英文演讲录 玛丽莎·托梅：站出来勇敢表达(1)（在线收听）

When I was a little girl growing up in middle-class New Jersey, my entire artistic life was curated by people who lived in the straight jacket of a very conformist suburban life.

当我还是个小女孩的时候，我生长在新泽西州的中产阶级家庭，我的整个艺术生活都是由那些在刻板郊区生活中的人策划的。

In the late '50s and early '60s, all the houses in my neighborhood were the same size.

在50年代末和60年代初，我家附近所有的房子都是一样大小的。

In the developments, they even were the same shape and color and style.

慢慢发展，他们甚至形状，颜色和风格也是相同的。

And in the schools, your job was to put pennies in your loafers and look the same as everybody else and act the same way as everybody else.

在学校里，你的工作就是把硬币放进你的乐福鞋里，看起来和其他人一样，举止也和其他人一样。

Standing out, being different was like drawing a target on your forehead.

脱颖而出，与众不同就像在你的额头上画了一个靶子。

And you had to have a special kind of courage to do it.

你必须有一种特殊的勇气才能做到这一点。

And some of my teachers were obliged to live their whole lives hidden, covertly.

我的一些老师被迫隐蔽地度过他们的一生。

But my sixth and seventh grade music teacher, Paul Grossman, was one of the bravest people I knew.

但是我六年级和七年级的音乐老师保罗·格罗斯曼是我认识的最勇敢的人之一。

Because later, when I was in graduate school, I read that he had transitioned and become one of the first transgender women in the country.

因为后来我读研究生的时候，我得知他变性了，成为这个国家第一批变性女性之一。

And after the operation, she reported back as Paula Grossman.

手术后，她以保拉·格罗斯曼的身份报到。

To our middle school in Basking Ridge, New Jersey, where she had taught for 30 years, and she was promptly fired.

去了我们位于新泽西州巴辛岭的中学，她曾在那里教了30年书，但她很快就被解雇了。

But she pursued her case for wrongful dismissal and back pay through the courts for seven years, all the way to the Supreme Court.

但她在法庭上以非法解雇和欠薪为由追诉了7年，一直到最高法院。

Unfortunately, her case was not accepted, and she lost, but she won her pension under a Disability Allowance settlement, although she was disabled only the small minds of the school board.

不幸的是，她的案子没有被受理，她输了，但她根据残疾津贴和解协议赢得了养老金，尽管她的残疾只是学校董事的狭隘思想。

She was a garrulous, cantankerous, terrific teacher, and she never taught again.

她是一位唠叨的、脾气不好的、可怕的老师，从此再也不教书了。

But her case set the stage for many discrimination cases that followed.

但她的案件为随后的许多歧视案件奠定了基础。

She and her wife raised their three girls.

她和妻子抚养他们的三个女儿。

She worked as a town planner, and she had an act playing piano and singing in cocktail lounges around New Jersey.

她后来做了一名城镇规划师，也在新泽西的鸡尾酒酒吧里弹钢琴唱歌。

But I remember her as Mr. Grossman, and I remember when he took us on a field trip to the Statue of Liberty in 1961.

但我记得她是格罗斯曼先生，我还记得1961年他带我们去参观自由女神像。

And our whole class stood at the feet of that huge, beautiful woman and sang a song he had taught us, that was taken from the lyrics, the lyrics were taken from the poem by Emma Lazarus engraved at the base of the monument.

我们全班站在那位高大美丽的女士脚下，唱着他教我们的一首歌，歌词取自刻在纪念碑底部的艾玛·拉撒路的诗。