Good evening, my dear colleagues,

I will speak about an unusual practice which endured in some part of Balkans. I
have to be honest and admit that I have just recently heard about it and it’s no
wonder as seems it

An unusual practice has stubbornly endured in remote villages in the Balkans

since medieval times. Traditionally, if the head of a household in this strongly
patriarchal society died without a male heir, one of his daughters could choose to
become a man.

She would dress like a man. She was permitted to smoke and mingle with men in
the village cafe. She could even carry a weapon.

But these privileges came at a price. She had to become a “sworn virgin”.

Her vow of celibacy and her promise to look after her mother, sisters and the
family property were lifetime commitments. In many cases, it was the only way
by which a woman could inherit her family’s wealth.

Last of the burrnesha: Balkan women who

pledged celibacy to live as men
 
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In May the last so-called sworn virgin of Montenegro was moved from her village
near Savnik to a home for the elderly in the coastal town of Risan, amid fears for
her health. Stana Cerovic was born in 1936, the youngest child in a family of five
girls and two boys – both of whom died young.
While still a child, she promised her father she would never marry and would,
instead, take care of the family. All her life, she socialised with men. She started
smoking at the age of five. She began working in her father’s fields at seven. Her
father taught her how to shoot.

Cerovic never dressed as a woman. Traditional “women’s tasks” such as laundry

and cleaning were always done by her sisters. She was always “the man of the
family”

The custom survives in Albania but has already died out in Dalmatia and Bosnia
and now it is in its final days in Montenegro.

Sworn Virgin by Elvira Dones review – the

Albanian women living as men
 
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The 2007 novel Sworn Virgin by Albanian novelist Elvira Dones traces the life of
one woman who, with the help of her sister, managed to reconnect with her
female identity. Italian filmmaker Laura Bispuri made a film based on that novel
in 2015.

Elvira Dones tackles cultural and gender disorientation and identity while seamlessly expanding upon
immigrant and emigrant status and the multiple levels of transition. Mark's decision to shake off her oath
after fourteen years and to re-appropriate what is left of Hana's body and mind by moving to the United
States creates a powerful rupture. The transition to a new life as a woman striving to shed the burden of
her virginity is fraught with challenges, and the first-generation assimilatedcousins with whom Hana
tentatively undertakes her new life make her task no easier.

Sworn Virgin is the first novel Elvira Dones wrote in Italian.

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Unlike the heroine of Dones’s novel, Cerovic seems to have no regrets. Her last
wish, she says, is to be remembered in her family graveyard as her father’s only
surviving son.

I personally do not take neither positive nor negative position – I believe everyone should live their lives
as they want. However, in this case, I would not say that these women wanted to become men and
never marry or have kids, but that they were actually given an ultimatum – you can shoot, smoke and do
other customs as men usually do and you must protect your family, but in return you need to give up
your feminine side. Luckily, in the modern society, women are free to do whatever they want and do not
have to give up neither of their masculine nor feminine side and the same goes for men.

Thank you