Sworn Virgins | National Geographic

here in Albania gender identity can take
an extraordinary turn
Antonia yang is a British writer who’s
travelled here regularly since 1989 with
her guide blendy Deborah Antonia is on a
mission to find some albanian women who
have opted to live as men they’re known
as sworn virgins a sworn version is a
person in Mersin in Albania but also in
in Bosnia and southern Serbia this is a
woman who has sworn to live her life as
a man and the reason that this happens
is really a social situation whether or
not enough men in the family while
women’s rights are gaining a foothold in
the capital in northern Albania
traditions die hard men maintain power
both politically and socially the only
way a woman can have the rights of a man
is to take an oath of celibacy and
become a sworn virgin
Antonia first met posh csoka lea in 1994
although pashka decided on her own to
become a sworn virgin it was a choice
born from a cruel fate mean yeah
mccoggins una vida my childhood had many
software’s because my father died when
my mother was still pregnant with my
uncle and when I was one year old my
mother left me and I grew up with my
uncle and father’s mother she was their
sole provider if she married she’d have
to live with her husband and abandon her
uncle and grandmother law in your
theatre tomorrow then her uncle got sick
and was sent to a hospital miles away
Momo’s doc Mele is a woman I had no
possibility to drive I needed to walk to
travel a lot to dress with trousers and
not to be seen as a woman by age 35
unmarried and alone pashka had tired of
her hard life as a woman she opted to
become a sworn virgin for pashka it was
a choice about gender not sex lesbianism
in rural Albania is an unknown concept
their culture recognizes only
traditional male-female relations
pashka says she has no regrets about not
having children nor does she feel she’s
missed intimacy with a man sex is such a
minor part of life that in the Society
of the very traditional rural areas it’s
not something that that they themselves
can imagine but pashka feels that
today’s generation should not follow in
her footsteps
Asli voice no become a Snooki to know
young girls I would recommend what I
have done so because now life is more
open the society is more civilized in
our schools better educational but I
know there are many choices to join we
see but in case they want to take the
decision as I took it she was in a boil
I would recommend a hundred times to
think about it because once you make it
you should stick to it
Antonia believes there are only about
100 sworn virgins left in northern
Albania but as change comes to this
remote and wild corner of the world
she thinks the practice may not survive
I would imagine that that Swan virgins
will die out in the in the end but I
think it’s still going to take quite a
while