ChimpumCallao
Joined: 17 May 2005
Location: your mom
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 Posted: Mon Aug 13, 2007 6:42 pm Post subject: Sworn female virgins allowed to live as men |
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/10/AR2007081002158.html
WoW! Interesting, to say the least. Here are just some excerpts.
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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. |
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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. |
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In the mountains of northern Albania, throughout modern history, women have had very few rights. They cannot vote in their local elections, they cannot buy land, there are many jobs they are not permitted to hold; they cannot even enter many establishments. An ancient set of laws called the Kanun still helps govern the region. The Kanun says, "A woman is a sack made to endure."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. |
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"She deeply feels that she needs to give love to someone else," Dones says. "And of course, she's not delusional. She knows that perhaps she will never find a man. And perhaps she could never start a life as a woman at 50."
Though Vatoci speaks no English, she has the "skills of a man," and Dones thinks she could make it in America: "She went to school for being a truck mechanic. She's a tough guy." |
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