纽约时报：中国激辩性解放Didi Kirsten Tatlow 文 Erdong Chen 译

chrisxsy

北京 - 在马晓海的律师的网站上，有一张马晓海的照片，照片里的他直视相机镜头，下陷的脸颊上方，颊骨明晰，表情严峻，几乎像是被鬼神附身似的。这位53岁的计算机科学家，身着深色夹克和圆领毛线套衫，手上举着标牌：“换偶无罪”。
　　让马晓海遗憾的是，换偶有罪。中国刑法第301条禁止“聚众淫乱”，违者将被判处最高长达五年的监禁。
　　4月7日，马晓海与他的换偶圈子里的其他21位成员一道，在南京市接受审判，被指控的理由是“聚众淫乱”。案件的审判引起社会舆论的震动，并在学术界、朋友圈以及网络博客上引发激辩。检方指控有过两次离异史的马先生 - 这位因该案而被南京工业大学开除的大学教授 - 在2007年至2009年期间组织并参与了至少18次集体性交派对。根据马的律师薛火根的介绍，其中14次是在马的家中，4次在酒店，其余派对的地点则不明。
　　然而为期两天的审判结束之后，法官并未宣判。马是庭审中唯一一位进行无罪辩护的被告。
　　“该案在社会上产生了非常大的影响，所以法院在处理过程中也刻意保持谨慎”，薛律师说道。
　　不过中国的性学家们表示，马的行为并非完全的不同寻常。1978年，当中国开始了大胆的、资本主义模式的经济和社会试验，也就是中国特色的社会主义的时候，人们对于性的态度也和其他事情一样迅速转变。
　　中国社会科学院的社会学家李银河，用这样的一个例子来表示中国人性观念的改变速度之快。她注意到，在80年代初，一个在当年非常罕见的换偶团体所遭受的法律制裁：一位成员被判处死刑，另一位被判处无期徒刑，而第三位则被判处有期徒刑15年。相比之下，李银河估算如今中国最大的网络群交站点“Happy Village”拥有36万用户。
　　李银河，很多人眼里的中国最著名的性权利主张者，正在领导一场将群体性行为合法化的运动。
　　“'聚众淫乱'是一条过时并且错误的法律”，李银河在自己的博客中写道，她号召中国民众捍卫他们的性权利。只要符合“成年人，自愿参与以及在私下场合进行”三条原则，那么群体性行为便是可以被接受的。
　　对于批评者关于合法化将导致公共道义的沦丧的说法，李银河则指向了1997年国家废除“流氓罪” - 一个长期可以被惩罚而且囊括一切的针对婚外性行为的罪名 - 以及“反革命”罪，并以此为证解释她的逻辑。
　　“这两条法律废除之后并未导致流氓行为以及反革命行为的暴涨，难道不是吗？”李如是发问。
　　三月份，李银河委托其担任全国人大代表的朋友提交了一份她所起草的提案，内容是在人大年会上取消“聚众淫乱”的罪行。
　　在中国的性解放过程中，换偶只是众多有争议的行为中的一个。SM俱乐部 - 大部分借助网络进行组织 - 正在蓬勃发展。许多是刚刚涌现的，比如河北省保定市的一个。“快来享受你长期被压抑的幸福和兴奋”，这个宣传口号如是道，“只有保定居民可以申请”。
　　在过去的十年间，许多经营性消费品的商店在中国的城市拔地而起。我位于北京使馆区附近的居住地周边，仅仅两条街上便有四家“紫色激QING成ren健康用品商店”，在其中一家，一位43岁的自称王女生的售货员站在一个2平方米或者说是22平方英尺的狭小空间内，货架立在地板上，上端紧贴着花板，货架上挂着性玩具、捆绑工具以及中国制造的“伟哥”。
　　“我们的顾客各式各样”，这位售货员说道，“离异的老男人，或者妻子带着孩子去外地念书的男人，当然也有单身女性”。
　　“他们对我说，'千万不要告诉别人我买了什么'，我把他们买的东西放在两个黑色塑料袋里，这样就可以遮蔽里面的东西。”
　　那天的生意不算太好，是个下雨的周日下午，但王女士表示通常情况下她的日营业收入有“几百块”人民币。不算很多，但很稳定，她说道：“这没什么危害”。
　　不过王女士也有她的原则。
　　“噢，不！”当我问起南京那起案件的时候，她惊叫出声，“那样太混乱了，不卫生，他们之间会互相传染疾病的”。
　　证据显示，马晓海案件中的支持者和反对者非常有趣地各占半壁江山。一项由人民大学于2007年发表的，关于中国人从2000到2006年间的性观念调查发现，每五个人中有三个认为“聚众淫乱”的法律太过苛刻，每五个人中则有两个相信群交并不属于犯罪。
　　在4月初，另一项由凤凰卫视运作的调查发现，69%的被访问者认为马晓海不该被审判，47%表示换偶无罪。
　　马晓海正在为自己的无辜而抗争，与此同时，他也收拾行李做好了搬进监狱的准备。
　　“我一点没有做错”，马告诉电视台的记者，“换偶过程中完全没有强迫。为什么整个国家却都在针对我？”

