Few issues are more contentious in today’s culture wars than those involving gender and sexuality, which is why they attract a substantial amount of hot-button media attention. That includes religion-beat coverage, of course.
Those labeled traditionalists generally feel one way on the issue and so-called progressives tend to feel just the opposite way. It’s a divide that cuts across virtually every faith group, leading to schisms and a great deal of congregational and individual pain.
Nor, I should point out, is there across-the-board agreement on these issues in secular circles.
On occasion a story turns up that seems to turn the issue on its head, scrambling our easy use of the traditionalist and progressive labels.
The New York Times recently ran one such piece out of Albania. I found it fascinating. The headline: “With More Freedom, Young Women in Albania Shun Tradition of ‘Sworn Virgins’.”
Reading between the lines, one unstated point I take from the story is that today’s growing acceptance, by some, of more fluid gender roles predates the post-modern influences that today’s cable TV news polemists, and others — including politicians — argue are causative.
On the other hand, I’d be remiss to not also note that this Albanian cultural quirk is an isolated practice that’s rapidly disappearing as the small Balkan nation’s rigid gender roles loosen in the age of globalization. So be careful not to draw too many broad generalizations from it.
In short, gender roles, like everything else in life worth serious attention, are complicated concepts and have been across human history. Here’s the story’s top:
LEPUSHE, Albania — As a teenager locked in a patriarchal and tradition-bound mountain village in the far north of Albania, Gjystina Grishaj made a drastic decision: She would live the rest of her life as a man.
She did not want to be married off at a young age, nor did she like cooking, ironing clothes or “doing any of the things that women do,” so she joined a gender-bending Albanian fraternity of what are known as “burrneshat,” or “female-men.” She adopted a male nickname — Duni.
“I took a personal decision and told them: I am a man and don’t want to get married,” Duni recalled telling her family.
Few women today want to become what anthropologists call Albania’s “sworn virgins,” a tradition that goes back centuries. They take an oath of lifelong celibacy and enjoy male privileges, like the right to make family decisions, smoke, drink and go out alone.
Duni said her choice was widely accepted, though her mother kept trying to get her to change her mind until the day she died in 2019. Like other burrneshat, Duni — who remains Gjystina Grishaj in official documents — is still universally referred to in a traditional way, with female pronouns and forms of address, and does not consider herself transgender.
By declaring herself a man, Duni was not striking at conventional gender norms, but submitting to them.
The story explains that by living as a burrneshat Duri is able to participate in village decision-making, run her family farm and inherit wealth. In short, it allowed her to escape forced marriage as a teenager and gave her an equal voice in what remains a patriarchal culture still largely subject to Albania’s ancient honor codes known as “Kanun.”
In a region long-plagued by violent clan feuding, the sworn virgin tradition allowed families whose husbands and sons had been killed to remain represented in communal affairs. An added bonus is that burrneshat are exempt from the blood feuds so they won’t be murdered by rival clans.
The story, other than stating that women such as Duni vow to be life-long celibates, does not — to its credit, I think — question the sexual orientation of burrnesthat. As for Duni, the story says she’s strongly “homophobic and transphobic.”
She has also called transgender surgery “against God’s will,” and said that people “should be put in jail” for doing so.
“I have not lived as a burrneshat because I want to be a man in any physical way. I have done this because I want to take on the role played by men and to get the respect of a man,” she said. “I am a man in my spirit, but having male genitals is not what makes you a man.”
Another burrneshat is Diana Rakipi, who took the celibacy oath as a teenager in front of dozens of relatives and who when interviewed wore a black military beret, a red tie, men’s trousers and a safari vest, its pockets stuffed with talismans of her eclectic beliefs, including a Christian cross and a medallion with the face of Albania’s onetime dictator, Enver Hoxha. (Sworn virgins generally wear male clothing.)
Ms. Rakipi snorted with contempt when asked about people who undergo transition surgery. “It is not normal,” she said. “If God made you a woman, you are a woman.”
Albania — the birthplace of Mother Teresa, now St. Teresa of Calcutta — has, to put it mildly, a highly complicated religious past, including a period of state enforced atheism under Hoxha.
Of course religious complexity is true for all the Balkan nations, where Christianity (in its Catholic and Orthodox iterations) and Islam historically fought for dominance.
Yet other other than a couple of unexplained references to “Christian” affinities in Lepushe and Rakipi’s adopted town, the Times story ignores the role of religious authorities in the burrrneshat tradition, which dates to the 15th century.
That’s too bad — dare I call it a journalistic sin of omission? It certainly qualifies as what we at GetReligion call a “religion ghost” — our way of noting an essential religion angle left unexplored in news coverage.
I’d love to know what the Catholic, Orthodox and Muslim authorities made of the tradition. Did they support it? Oppose it? Argue that it serves a greater good? Just wink and look the other way? I can’t say, though my guess would be the wink, wink option.
(The Times is certainly not the first outlet to cover this story — here’s a more detailed version from GQ published in 2014 — but my admittedly limited web search turned up no story that addressed this particular religion angle.)
Still, as I said above, I found the Times saga fascinating, if only as a journalistic slice-of-life from a corner of the world few outsiders know much about.
Here’s the link again. I encourage you to read it in full.
FIRST IMAGE: Photo posted, without credit, with a Daily Sabah feature entitled “Meet the last sworn virgins of the Albanian Alps.”
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