By Xiaogang Wei, Edited by Stijn Deklerck
I set out to Renmin University to talk to a classroom full of students about the gay side of life, accompanied by the comrades of Aibai, a Beijing LGBT information organization that often organizes lectures in universities.
Upon meeting the students, I suddenly felt like a mutant in one of the X-Men movies: an ordinary-looking boy with extraordinary powers, talking to an assembly of non-mutant people. I wanted to explain to them how normal I am, and how similar I am to other people. At the same time, I had to be conscious of the fact that my audience may fear my magical powers.
I shook the feeling off, telling myself that I was just spreading information to knowledge-hungry kids, and I plunged ahead through their questions.
Can your gay sexual orientation change when you marry a woman?
What do you do when you fall in love with a straight person?
How many gay people are there in the world?
“Can a man grow horns?” “Run!” and “Too little honey, too little,” is what I would answer if any of my gay friends had asked me those questions. Yet here I was with a classroom full of eager students and I wanted to honor their honest questions with genuine answers. After careful consideration, I told them that it’s impossible to change your sexual orientation, especially through marriage, since it is something that you should enter into out of love and not out of a desire to change yourself. I told them that I suffered, suffered and then suffered some more when I fell in love with a straight guy, up until the moment that I realized my mistake was a beautiful mistake. Finally, I told them that according to a very cautious estimation, 3 to 5 percent of the world’s population is gay, with 30 to 50 million gay people living in China, and I assured them that this percentage is the same in every country whether it accepts gay people or not.
When I was on my way home, it occurred to me that I really had changed into a mutant with extraordinary powers. It wasn’t the fact that I’m gay which changed me into a mutant. Being gay is in the end not so different from being straight. It was the fact that, from a very young age, I had to face myself in all honesty and find myself in ways that weren’t dictated by society. It gave me a very open look on life, and that’s an extraordinary power indeed.
For more information about Queer Comrades, please visit www.queercomrades.com
This Column was published in the METRO-section of the Global Times newspaper on Thursday, December 17, 2009.
X战警变种人
作家：魏建刚
我上个星期三应人民大学学生组织和爱白的邀请，到人民大学和同学们做一个交流，主题就是同性恋话题。人大的一间教室里做的满满当当。
“怎样分辨谁是同性恋？”
“同性恋的成因是什么？”
“性倾向是否会改变，比如和一个女的结婚后？”
“喜欢上直人怎么办？”
“你们是否会定期做HIV检测？”
“世界上到底有多少同性恋”
。。。。。。
那感觉就像X战警里变种人给国会做报告一样，我一边解释着我们多么正常，一边我想我们可能真的有什么神奇的超能力使他们害怕。
“去目的地酒吧，不用分辨，全是同志。你可以做一次实地考察，自己取样”
“一般有两种说法，后天说和先天说，但是这个问题也可以反问一下，可能更容易明白，异性恋的成因是什么？”
“不会，因为性倾向一般是不能改变的，而且结婚的意义应该是相爱，而不是为了改变性倾向。”
“痛苦，再痛苦，一直痛苦到你明白喜欢上直人是个美丽的错误。”
“为什么我们要定期做HIV检测？因为我们是同志？请重温一下艾滋病病毒的三种传播途径”
“同性恋人群比例一般占全部人口的3%到5%，中国大概有3000万到5000万人左右，同性来年人口比例也不会因为国家的开放或是压制而增加或减少，没看到并不代表不存在。”
这时候有个人传上来了一个小纸条，字写得工工整整“我想知道什么是1，0？.什么是T，P？为什么有这样划分？你怎么看待同性恋圈中的多性伴，419现象”
“都是好问题，我一一来说，虽然阿拉伯人发明了数字，可是中国人的数学天分不可小觑，就连重文轻理的中国同志对数字运用也是游刃有余，1，0，69，419，简单的几个数字几乎中国同志茶余饭后的家常话，
1：是指插入者，同时也是阴茎的象形；
0：是指被插入者，像什么我不说你也知道了；
69：是姿势，适用于所有性别组合。
419：For one Night
T：Tomboy，指的是偏男性化的女同志
P：Po，就是老婆的婆，顾名思义是女同志中偏女性化的。
同志：原指革命同志，从九十年代开始，因一位香港戏剧导演用同志指代同性恋，被沿用至今，听说中国政府曾下过文件不许用同志称同性恋。
拉拉：指女同性恋者，来自于台湾一本小说。书的作者称女同志为拉子。
关于为什么这样划分，是一个非常复杂的问题，我想它是同志身份建构中的一个过程，也是男性霸权统治下的性别二元的映射，我想这种死板划分正在通过多元化性选择的发展被逐渐打破，抛弃和遗忘。
至于多性伴，419，这是我们怎样去看待性，我想在这个问题上不管是同性恋还是异性恋，福柯说过一句话“人们应该拥有再不伤害他人的情况下从事自己喜欢的性行为，建立自己喜欢的性关系的权利，这才是每一位现代人应持有的对性的态度。”
在回家的路上，我突然觉得自己真的变成了一个拥有超能力的变种人，而且我也开始喜欢上我的超能力，它让我认识自我却不随波逐流。
