|
本帖最后由 下个月 于 2010-4-2 16:35 编辑
【中文标题】中国的女性宇航员:必须是已婚妈妈
【原文标题】China's Female Astronauts: Must Be a Married Mom
【登载媒体】时代周刊
【原文作者】Hillary Brenhouse
【声明】本翻译供Anti-CNN使用,未经AC或译者许可,不得转载。
【原文链接】http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1974793,00.html
2009年8月30日,中国的第一批女性战斗机飞行员在北京空军基地的一次集会中。中国有可能在2012年将第一名女性送入太空。
被选中代表中国进入外太空的人在当地经常被成为“超级人类”,这并不仅仅是因为他们要经受超越极限的训练。想要成为中国宇航员的人必须满足一些几乎不可能的标准,目的是淘汰哪怕有一点点缺陷的人。中国的宇航员不能有慢性咽炎和长期的感冒症状,不能有饮食偏好,不可以有重口音,身体不能长癣,也不能有人工穿孔和伤疤。中国男性宇航员所需要满足的这一长串似乎不可能的标准,也同样适用于中国女性宇航员,而且,还有两个重要的额外条件。上个月,中国从15名女性战斗机飞行员选拔出的两位宇航员人选,被要求必须是已婚的母亲。
根据官方描述,该条件背后的原因在于,太空飞行存在破坏女性生育能力的可能。解放军北京宇航临床医学中心主任徐先荣是遴选小组的成员,他在接受官方政府新闻媒体新华社的采访时说:“这是出于对女性飞行员负责的考虑。尽管还没有证据证明太空体验是如何影响女性体质的,但是我们必须格外小心,因为这是中国的第一次。”他还说,确保女性宇航员已经有过生育,就不会打乱她们的家庭计划。但是,至少还有一位专家——中国太空人项目的前副指挥官张建圻(音译)曾经表示,这个标准的确立是因为已婚女性在生理和心理方面都更加成熟。
这和Lisa Nowak的故事是截然不同的,这位前NASA宇航员在搭乘发现号航天飞机归来之后不到一年,就在佛罗里达被捕,罪名是试图绑架另外一位宇航员William Oefelein的女朋友。(在接受了一些诸如盗窃的轻微指控之后,Nowak被判处一年缓刑)一些专家曾说,像Nowak这种已婚,并且有了三个孩子的女性,在平衡对太空事业的追求和成为一个好妈妈时所遭受的压力,是导致她这种极端行为的原因。她在被捕前接受《妇女家庭杂志》的采访时说:“在确保自己飞行事业的同时,很难照顾好哪怕一个孩子,更不用提其它那些你不得不做的事情了。” 心理学家Thomas Nagy曾经研究过双职工家庭所面临的压力,他说:“如果家庭和事业失去平衡,并且事业占据了女性的大部分精力,那么就有可能产生失眠、压力型紊乱、焦虑、沮丧,并且会牺牲教育子女的能力和生活质量。”但是他又说:“说一个女性有意推迟婚姻而去追求其它目标是因为能力不强或者不成熟也是错误的。”
尽管Nowak自身的崩溃(包括她被NASA除名)不仅仅和她在职母亲的身份有直接的关系,但是这个例子的确说明中国的新政策是独断、霸道的。2005年《国际阳痿研究杂志》中一份有关生育健康与宇宙飞行的报告也证明了同样的观点,其中提到,进入NASA的美国女性飞行员有大约80%不是母亲。报告同时研究了两种性别,并没有发现任何证据证明短期宇宙飞行(9天以下的飞行任务)“会对宇航员正常怀孕和生产健康的后代有任何负面影响”。但是,这项研究特意提到,长期的宇宙飞行以及太空间的高能粒子辐射对生殖系统的影响尚无定论。一些医学专家认为,男性宇航员的生殖能力其实更加脆弱。参与这项研究的Richard Jennings教授是得克萨斯的妇科和宇航医疗执业医生,他说:“就急性辐射效果来看,男人比女人更加危险,因为精原细胞对辐射非常敏感。”
美国的大部分女性宇航员没有孩子并不是因为宇宙飞行有负面效果,而是因为她们有意推迟了怀孕的时机。想要孩子的女性飞行员一般都会在她们事业的早期暂时搁置这个计划,因为飞行计划经常有变,如果怀孕就无法参加大部分的训练。Jennings说:“大部分人都希望在第一次太空飞行之后再怀孕。”而这时候她们往往都已经步入40多岁的年龄段,基因缺陷和流产的几率自然会高很多。
这份报告提出了一个备选的解决方案,不是让女性飞行员提早要孩子,而是让夫妻双方储存生殖细胞以供将来使用。对女性来说,在冷库中保存卵子不但会避免可能存在的宇宙射线对生殖系统的影响,还可以解决年龄导致生育能力下降的问题。
但是这些方案似乎不会引起中国的太多兴趣,那里的独生子女政策表明这个国家要继续遏制,而不是鼓励人口增长。北京看起来也并不是那么关心飞行员的家庭计划是否被打乱,它所想的是如何让自己的女性形象展示在银河系的舞台上。如果它的确关心,或许应该更多地考虑那些来自已经决定不要孩子的女性申请,或者让这两个条件也同样适用于男性飞行员。在中国,一名已婚妈妈是杰出与卓越的象征,就像清香的微风和没有一个空洞的牙床X光照片那样让人愉悦。女权非政府组织Isis International主席蔡一萍(音译)说:“中国的文化依据女人的母性之道来评判她们。最完美的女人应该身为人妻,有一个孩子,最好是男孩。但我不知道宇航计划有没有把这部分内容放在他们所提出的条件中。”
原文:
China's first group of female fighter pilots gathers during a ceremony at an air force base in Beijing on Aug. 30, 2009. China could launch its first woman into space as early as 2012
The men chosen to lead China into outer space are often referred to locally as "superhuman beings" — and not just because they train to cross the final frontier. Would-be taikonauts have to meet near impossible standards that are meant to weed out the less-than-flawless. Chinese astronauts cannot suffer from chronic sore throats or runny noses. They mustn't have food restrictions, strong regional accents, ringworm, cavities or scars. Bad breath, body odor and a snoring problem are all immediate disqualifiers. And if China's spacemen are expected to satisfy an unlikely string of qualifications, so too are its new spacewomen — with two notable additional criteria. China's first two female reserve astronauts, selected earlier this month from a pool of 15 female fighter pilots, were required to be wives and mothers.
