The Birth

Spacetime co-ordinate: Malmö, February 2004

 

”Performativity is […] not a singular "act”, for it is always a reiteration of a norm or set of norms.” (Butler, 1993:12)

 

We had not asked to know the child’s sex —

but the last ultrasound left no doubt.

 

She flashed us on the grey-white screen—

unaware of codes surrounding gender and nakedness.

 

Months later, after hours of labour, longing, and laughing gas,

she emerged with an unusually hairy head.

 

The ribbon’s sheen and colour carried norms,

whispering of potential.

 

Together with the baby’s hairy head,

it was shaped into a bow.

 

The child was a girl—

became a girl—

in the midwife’s hands.

 

I reacted intensely, almost reflexively, to the bow.

I didn’t want the midwife to feel uncomfortable.

I could see her tying the ribbon in the baby’s hair

out of good will.

 

At the same time, I realised

that I was not the sole actor in her becoming.

 

Now I see a Butlerian act—

the bow affirming and forming the gendered girl,

the midwife both following

and (re)creating gender norms.

 

I see, with Karen Barad,

how gender is materialised through the phenomenon of hairstyle.

 

Not cause and effect,

but a weave of intra-actions.

 

And I think about how this act of performativity,

this making of gender,

is never a choice.

 

Even those intending to break patterns

are marked and moulded by norms.

 

I perform masculinity

both in resonance with

and in resistance against masculinity itself.