Albanian "sworn virgins" revisited

The New York Times has picked up on the disappearance of Albanian sworn virgins:

Pashe Keqi recalled the day nearly 60 years ago when she decided to become a man. She chopped off her long black curls, traded in her dress for her father’s baggy trousers, armed herself with a hunting rifle and vowed to forsake marriage, children and sex.

. . . She says she would not do it today, now that sexual equality and modernity have come even to Albania, with Internet dating and MTV invading after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Girls here do not want to be boys anymore. With only Ms. Keqi and some 40 others remaining, the sworn virgin is dying off.

“Back then, it was better to be a man because before a woman and an animal were considered the same thing,” said Ms. Keqi, who has a bellowing baritone voice, sits with her legs open wide like a man and relishes downing shots of raki. “Now, Albanian women have equal rights with men, and are even more powerful. I think today it would be fun to be a woman.”

The tradition of the sworn virgin can be traced to the Kanun of Leke Dukagjini, a code of conduct passed on orally among the clans of northern Albania for more than 500 years. Under the Kanun, the role of a woman is severely circumscribed: take care of children and maintain the home. While a woman’s life is worth half that of a man, a virgin’s value is the same: 12 oxen.

I didn't want to defend the Virgjineshe when I posted about them last year and I don't want to defend the practice now, but to frame its decline as a victory for the Western idea of gender equality strikes me as wrongheaded.

There is a difference between fulfilling traditionally male responsibilities and adopting a masculine manner and masculine patterns of thought, and insofar as the Virgjineshe realize that you can't do the former without also doing the latter they're smarter than, say, American feminists. The mental quirks associated with masculinity (an obsession with pride, aggression, competitiveness, etc.) developed (partly) in response to male responsibilities, and I think there's something to be said for insisting that, if you're going to play patriarch, you should go all the way with it. Gender isn't a buffet bar; be one or be the other, but pick. (Shorthand: Horses-era Patti Smith is better than Chrissie Hynde.)

Let's unpack that principle a little more. If a woman wants to infiltrate "a man's world," she could do so by arguing that it shouldn't be a man's world in the first place, in which case women will eventually become as prevalent in that sphere as men, in which case the fundamental character of that sphere will change (become feminized). An example: the Yale Political Union goes from 80% men to 50% men, and the debate floor becomes a less intimidating place, because men will humiliate another man who makes a bad speech but won't do the same thing to a woman. I think there is a place for women in a male-dominated YPU, but that's because guys can handle the cognitive dissonance of treating a few exceptional girls like one of the guys as long as there's only a handful of them, and as long as everyone involved recognizes that something weird and subversive is happening when they do so.

This article on the Virgjineshe is the best; scroll down to the quotes at the bottom:

Rabë Lajqi, 77: . . . I wanted to be a man and I was completely like a man, always. There was no love and I never regretted it. I had a gun and the men were afraid of me. Once, I was cutting trees in the forest and a guy came up demanding that I stop. He said a woman shouldn't be in the woods by herself, never mind doing man's work. I pointed my rifle at him and told him, should he ever come within 100 yards of me again, he would be a dead man. Ha! How he ran. Nobody ever bothered me again.

I'd like to marry now, but it's too late. If I was younger, I'd put on a dress, flirt with the men and find myself a husband. I am the only proper Virgjineshe in Rrugova now. Mirë is not strong like a man. She was only a shepherd. She never really worked like a proper man of Rrugova.

'Kajtaz' (Mirë Lletë) Lajçi, 64: . . . Rabë told you she is a strong man, did she? What she didn't tell you is she was engaged to a man from another village when she was a child. He died and they never met. Maybe her father, who arranged the engagement when she was born, didn't tell her anything, but the fact is she was engaged and is therefore a woman.

'Lika' (Lirie) Thera, 57: I never cared about girls' silly talk and behaviour. I was 14 when I was first caught smoking with the boys in school. I dressed like a boy and started working in the holidays because I wanted to be independent. After school, I went to study in Prizren and had the time of my life. Nobody ever saw me as a girl or thought it was indecent that I went out drinking. They always accepted me as one of them, and two of them are my 'blood brothers'. Apart from my mother and aunt, I spend time only with men, but I am not interested in love or sex. I just want to be free to work, go fishing and drink raki, vodka and beer.

Haki, 66: I am a man and that's it. I own this whole farm and I work very hard. Why would I mind living on my own? I have a lot of honour in this village and beyond, and people visit me. Why do you come here and ask all these questions? I don't have time for you. I am very busy.

The Guardian article's main objection to the practice is that it makes celibacy a condition of participation in the masculine sphere. I'll certainly concede that celibacy is a total drag, but, for my money, I think it's an unofficial condition of being treated as "one of the guys" in any case. Think CJ Cregg versus Amy Gardner on West Wing, or Dana on Sports Night. The femininity involved in being someone's wife or girlfriend—letting him be the man of the house—necessarily compromises a girl's ability to seem tough enough to make it in a man's world, which leaves you with the option of either keeping the two spheres completely separate or abandoning one of them altogether.