In February we became parents. Our child was greeted the same way every other newborn is: A slip of paper, mother's name and room number, pink or blue. Then another piece of paper, just as colour coded as the previous one, with a list of vital measurments: Welcome. You have been assigned meaning.

We didn't accept the paper. The nurse, after grunts of disapproval, came back with a green one, my name now misspelt.

The discussions about what would be in the child's best interest regarding The Pink Issue (positions ranging widely from the alleged need for every "girl" to express herself as "pretty" through pink and thus develop a «proper» gender identity to insisting the child be given freedom to be seen as a person, not a girl-person) had been raging with our surroundings since the pregnancy test proved positive.

We, the parents, agree. Our child is not to be easily read. Five months old, Luka Judith (oh yes, we did!) is almost always read as masculine, in the abscence of so called feminine markers. With no pink present, no flowers or butterflies, boy is the only option.

We'll remember this summer as Luka's first, and as the summer when our friend, the sexologist and doctor Esben Esther Pirelli Benestad once again was reported to The Norwegian Board of Health Supervision (Helsetilsynet) for malpractise and abuse of the State's funds. During the last few years dr. Pirelli Benestad had made arrangements on behalf of three patients to have full mastectomies. Only the Gender Identity Disorder (GID) Clinic at Rikshospitalet has the mandate and the right to do that. Now the whistle had been blown.

My love, Caro, Luka's other parent, does not do gender. It is not at all uncommon among the people who know it to be a possibility. I choose to do gender the way I do; I am perceived as "the mother", "the wife". I choose my long hair, my sensible shoes and my weight. I answer to "her" and "she", but my awareness allows me to resist being uncritically constituted by it's categorical implications.