Sean Wayman: Woke Lady Macbeth

Woke Lady Macbeth

The forming of a subject requires an identification with the normative
phantasm of “sex”.  —Judith Butler

“O, come ye spirits and unsex me here
That I may breach the gender binary.
Remove, post-haste, my woman’s finery
and gird my loins with something more severe.
For everyone who isn’t genderqueer
colludes in systems of obscene Oppression.
The gender boundary remains so clear;
I therefore hanker for your intercession.

Come and block up my lactiferous ducts,
those dull adherents of the normative.
Aware that gender’s just performative,
I try to close them, yet the flesh relucts.
Perhaps some inner patriarch obstructs
my liberation from repressive norms.
So come and make this “lady” genderflux,
a sprite assuming ever-changing forms.

There was a time, not very long ago,
when cis-women counted as a victim class.
We somehow felt that we should get a pass.
What egotism we were wont to show!
For when we women let our tresses flow,
or blushed with joy to hear our graces praised,
our gender fealty dealt a vicious blow,
which left transgender women bruised and grazed.

O pale enchanters, bring the smoke of hell
to thickly cloak my transformation scene!
By all reports, the spirits’ knives are keen.
I fear I might perform a fainting spell.
Yet who, besides a reprobate, could dwell
within their gender when it does such harm?
It’s time to bid the ghost of “sex” farewell.
O nag and necromancer work your charm!

Sean Wayman