What Lady Macbeth meant when saying, “Unsex me here” -blog post 8

In act one, scene five, Lady Macbeth exclaims, “Come, you spirits/ that tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,/ and fill me from the crown to the toe top-full/ of direst cruelty. Make thick my blood.”
Throughout this course, this has been a heavily discussed passage. Our first our assumption being this was Lady Macbeth’s cry to be seen as a man; therefore, she would be seen as someone of importance and of power. Through further reading and discussion, I believe Lady Macbeth was trying to say that she wanted to remove the boundaries of gender completely.
My reasoning for this derives from the text, “Revisiting Shakespeare: Subverting Heteronormativity- A Reading of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth.” This article discusses how Queer Theory is deeply rooted in Shakespeare’s work, leading towards views of gender fluidity and the views of “butch” women.
Knowing this view on Shakespeare’s work, leads towards the probability of the line, “Unsex me here,” meaning removing the stereotypes of sex. Lady Macbeth wants to be viewed as an equal, and revered for her wit and planning. She does not want to be seen as simply the bride of Macbeth. I feel if Shakespeare wanted the line to be interpreted as Lady Macbeth longing to be a man, he would not have left it up to interpretation, bluntly he would have said she wanted to be male. I feel this way because when describing the witches Shakespeare blatantly includes the fact that they have some form of a beard, “...You should be women, and yet your beards forbid me to interpret that you are so” (Act 1, scene 3, 49).

Lady Macbeth is striving to be viewed as an equal, through the lines from Act 1. She is not saying she wants to be re-gendered, but that she wants gender to be unimportant.

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