(Hat tip to KH for the link)
There’s an article in the Washington Post about the Albanian sworn virgins:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/10/AR2007081002158.html
Dones, who lives in Rockville, had just met an adherent of an ancient northern Albanian tradition in which women take an oath of lifelong virginity in exchange for the right to live as men. The process is not surgical — in these mountains there is little knowledge that sex-change surgery is even possible. Rather, sworn virgins cut their hair and wear baggy men’s clothes and take up manly livelihoods as shepherds or truck drivers or even political leaders. And those around them — despite knowing the sworn virgins are women — treat them as men
They cannot marry men, and the oath they take is irreversible; at least one of the virgins mentioned in the article talked about regretting living without a male partner. The article didn’t bother to mention their options vis-a-vis women, or bring up the subject of affairs with women, either accepted or covert. It also didn’t mention an orientation towards women as a reason for rejecting marriage and becoming a sworn virgin. I assume that sworn-virgin status is not a means of attaining social acceptance as a dyke.
The article emphasizes utilitarian rationales for wanting male status, including both a desire to evade sexism and the need for a patriarch.
“Why live like a man?” one virgin, Lule Ivanaj, asks herself rhetorically in an English-subtitled documentary that Dones (pronounced DOH-nez) made on the women for Swiss television called “Sworn Virgins.” Ivanaj looks like a man in his 50s, with short hair, thick arms and a wide metal watchband on one wrist. “Because I value my freedom. I suppose I was ahead of my time.”
Dones, 47, learned about sworn virgins 25 years ago from her university classmates in Albania’s capital, Tirana. The practice has existed at least since the 15th century, when the traditions of the region were first codified, according to Dones. The sworn virgins came into being for emergencies: If the patriarch of the family died and there was no other man to carry on, a provision was needed so that a woman could run her family.
The article portrays sworn-virgin status as generally accepted (at least historically; the choice is becoming anachronistic), but I wonder how a woman growing up alongside that tradition would have felt about it. Did families speak openly about the possibility? Were girls able to talk about it as an option they might be considering? Did they have contact with sworn virgins in their extended families? Was contact between sworn virgins and either men or women restricted apart from the prohibition on marriage? What happened when a girl told her parents she intended to become a sworn virgin, and how did parents think of their grown children who had made that choice?
I know how I might answer all of these questions as a Westerner, an American from my own very specific background. I could mention feelings of loss and intolerance and dissonance as I’ve heard them described here. I don’t know how this other culture would deal with them.
One very interesting potential conflict was the consistent use of female pronouns to refer to sworn virgins–people who had made the recognized choice to live as men and who, according to the article, were treated as men by those around them–along with consistent reference to them as “women.” There’s no discussion of whether or not the sworn virgins are referred to as “he” or “she” by the people around them.
The article also continually describes the (arguable) disjunct between the sworn virgins’ assigned sex and their role with phrases that emphasize the “truth” of the assigned sex and its assumed potential to overshadow the sworn virgins’ lives as men:
When the Albanian journalist and author Elvira Dones was traveling in the mountains of northern Albania, she asked for directions from someone she thought was a man walking his mule through a village, rifle on shoulder.
And those around them — despite knowing the sworn virgins are women — treat them as men.
Other traditional practices of the north were repressed by the communists, but leaders in Tirana simply never cared if a woman in the impoverished and remote mountains wanted to dress and labor as a man.
The article is also careful to rephrase these sworn virgins using the cues we are familiar with:
Ivanaj looks like a man in his 50s, with short hair, thick arms and a wide metal watchband on one wrist. “Because I value my freedom. I suppose I was ahead of my time.”
I’m not sure how to negotiate these differences–like I said, I’m reacting to the sworn virgins as a member of my own culture–but it’s an interesting problem to see play out here.