs,” because he must have felt that when you’re a future star of the U.S. ruling class they also let you do it.
但同样，这不仅仅是特朗普的问题。周六，康奈尔大学校长迈克尔·科特利科夫发布了一份有力的视频声明，承诺进行真正的改革，称“这不会只是一个过去的时刻”。如果科特利科夫这个名字听起来有点耳熟，这位校长正是那位倒车撞向一名支持巴勒斯坦抗议者的人，引发了一项调查，结果却怪罪……学生。当你是常春藤盟校校长时，他们就让你这么做。难怪人们感到厌倦。
But again, it’s not just Trump. On Saturday, Cornell’s president, Michael Kotlikoff issued a powerful video statement promising real changes, that “this will not be a moment that passes.”If Kotlikoff’s name sounds vaguely familiar, this is the same college president who backed his car into a pro-Palestinian protester, triggering an investigation that blamed … the students. When you’re an Ivy League president, they let you do it. No wonder people are fed up.
也难怪特朗普对该案唯一的评论是担心康奈尔的被指控年轻人“不会得到公正对待”，来自纽约州检察长莱蒂蒂亚·詹姆斯——多年来她一直不懈地追究总统的责任。特朗普政权一直努力确保其自身的不公感——不是针对性侵犯这一普遍罪行，而是其被纵容的信念即#MeToo运动走得太远——被写入政府政策。
And no wonder Trump’s only comment on the case is his concern that Cornell’s accused young men “won’t get a fair shake” from New York Attorney General Letitia James — who has relentlessly pursued justice against the president over the years. The Trump regime has worked hard to ensure that its own feelings of injustice — not over the pervasive crime of sexual assault, but its pampered belief that #MeToo went too far — are enshrined in government policy.
在康奈尔案件登上新闻头条的同时，特朗普的教育部正忙着废除拜登时代的一系列《教育修正案第九条》改革，该条款管辖校园性侵调查，大幅缩小了联邦授权的范围。这只是又一个提醒：厌女症不是“让美国再次伟大”运动的副作用，而是其生命力所在。
At the same time the Cornell case was leading newscasts, Trump’s Education Department was busy rolling back a series of Joe Biden-era reforms to the Title IX rules that govern the investigation of campus sexual assaults, sharply narrowing the scope of federal mandates. It was just one more reminder that misogyny is not a side effect of the MAGA movement, but its life-force.
这从大批右翼“键盘指挥官”蜂拥而至、纷纷宣称康奈尔大学发生的事件引发的愤怒不过是某种“猎巫行动”，不公平地践踏了被指控者的权利、并坚称他们才是真正的受害者这一点便可见一斑。每日连线的马特·沃尔什即是典型代表，他将2024年的事件称为“一场令人作呕的毒品和酒精狂欢”，并称“醉酒的男性同样有理由主张自己被强奸了”。
That was clear from the army of right-wing keyboard commandos who raced to declare that the outrage over what happened at Cornell was some kind of witch hunt that is unfairly trampling on the rights of the accused, whom they insist are the real victims here. Typical is the Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh who called the 2024 events “a disgusting drug and alcohol fueled orgy,” where “the drunk men have just as valid a claim to being raped.”
这与当晚的已知事实不符，也将一个性别对立双方本应达成共识的观点——需要伸张正义，但这要求正当程序——变成了一场闹剧。詹姆斯的调查必须彻底且不仓促，查明确切发生了什么以及各层面的个人责任，并寻求适当的惩处。
That doesn’t jibe with the known facts about that night, and it makes a mockery out of a point that both sides of a gender war should agree with — that there needs to be justice, but this requires due process. The investigation by James needs to be thorough and not rushed, establish exactly what happened and the layers of individual culpability, and seek appropriate punishment.
这似乎是司法常识101，然而每一级所谓成年人的问责机制——康奈尔大学校方及其校园警察、伊萨卡警方和汤普金斯县地方检察官——却在两年间一次次辜负了简·多伊。
That seems like Justice 101, and yet every level of allegedly grown-up accountability — the Cornell administration and its campus police, the Ithaca cops and the district attorney in Tompkins County — has failed Jane Doe for two years.
多伊的“终身刑”早已宣判。“她勉强支撑着，”她的律师托马斯·吉乌夫拉对CNN表示，描述了在教室里见到施暴者的创伤如何迫使她放弃了追求常春藤盟校文凭的梦想。
Doe’s life sentence has already been meted out. “She’s barely hanging on,” her attorney Thomas Giuffra told CNN, describing how the trauma of seeing her attackers in the classroom forced her to end her pursuit of an Ivy League diploma.
这不仅是厌倦了父权制顽固存续的数百万女性的最后一根稻草，也是所有阶层、对一个承诺给予少数特权阶层终身豁免权、却对女性、移民、黑人和棕色人种、或LGBTQ群体毫不留情的制度感到厌恶的美国人的最后一根稻草。但这正义的愤怒能否转化为真正的变革？
This is the last straw not only for millions of women sick of the patriarchy’s persistence, but for Americans of every stripe who are disgusted with a system that promises lifetime immunity for a privileged few, but no holds barred for women, for immigrants, for Black and brown folks, or the LGBTQ community. But can this righteous rage transform into real change?
今年秋天，创纪录数量的女性——总共约590人——正在竞选国会议员。其中大多数是民主党人——尤其是新面孔——她们的竞选纲领主要反映了公众对不公正社会的愤怒。也许对美国“施虐者总统”的一些制约，能教会下一代年轻男性：即使你是冉冉升起的新星，他们也不会让你为所欲为，而在Snapchat上唯一正确的回应是：“停下。这是错的。”
This fall, a record number of women — some 590 in all — are running for Congress. The majority are Democrats — especially among the newcomers — and their platforms mostly reflect the public’s anger over an unjust society. Maybe some restraints against America’s abuser-in-chief can teach the next generation of young men that even if you’re an up-and-coming star they don’t let you do it, and that the only right response on Snapchat is, “Stop. This is wrong.”