作者简介：Kathryn Cannady,毕业于美国西北大学，梅迪尔新闻学院新闻学学士、历史学学士和艺术历史学学士。日落杂志研究助理，知名电视剧《圣诞丘比特》制片助理（美国迪斯尼集团），成功辅导学员录取：西北大学（综合12名）、卡内基梅隆大学（综合23名）、维克森林大学（综合23名）、加州大学洛杉矶分校（综合23名）、南加州大学（综合23名）等美国名校。

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翻译：Ben

Feminist(n.) – someone who believes that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities.

女权主义者—指坚信男女应该享有平等的权力与机遇的女性。

It is an inevitable fact of life that our experiences largely define who we are. Our childhood, school life, and the adults who surround us all influence how we see our world and ourselves. It is no surprise, then, when women grow up to believe what their cities, cultures,parents, or friends believe. Because of this, gender and women’s studies are important – if not critical – parts of the college and lifelong learning experience.

我们的人生轨迹取决于我们是谁，这是生活中无可避免的事实。我们的童年、校园生活以及那些围着我们的达人们都影响着我们如何看待世界和自己的方式。所以毫无意外，女性在成长的过程中去认可着她们所处的城市、文化、家长或者朋友所认可的观点。因此，就算不是关键，性别与女性的研究也是大学以及人一生学习经历中重要的一部分。

In the past three years alone, I’ve been forced time and time again to rethink my ideas about women and their place inthe world. Even as a self-proclaimed feminist, I often find myself doing things that work against the end goal of being seen as equals – something that I constantly strive to better. I consider myself lucky to have been raised in a household that never told me I was less than my brothers and my male peers.However, in the southern part ofAmerica, many women are raised believing that their role is one that is best served in a kitchen, or as a mother.In school, we were never told to be engineers or mathematicians, biologists or politicians – these were men’s jobs. We were also raised with another kind of anti-feminist rhetoric, but this one dictated our actions. Southern women were polite, reserved, and never promiscuous in dress or action. Even if I didn’t believe these ideas, they shaped me into the student I was before I went to college.

单在过去的三年里，我不断花时间一遍又一遍地思考着我关于女性以及她们在整个世界的地位的观点。虽然我自称是一名女权主义者，但是我发现我自己经常做的那些事情与最终目的：平等对待 背道而驰，而我却还一直努力想把那些事情做得更好。我一直为我生长在一个从不认为我比我的兄弟或者男伴低人一等的家庭里而感到庆幸。然而，在美国的南部，许多妇女在成长的过程中被灌输着这样一个观点：她们的职责就是下得好厨房，或者是做一名全职母亲。在学校里，我们从不被寄以希望成为工程师、数学家、生物学家或者是政治家——这些被认为理应是男性的工作。我们女性也被另外一种反女权主义的花言巧语所蒙蔽，但是却支配了我们的行为。南部地区的女性礼貌含蓄，衣着举止一丝不苟。即使我并不认同这些观点，但却让我想起了在上大学之前我的那副学生样子。

Knowing that this was a part of my upbringing, I sought out women’s studies classes in college, looking to learn more about what others thought and how others experienced their roles as women.Reading classics like Betty Friedan’s TheFeminine Mystique or looking at the history of females in nude painting gave me new ways to explore and understand my role as a woman – and how men had shaped this. Even contemporary writings like Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In gave me new ways to think about the role of women, and how those around me had shaped it. I learned more about how women had been property of their husbands, how they were not allowed to own land, and how their emotions became to be labeled as “hysterical” or“over-emotional.” I also learned how great movements like the Civil Rights Movement used these ideas to further their cause, or how feminist movements eschewed them to create new roles and rules for women. Now, of course this knowledge did not turn me into some bra-burning anti-male woman, but it gave mean understanding of how my role in society had been shaped, and how I could change that role and the rules of it.

我知道这是我成长的一部分，我找到了大学里女性研究类课去了解更多关于其他人是在怎样去看待作为女性的自己，其他人是怎么样经历了作为女性的人生。通过阅读经典著作，像贝蒂弗里丹的《女性的神话》，或者通过观赏裸体画像来了结女性的历史，这些给了我新的途径去探索理解我的角色：女性——以及男性是如何造成这一现象的。即使是当代的作品如Facebook的COO 雪莉·桑德伯格的《向前一步》也为我提供了新思路去思考女性的地位以及我身边的那些人是如何形成对我的影响的。我了解到了更多关于女性是如何成为她们丈夫的财产，她们是如何禁止拥有土地，以及她们的情绪宣泄被贴上了“歇斯底里”或者是“阴晴不定”的贬义标签。我还明白了伟大的革命如民权运动是如何利用这些现象去推动他们的事业，女权运动如何回避这些现象去为女性创造出新的地位以及规则。现在，这些认知当然不会把我变成那些焚烧胸罩反抗男性的女人，但是却让我明白了我如今在这个社会的地位是如何形成的，我该如何改变我的地位以及女性在这个世界上的条条框框。

