Stories like the virgin birth lack freely given female consent. Why dont they bother us more? 故事就像被大多数女人认为的那样-处女生育会缺乏自由。只会给我们带来很多麻烦? Powerful gods and demi-gods impregnating human women—its a common theme in the history of religion, and its more than a little rapey. 强大的神和半神血统的人类女性-这是在宗教史上的一个共同的主题，就非常怪异了。
Zeus comes to Danae in the form of a golden shower, cutting the knot of intact virginity and leaving her pregnant with the Greek hero, Perseus. 宙斯看到了达那厄后乘她睡觉的时候化做一阵金雨与达那厄交配（结束了达那厄童贞）并生育了珀耳修斯。 Jupiter forcibly overcomes Europa by transforming himself into a white bull and abducting her. He imprisons her on the Isle of Crete, over time fathering three children. 宙斯变成了一头白牛并且说服了欧罗巴，绑架了她。他禁锢她在克里特岛，随着时间的推移，他们生下三个孩子。 Hermes copulates with a shepherdess to produce Pan. 赫尔墨斯交配牧羊女生下潘。 The legendary founders of Rome, Romulus and Remus are conceived when the Roman god Mars impregnates Rea Silvia, a vestal virgin. 罗马传奇的创始人,罗穆卢斯和瑞摩斯是当时罗马战神让西尔维亚公主怀孕（一个处女）的结果。。 Helen of Troy, the rare female offspring of a god-human mating, is produced when Zeus takes the form of a swan to get access to Leda. 特洛伊的海伦，当宙斯化妆成天鹅勾引丽达时，一个罕见人神交配的雌性后代产生了。 In some accounts Alexander the Great and the Emperor Augustus are sowed by gods in the form of serpents, by Phoebus and Jupiter respectively. 在有些传说中，伟大的亚历山大和奥古斯塔斯大帝各自是由日神菲博斯和宙斯化身蛇播种生下。 Though the earliest Christians had a competing story, in the Gospel of Luke, the Virgin Mary gets pregnant when the spirit of the Lord comes upon her and the power of the Most High overshadows her. 即使最早的基督教，也流行着一个故事，即在卢克福音中，上帝遇到圣母玛利亚，并且使圣母成功受孕。 The earliest accounts of Zoroasters birth have him born of a human father and mother, much like Jesus,; but in later accounts his mother is pierced by a shaft of divine light. 最早的传说中，拜火教圣人是人类父母的儿子，很像耶稣。但随后流传的故事中讲到他母亲是由神灵受孕而产下了他。 The Hindu god Shiva has sex with the human woman Madhura, who has come to worship him while his wife Parvathi is away. Parvathi turns Madhura into a frog, but after 12 years in a well she regains human form and gives birth to Indrajit. 印度教中的造物主席尔瓦令人类女孩马杜拉受孕。在他的妻子帕尔瓦蒂离开时，马杜拉基于对席尔瓦的崇拜使两人处在一起。之后帕尔瓦蒂将马杜拉变成了青蛙。但12年后在一口井中，她又恢复人形，并生下了因陀罗。 The Buddhas mother Maya finds herself pregnant after being entered from the side by a god in a dream. 释迦摩尼的母亲玛雅夜里梦见与一个神仙交欢后怀孕。 Underneath this remarkably enduring and widespread trope lie two assumptions that, in their most primitive form, may trace their roots all the way back to evolutionary biology. 在这些不同寻常并且广为流传的故事中，存在两个假设，即以最原始的方式，追寻生物进化论的根源。 The biology hypothesis, much oversimplified, goes something like this: Males and females of each species have instincts that maximize their genes in the next generation. Among humans, females seek the highest quality sperm donors that they can attract. They maximize the quality and survival of their children by mating with high status, powerful males. Males, on the other hand, maximize the quality and quantity of their offspring by seeking young fertile females (with beauty signaling fertility), controlling some females and fending off other males while also spreading their seed around if they can get away with it. 很多关于进化论的假说都过于简单，大体上都这样表述：每个物种的雄雌两性都具备本能，最大程度地把他们的基因传递给下一代。在人类中，女性追求她们所能吸引到的最高质量的精子贡献者。通过与强壮俊美的男性交配，保证繁衍出最佳质量的下一代。另一方面，男性通过寻找年轻的生殖能力出众的女性（美丽容貌象征着生育能力），从质量和数量两方面保证繁衍出自己的最佳后代。他们控制住某些女性，并且防止周边其他男性的介入。 Biology may be the starting point, but over time, human impulses are embellished and institutionalized and made sacred by culture and religion. The mythic trope of gods mating with human females embodies powerful cultural and religious beliefs about sexuality. Familiar stories of this type derive from male dominated societies, which means they legitimize male reproductive desires: Powerful men not only want to control the valuable commodity of female fertility, they should. Gods ordain it and model it. And they prescribe punishments for those—especially females—who violate the proper order of things. 进化论或许是起点，但历经沧桑，人类的本性冲动受到修饰和系统化加工，并且被文化和宗教赋以神话论。神话中的上帝与人间女子的交合便体现出强大的文化和宗教对性本身的信念理解。类似的故事从父系社会中流传下来，意味着子承父业的繁衍。强大的男子希望控制女性的繁殖权，他们也能够做到。上帝赐给他们权力并且成为典范。他们为此建立了惩罚机制，尤其对于妇女，那些要违反正确规律的人。 The miraculous conception stories I listed may have roots in pre-history, in early religions centered on star worship and the agricultural cycle, but they emerged in modern form during the Iron Age. By this time in history, most women were chattel. Like children, livestock and slaves, they were literally possessions of men, and their primary economic and spiritual value lay in their ability to produce purebred offspring of known lineage. The men at the top owned concubines and harams, and virgin females were counted among the spoils of war. (See, for example, the Old Testament story of the virgin Midianites in which Yahweh commands the Israelites to kill the used women but keep the virgin girls for themselves.) 