Academic

Albanian Custom Fades: Woman as Family Man

By Caitlin Borgmann

Interesting story in the N.Y. Times (6/25):

Pashe Keqi recalled the day nearly 60 years ago when she decided to become a man. She chopped off her long black curls, traded in her dress for her father?s baggy trousers, armed herself with a hunting rifle and vowed to forsake marriage, children and sex.

For centuries, in the closed-off and conservative society of rural northern Albania, swapping genders was considered a practical solution for a family with a shortage of men. Her father was killed in a blood feud, and there was no male heir. By custom, Ms. Keqi, now 78, took a vow of lifetime virginity. She lived as a man, the new patriarch, with all the swagger and trappings of male authority ? including the obligation to avenge her father?s death.

-Caitlin Borgmann

Full post as published by Feminist Law Professors on June 26, 2008 (boomark / email).