While women’s studies was not a major I pursued, the knowledge I gained in classes has made me a more active thinker,and has even encouraged me to be a more forgiving person. Feminism does not require that all women become man-haters or that all women must enter the workforce, it just asks that women have the opportunity to become anything they want, and that they be allowed to do it on an equal playing field with men. This concept has taught me to be more forgiving of those who act out their femininity differently than I do, but has also made me more passionate about spreading the ideas that women are not inferior to men.

虽然女性研究并不是我心仪的专业，但是在这些课程中我学习到的只是让我成为一个更积极的思想者，它促使我去成为一名更加宽容的人。女权主义并不是要让所有的女性成为仇视男性者或是所有的女性都必须去工作，它只是要求女性可以得到机会去成为她们想要的样子，她们可以跟男性站在平等的竞技场上进行竞争。这一概念让我更加宽容地对待跟我用不一样的方式去表现她们女性特质的人，但也让我更加积极地去传播女性并不次等于男性的信念。

For many Chinese students, the ideas of women’s studies and gender studies seem to be irrelevant to later success or future happiness. Many students believe that these ideas and issues of equality are peculiarly foreign or “western” and think that the study of them are superfluous. To them, it often doesn’t matter how women are treated, because they’ve never been asked to investigate the ways that the oppression of women have affected their lives and their opinions. However, in a country that often treats women poorly, or as secondary citizens to men, the knowledge of what other parts of the world believe serves a critical purpose. For women and men, the study of equality forces people to be at once forgiving and revolutionary. It teaches students to accept how individuals choose to live their lives (whether as politicians, scientists,or homemakers) but it also incites them to make a change in their communities –they learn to fight for equality and they learn to be aware of the lack of equality in their own lives and actions. It is this quest for and awareness of equality that will help communities and cultures around the world interact and learn from each other more constructively, while also forcing people to take a stand for the universal idea that despite race, gender, sexuality or sex, we are all the same.

对于许多中国学生来说，学习女性研究以及性别研究似乎与以后的成功或者是未来的幸福一点关系都没有。许多学生认为这些观点以及平等问题都只是海外或者是西方化的，并且认为对于它们的研究是多余的。对于中国学生来说，如何对待妇女并不怎么重要，因为学生们从来没有被要求去调查，对妇女的压迫已经影响了他们的生活和他们意见的表达。然而，在一个通常歧视女性，或者说是把女性当作是次于男性的二等公民的国度里，世界上其他国家的认知是怎样的会成为一个关键点。对于女性和男性来说，关于平等性的研究迫使人们立刻变得宽容且具有革命觉悟。它让学生们明白个体是如何选择他们的生活（是成为政客，科学家还是家庭主妇），但它也激励着她们去改变她们的生活环境——她们明白了要为平等奋斗，要清醒地明白自身的生活和行为缺少平等性。正是这种对平等的寻求以及平等意识将是世界上的国家以及文化能够更有建设性地相互了解相互配合，同时也使人们支持这一普遍的观念：尽管种族不同、性别不同、性取向不同、性特征不同，但是我们所有人都是一样的。

Because of this, the study of feminism reaches far beyond just learning about the place of women, and gives students skills that will help them succeed in any environment that requires them to interact with difference – including their upcoming experiences as international students inAmerica.

因此，女权主义的研究远不止了解女性的立场，它还让学生学到技能使他们能够在任何需要他们适应差异的环境中取得成功-包括他们即将到来的赴美留学的那条路。

【智梦简介】

智梦是一家专注美国本科留学的教育咨询机构。

我们的使命：

“智梦教育团队深知留学申请关系到学生及其家长的前途和未来，我们将竭尽所能帮助每一位智梦学员发掘其潜在的特质，以开放透明的申请方式，让他们能不留遗憾的争取到自己的理想学校。与此同时，培养他们成为诚实守信、独立思考、德才兼备的国际化人才。”

我们的愿景：

“智梦教育将成为一所发掘学术兴趣，培养学术能力，塑造具有公民意识的新时代留学生的学校。”