SWORN VIRGINS
It is tempting to assume that gender-based violence is always directed against women (with idiosyncratic exceptions such as Lorena Bobbit noted elsewhere) but this is by no means the case. Blood-feuding and vendettas which involve only males are a kind of counterpart to female-targeted honour killing. Blood feuds are common in the Balkans, the Caucasus regions and in Sicily and Corsica.
In Albania and elsewhere in the Balkans blood- feuding is sanctioned by an ancient code of honour known as the Kanun. According to the Kanun ‘an offence against honour is not paid for with property but by the spilling of blood’. Only male blood will do however. Where all the males of a household – from schoolboys to patriarchs – are house- bound because they are engaged in a blood feud with another family – one of the women of the family becomes a ‘sworn virgin’. Sworn virgins are social males who assume all responsibilities of head of household –legal, political, & social – but should remain celibate and unmarried. Sworn virgins have access to the male world by renouncing their femininity and reproductive role. They dress, talk and behave like men and can carry arms.
Girls or women may also become sworn virgins in the absence of a male heir or to avoid an arranged marriage… this is virtually the only way to avoid such a marriage without dishonour to any of the parties involved.
A man who becomes household or family head is by definition ready to participate in blood feuds, which can ravage families and communities for generations, and often ensure that some families have no sons to take over headship. The institution of the ‘sworn virgin’ can be seen as a kind of safety valve for a system of extreme patriarchy and patriliny, where men’s and women’s spheres of activity are strictly divided, and wherein women would normally have no social and political rights. Sworn virgins are not at risk of violence from the family who are bound by honour to kill their male relatives and are free to go out in public without fear of reprisal leaving the men and boys at home.
An article in the Guardian newspaper (06 January, 2007) carried an interview with Rakipi an Albanian sworn virgin who took on the role at the age of six after the deaths of three of her brothers in a blood feud. She joined the army for six years where she trained women to fight but returned to the men’s barracks at night. ’Now tough- talking, with cocky exaggerated male mannerisms, she works as a security guard’.
The same article reports that there are believed to be only 30 or 40 sworn virgins left in Albania and that progress towards gender equality may be making the role less appealing than formerly as there may be other ways of entering what is still probably largely a ‘man’s world’. However, until blood feuding disappears entirely it seems that there will still be some openings available.