My Fair Sworn Virgin

The movie “My Fair Lady,” with its music, sets, costumes, story, and acting by Rex Harrison and Audrey Hepburn has always been one of my favorites. It is an adaption of George Bernard Shaw’s “Pygmalion”—which he adapted from a Greek mythological figure, Pygmalion, the King of Cyprus,who carved a statue of a beautiful woman. But then he made the mistake of falling in love with it.

In Shaw’s play, Professor Henry Higgins bets his rich buddy Colonel Pickering he can coach an illiterate, street-wise flower girl to become a beautiful woman who can pass easily among the best in society. It was Shaw’s thesis that we would all be equal if we had the opportunity.

I thought immediately of Shaw’s plot when I read New York Times reporter Dan Bilefsky’s story of Albanian sworn virgins swapping genders when there was a shortage of men in their family. Pashe Keqi decided to become a man over 60 years ago when her father was murdered in a blood feud. Because her four brothers were already imprisoned or killed by the Communist government of Enver Hoxha, she decided to give up her life as a woman. She cut off her long black curls, wore baggy trousers, and carried a rifle most of the time. She also sacrificed marriage, children, and sex. Pashe became the bread winner for her mother, her four sisters-in-law, and their five children.

There are about 40 “sworn” virgins left in Albania. They live under a 500-year-old code of conduct developed by clans of Albania called the Kanum of Leke Dukagjini. Under the code a woman’s only purpose is to take care of children and maintain the home. Consequently, she is worth only half a man. A virgin’s value, however, is worth 12 oxen.
Pashe lives as a man under the code, is the patriarch of the family, and has the additional obligation of avenging her father’s death. The 78-year-old has developed a “bellowing” baritone and has acquired all of the swagger and trappings of an Albanian clan leader. She also loves downing shots of raki, a very strong drink which can move the top of your head.

“Why Can’t A Woman Be More Like A Man?”

One of my favorite songs from “My Fair Lady,” “Why Can’t A Woman Be More Like A Man?” is sung by Professor Higgins when he realizes he is falling in love with Eliza Doolittle, the little flower girl he has turned into an aristocratic society woman:

Why can’t a woman be more like a man? Men are so honest, so thoroughly square;
Eternally noble, historic’ly fair, Who when we win, will always give your back a pat.
Well, why can’t a woman be like that? Why does ev’ryone do what the others do?

Pashi Keqi says she would not become a sworn virgin today because a certain amount of modernity, Internet dating, and even MTV has come to Albania. There is even a semblance of sexual equality. She says, “Now, Albanian women have equal rights with men, and are even more powerful. I think today it would be fun to be a woman. Back then, it was better to be a man because before a woman and an animal were considered to be the same thing. Girls here don’t want to be boys anymore.”

Bilefsky writes: “The sworn virgin was born of social necessity in an agrarian region plagued by war and death. If the family patriarch died with no male heirs, unmarried women in the family could find themselves alone and powerless. By taking the oath of virginity, women could take on the role of men as head of the family, carry a weapon, own property and move freely.”

Pickering, why can’t a woman be more like a man? Women are irrational, that’s all there is to that!
Their heads are full of cotton, hay, and rags!
They’re nothing but exasperating, irritating, vacillating, calculating, agitating,
Maddening and infuriating hags!

“And Ain’t I A Woman?”

In 1851 Sojourner Truth, a former slave, delivered her famous “Ain’t I A Woman?” speech to a group of ministers at a Women’s Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio. The six-foot black woman immediately went on the attack: “That man ober there says that women needs to be helped into carriages, and lifted ober ditches, and have the best place everywhar. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or ober mud-puddles, or gives me any best place? And ain’t I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have plowed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain’t I a woman? I could eat as much and eat as much as a man—when I could get it—and bear the lash as well! And ain’t I a woman? I borne 13 children, and seen most of them sold off to slavery, and when I cried with my mothere’s grief none but Jesus heard me! And ain’t I a woman?

“Then that little man in black there (a minister), he says women can’t have as much rights as men, ‘cause Christ wasn’t a woman! Whar did your Christ come from? What did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with him.

“If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all ‘lone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back, and get right side up again! And now they is asking to do it—the men better let ‘em.”
Pasha Keqi lived in a rather small house with her large family. She worked construction jobs, went to the mosque and prayed with the men, and expected her nieces to keep her supplied with brandy when she was home. She served as “uncle” to her nieces and nephews and reserved the right to give her permission before they married. Although not a virgin by a long shot, Sojourner and Pashe would have made an impressive couple to deal with!

“Would You Be Wounded If I Never Sent You Flowers?”

Can’t a woman learn to use her head? Why do they do ev’rything their mothers do?
Why don’t they grow up—well, like their father instead? Why can’t a woman take after a man? Men are so pleasant, so easy to please; Whenever you are with them, you’re always at ease. Would you be slighted if I didn’t speak for hours? Would you be wounded if I never sent you flowers?

Pasha said she really enjoyed living as a man and being taken as a man. Once when she was hospitalized for surgery, she was placed in a room with other women. She said the other women were horrifed to be sharing such close quarters with a “male.” She was disappointed she didn’t get a chance to directly avenge her father’s death. When her father’s killer was finally released from prison Pasha’s 15 year-old nephew shot him. Then the man’s family killed her nephew. And so it goes in Albania.

Another legendary Albanian sworn virgin is Diana Rakipi, who became a sworn virgin to take care of her nine sisters. She was promoted to a senior position in the army and ended up training women to be combat soldiers. Diana wears an army beret and summarizes her position: “Today women go out half-naked to discos. I was always treated my whole life as a man, always with respect. I can’t clean, I can’t iron, I can’t cook. That is woman’s work.”

Qamile Stema, 88, is the village of Kruje’s last sworn virgin. She wears the queleshe, the traditional white cap of an Albanian man. At wedding parties she sits with the men—and women are very reluctant to talk to her. She jokes that if she had married, it would have been to a traditional Albanian woman! She says, “I liked my life as a man. I have no regrets.”

Higgins asks the difficult question to Pickering:

Well, why can’t a woman be like you? One man in a million may shout a bit.
Now and then there’s one with slight defects;one whose truthfulness you doubt a bit.
But by and large we are a marvelous sex! Why can’t a woman take after a man?
‘Cause men are so friendly, good-natured and kind, if I were late for dinner, would you bellow?

Sworn virgins have not jerked third world countries into the 21st century yet. Perhaps we need more swearing women. Only 44 years ago, Dean Erwin Griswold of Harvard Law School, that bastion of liberalism, invited the 15 women who had joined the Class of ‘64 to dinner and asked them the question: “Why are you at Harvard Law School, taking the place of a man?” He was afraid all of their education would go to waste.

Our Supreme Court, the center of our wisdom and philosophy, has hired only seven female law clerks out of the 37 allotted for the new term. Half of law school graduates are now women. The so-called intellectual leader of the court, Antonin Scalia, has hired only two women out of the 28 clerk spots he has been allotted over the last seven years. He is by far the leading chauvinistic pig of the Court. Evidently Scalia needs to have a heavy conversation with the likes of Sojourner Truth. He seems to have swallowed the lessons of Higgins as easily as Pasha swallows raki.

Higgins continues his diatribe as Eliza taunts him:

Why is thinking something women never do? Why is logic never even tried?
Straightening up their hair is all they ever do. Why don’t they straighten up the mess that’s inside?
Why can’t a woman behave like a man?
After all, Higgins says, “Men are so decent, such regular chaps.”