英文原文：


April 27, 2010
China Debates Its Sexual Liberalization
By DIDI KIRSTEN TATLOW
BEIJING — In a photograph on his lawyer’s Web site, Ma Yaohai stares straight at the camera, cheekbones prominent above sunken cheeks, his expression intense, almost haunted. The 53-year-old computer scientist, dressed soberly in a dark jacket and polo-neck pullover, holds a sign saying: “Swinging is no crime.”
Unfortunately for Mr. Ma, it is. Article 301 of China’s criminal law bans “crowd promiscuity,” with offenders liable to five years in jail.
On April 7, Mr. Ma and 21 other members of his swingers’ circle were tried in the central city of Nanjing on group sex charges, in a case that is roiling society and provoking heated debates in academic circles, among friends and in the blogosphere. Prosecutors accuse the twice-divorced Mr. Ma, who has since been fired from his job as a professor at Nanjing University of Technology, of organizing and taking part in at least 18 group sex parties between 2007 and 2009. Fourteen were in his own home, four in hotels and the rest in unspecified locations, according to his lawyer, Xue Huogen.
No verdict has yet emerged from the two-day trial, during which Mr. Ma was the only defendant to plead not guilty.
“This case is having an enormous impact on society, so they are deliberating very carefully right now what to do about it,” Mr. Xue said.
Yet what Mr. Ma did isn’t all that unusual, sexologists here say. In 1978, when China began its bold, capitalist-style economic and social experiment known as Socialism with Chinese Characteristics, attitudes toward sex began changing fast, along with almost everything else.
In a sign of just how fast, Li Yinhe, a sociologist at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, noted how members of a rare swingers’ group in the early 1980s were treated: one person was executed, another was sentenced to life in prison and a third was given 15 years. Today, by comparison, Ms. Li estimates that the biggest online group sex site, Happy Village, has 360,000 users alone.
Ms. Li, arguably China’s most famous sexual rights campaigner, is leading a campaign to decriminalize group sex.
“‘Crowd promiscuity’ is an out-dated law, a wrong law,” she wrote on her blog, calling on the Chinese people to defend what she said were their sexual rights. Group sex is fine as long as it meets three criteria, she said: adults, joining in voluntarily, in a private place.
Countering critics who say decriminalization would lead to a decline in public morals, Ms. Li points to the 1997 abolition of the laws against “hooliganism,” long a punishable, catch-all term for sex outside marriage, and “counterrevolution.”
“That didn’t lead to an upsurge of hooliganism or counterrevolution, did it?” she asked.
In March, Ms. Li persuaded delegate friends at the National People’s Congress to submit a proposal she drafted to abolish the “crowd promiscuity” charge at the congress’s annual meeting.
Swinging is just one of a slew of controversial habits arising from China’s sexual liberalization. Sadomasochism clubs, many organized online, are flourishing. Many are new, such as one in the city of Baoding in Hebei Province. “Come along and fulfill your long-suppressed happiness and excitement,” the post says. “Only Baoding residents need apply.”

Many sex shops have sprung up in China’s cities in the last decade. At Purple Passion Adult Health Store, one of four on just two streets in my neighborhood in Beijing near the embassy district, a 43-year-old saleswoman who gave her name as Ms. Wang stood in a tiny, 2-square-meter, or 22-square-foot, space with floor-to-ceiling shelves festooned with sex toys, bondage gear and Chinese-made Viagra.
“We get all sorts of people,” she said. “Older men who are divorced, or whose wives have gone to another city to put their child in school there. Single women, too.”
“They say to me, ‘Don’t tell anyone what I bought.’ I put their purchase in two black plastic bags to hide it.”
Business had been slow that day, a rainy Sunday afternoon, but Ms. Wang said normally she did “several hundred” renminbi in sales a day. Not a lot, but steady, she said. “There’s no harm in it.”
Yet Ms. Wang has her limits.
“Oh, no!” she exclaimed, when I asked about the Nanjing case. “That is too chaotic. It’s unhygienic. They could catch diseases from each other.”
Anecdotal evidence suggests the pro and con camps in Mr. Ma’s case are about evenly split. Supporting that, a survey published in 2007 by Renmin University in Beijing, on sexual attitudes in China between 2000 and 2006, found that three in five people considered the “crowd promiscuity” law too severe. Two in five believed group sex was no crime.
In early April, another survey by Phoenix TV found that 69 percent of respondents believed he should not be tried; 47 percent said swinging was not a crime.
Meanwhile, Mr. Ma is protesting his innocence, while packing his bags and getting his things ready to go to jail.
“I didn’t do anything wrong,” he told the television station. “And there was no force involved or organizing. Why is the whole country picking on me?”
(转载本文请注明“中国选举与治理网”首发)