The reasoning behind the prerequisite, according to officials, is that spaceflight could potentially harm the women's fertility. "It's out of the consideration of being responsible for the female pilots," Xu Xianrong, director of the PLA's Clinical Aerospace Medicine Center in Beijing and a member of the selection panel, told the official government news agency Xinhua. "Though there is little evidence on how the space experience will affect the female constitution, we have to be extra cautious, because this is a first for China." Ensuring that the female astronauts have already reproduced, he said, will guarantee that their family planning is not disrupted. But at least one authority, Zhang Jianqi, former deputy commander of the country's manned space program, has stated that the requirement stands because married women are more physically and psychologically mature.
That was not, of course, the case for Lisa Nowak, the former NASA astronaut who less than a year after flying aboard the Discovery was arrested in Florida and charged with the attempted kidnapping of the girlfriend of astronaut William Oefelein (Nowak was eventually sentenced to a year's probation after pleading guilty to lesser charges of felony burglary and misdemeanor battery). Experts have since said that Nowak, who was married at the time and has three children, may have been driven to those extremes by the pressures of juggling her demanding space career and motherhood. "It's definitely a challenge to do the flying and take care of even one child and do all the other things you have to do," she told Ladies' Home Journal in an interview before her arrest. Psychologist Thomas Nagy, who has studied the stresses that dual-career couples face, says "where there is no balance and the career has demanded too much of the woman, there may be chronic sleep deprivation, stress-related disorders, anxiety, depression and sacrifices to parenting ability and quality of life." But, he adds, "it would be a mistake to assume that women who intentionally delay marriage to pursue other goals are less capable or mature."
Though Nowak's epic meltdown (and her termination by NASA) almost certainly hinged on more than her working-mom status, the case does underscore the arbitrariness of China's new policy. So does a 2005 study on reproductive health and spaceflight in the International Journal of Impotence Research, which reports that about 80% of the American female astronauts who came to NASA were not mothers. The report, which considers both genders, finds no evidence that short-duration spaceflight — missions of up to nine days — "has an adverse effect on the ability of astronauts to conceive and bear healthy children to term." Though the study notes that the effects on the reproductive system of long-duration flights and the high-energy particle radiation found in space are not well known, some medical specialists hold that it's actually male astronauts whose reproductive capabilities are more vulnerable. "As far as the acute effects of radiation," says Dr. Richard Jennings, who practices gynecology and aerospace medicine in Texas and co-authored the study, "men are much more at risk than women since the spermatogonia are very sensitive to radiation."
Most female astronauts in the U.S. and other countries don't have children not because of the adverse effects of spaceflight but because they have intentionally delayed getting pregnant. Female astronauts who want to have kids tend to put it off early in their careers because of unpredictable flight schedules and because much of their training is forbidden if they're expecting. "Most prefer to get at least one spaceflight in before pregnancy," says Jennings, and are approaching their early 40s by the time they begin trying for children, when the risk of genetic defects and miscarriage is much increased.
As a potential solution, the report proposes not that female pilots begin having children earlier, but that members of both sexes store reproductive cells for future use. For women, banking eggs would not only eliminate the theoretical difficulty of damage to reproductive tissues by cosmic radiation, but also solve the problem of age-related fertility decline.
This remedy, however, is not likely to be of much interest to China, whose one-child policy demonstrates the nation's ongoing commitment to curbing — not encouraging — population growth. Beijing, it seems, is not so much concerned with disrupting family planning — if it were, it might consider astronaut applications from women who are certain they do not want children or broaden the prerequisite to include spacemen — but with the image of the women it recruits to represent it on the galactic stage. In China, being a married mother is, arguably, as much a mark of excellence as sweet-smelling breath or a cavity-free dental X-ray. "Chinese culture defines women by their maternity," says Cai Yiping, executive director of the women's-rights NGO Isis International. "The perfect woman should be married with a child. Preferably a son. But I don't know if the space program has put that part in their requirements yet."
|
中国, 女性, 妈妈, 宇航员, 时代周刊, 中国, 女性, 妈妈, 宇航员, 时代周刊, 中国, 女性, 妈妈, 宇航员, 时代周刊
评分
-
2
查看全部评分
-
|