我列出的这些神话故事或许扎根于史前时代，早期的宗教以人神崇拜和世代农耕为中心，但在石器时代融入了现代的形式。在那段历史时期，大多数妇女作为货品，像儿童、工具和奴隶一般，他们几乎是属于男性的财产，他们基本的经济和意识形态价值在于是否具有能够为名门望族进行生育的能力。高高在上的男人们妻妾成群，处女们被当做战争中的战利品。（例如，旧约故事中，耶和华命令以色列士兵杀死米甸人中已为人妇的女子，而留下处女为其享用。） It was also a time when gods picked favorites and meddled in the affairs of tribes and nations, and great men were born great. Small wonder, then, that so many powerful men claimed powerful paternity. In the tradition of the ancient Hebrews, this took the form of an obsession with lineage and pure, favored bloodlines. Writers of the Hebrew Bible trace the genealogy of King David back to Abraham, for example, and the genealogy of Abraham to the first man, Adam. In the Greek and Roman worlds, entitlement claims took the form of assigning supernatural paternity to public figures. The Christian tradition, somewhat awkwardly, tries to lay claim to both of these—tracing the lineage of Jesus through his father Joseph back to King David, while simultaneously denying that he had a human father. 还是在那个时期，上帝来挑选喜欢的东西，并且插手部落和宗族事务，使得伟大男人天生便伟大。因此，很多强权男人们可以凭借父辈拥有权力。在古老的希伯莱传统中，以血统和纯粹的天赋血脉而拥有权力。希伯莱圣经的作者们将戴维大帝的族谱追溯到亚伯拉罕身上。例如，亚伯拉罕传承到下一代是亚当。在希腊和罗马世界，皇权天赋凌驾于普通大众之上。基督传统有些尴尬，试图将耶稣的血统追溯到其父亲耶和华以及戴维大帝的身上，而同时否认耶稣有一个人类父亲。 This is the context for the miraculous conception stories, and in this context, the consent of a woman is irrelevant. Within a society that treats female sexuality as a male possession, the only consent that can be violated is the consent of a womans owner, the man with the rights to her reproductive capacity—typically her father, fiancé, or husband. Many Christians are surprised when told that nowhere in the Bible, either Old Testament or New, does any writer say that a womans consent is necessary or even desirable before sex. 这构成了这些神话的背景。在这种背景下，取得妇女同意无关紧要。在一个把妇女的性权利当做男人财产看待的年代，唯一需要同意的便是妇女的主人，男人们有权主宰妇女的生育，通常是她的父亲、未婚夫或丈夫。很多基督徒感到吃惊，因为在圣经中，无论是旧约还是新月，没有任何作者写道在与妇女交欢前需要取得他们的同意。 This omission is more than regrettable, it is tragic. Two thousand years after Hebrew and Aramaic texts were assembled into the modern Jewish Bible, 1600 years after a Roman Catholic committee voted books in and out of the Christian Bible, 1400 years after Muhammad wrote the Koran (which draws heavily on the moral framework of the Judeo-Christian tradition), we still struggle with the question of female consent. Our struggle is made immeasurably harder by the presence of ancient texts that have become modern idols— texts that put Gods name on mens desires. 这种疏漏非常令人遗憾，造成了悲剧。希伯莱和阿拉伯教义合并成现代犹太圣经后已经过去了2000年，罗马天主教委员会表决选用圣经已经过去了1600年，穆罕穆德完成古兰经（很大程度上借鉴了犹太教与天主教的共同道德经典）已经过去了1400年，我们还在为征求妇女同意这一问题而苦苦斗争。古老的经文直到今天也是崇拜的对象，它们以神的名义为男人的欲望背书，这使得我们不得不付出多得多的努力。 The most extreme example may be a document published by the Islamic State, outlining rules for the treatment of sexual slaves, rules drawn from the Koran. Closer to home for most Americans is the awkward but widespread existence of Christian leaders who teach that a womans glory is in childbearing, and that a woman who fails to service her husband whenever he desires is failing to serve God. 最为极端的例子莫过于伊斯兰国家颁布的法令，古兰经的条文规定对待性奴的处理方法。说到底，大多数美国人会有些尴尬，但基督教领袖们广泛宣扬妇女们最高荣耀是生育子孙，而且没能在丈夫有需求的时候服侍好丈夫的女人，也是对上帝的忠实。 But even closer to home for many is the shocking prevalence on college campuses and in society at large of sexual manipulation and coercion perpetrated by males who otherwise seem morally intact. One cant help but notice that a large number of high-profile cases involve high-status males: fraternity members, a famous actor, a radio host, small-town football stars and big-league professional athletes—men, in other words, who think they are gods. These men are so convinced of their own deific qualities, they believe the object of their attentions has gotta want it—and if she doesnt, well, thats fine too, because when a god wants a woman, consent isnt really part of the story. 但进一步触及痛处，令很多美国人震惊的是放眼国内，美国高校和社会中存在大量男性性侵和强制猥亵事件，而且实施者表面上看却并非作恶多端，行为下流之人。我们不禁要注意到，大量广受注目的案件发生在知名男性身上，包括：大学兄弟会成员、著名演员、广播主持人、小镇足球明星以及大联盟球星。换句话说，认为自己是上帝的男人们，非常自信自己具备神一般的素质，以至于他们相信自己所关注的目标会愿意让他们为所欲为。如果她不愿意，那么好吧，因为传说中上帝需要女人时是不需要征得同意的。
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