“to be” lesbian seems to be more than a simple injunction to become who or what I already am … I am not at ease with lesbian theories, gay theories, for identity categories tend to be instruments of regulatory regimes.28 Butler, therefore, posits that gender is not something a person has but something a person does; it is reiterated rather than received, performed rather than possessed. For this reason, any notion of gender norms necessarily “operates as a preemptive and violent circumscription of