Albania's sworn virgins

Fascinating article in the New York Times today about the Albanian "sworn virgin" tradition. According to Albanian custom, if the "patriarch" of a family dies without leaving a male heir, an unmarried (ie virginal) daughter or other relative can make an oath to remain a virgin for life and assume a male identity (though usually without changing her first name) and become the "man of the house," protecting and providing for the rest of the family. They live as men and are regarded as male by the rest of society, including other men.

The tradition of the sworn virgin can be traced to the Kanun of Leke Dukagjini, a code of conduct passed on orally among the clans of northern Albania for more than 500 years. Under the Kanun, the role of a woman is severely circumscribed: take care of children and maintain the home. While a woman’s life is worth half that of a man, a virgin’s value is the same: 12 oxen.

This is interesting on a number of levels. first, it implies (or so it seems to me) that women aren't inherently less capable than men since persons who are born women can fulfill male roles within society. Moreover, a woman doesn't lose her value until she becomes sexually active and a potential mother. This is different from other patriarchal models where virginity is valued because a woman becomes "ruined" by sex, and unfit for marriage to a different man, or where extramarital sex brings shame or dishonor onto her male relatives. This 2007 Washington Post article explains,

The idea that a woman would need to forsake love and live as a man to control her own fate seems primitive to modern eyes. But perhaps, in the context of a once-upon-a-time culture, a culture before feminism, it can be seen as progressive. The existence of sworn virgins reveals a cultural belief, however inchoate, that a biological woman can do all the work of a man.

Under this paradigm, biology may not be destiny but society is built around two completely separate gender roles. A person's gender role may usually be determined by biological sex, but that can be overridden by social imperatives.

Hymen reconstruction debacle grips France

Gynecologists report that in the past few years, more Muslim women are asking for certificates of virginity to provide proof to others. That in turn has created a demand among cosmetic surgeons for hymen replacements, which, if done properly, they say, will not be detected and will produce tell-tale vaginal bleeding on the wedding night. The service is widely advertised on the Internet; medical tourism packages are available to countries like Tunisia where it is less expensive.

- NYT

And even more baffling...

The groom, an engineer, applied for an annulment because his bride, a student nurse, had lied to him about her virginity. Under the French civil code, an annulment can be granted “if there was a mistake about the person or the essential qualities of the person”. The judge declared the marriage void since it was “founded on a lie about her virginity”, which the bride acknowledged, and this constituted an “essential quality” in the eyes of both parties. The bride did not contest the annulment.

- The Economist

1) Women should have the right to pay for whatever ridiculous surgeries they want
2) Women should not be pressured into having ridiculous surgeries
3) Since it's well-established that all sorts of things can lead to the hymen rupturing, why is the presumption that a hymen-less woman isn't a virgin?
4) What's so great about virginity, anyway? Thanks to birth control and paternity tests, men don't have to worry so much about being duped into raising kids who aren't their own. And fears of STDs go both ways. If anything women should be more concerned, given the number of STIs that don't have any symptoms in men but can really mess up a woman's reproductive system.
5) In the case of the woman whose fiance's conservative Moroccan family wants their family friend to examine her, isn't that a form of assault? You better believe that no one looks at my lady parts without a good medical or romantic reason. And there's no way I'd marry anyone who tells me otherwise.
6) If you can't trust a woman to tell you the truth about her virginity and need so much proof, how can you trust her to be your wife? Or, why marry someone you don't trust?
7) Thats a LOT of money to pay for something whose sole purpose is to be examined once or twice and then broken. Kind of like a Jewish bride buying a fine crystal glass just to have the groom stomp on it.

So what does French public opinion have to say? That the husband in the Lille case was too young (23) to be taken seriously, that his virginity fetish was a throw-back to the Middle Ages (regardless of his religion), and that doctors and judges who go along with this sort of thing are complicit to the oppression of women. I don't disagree with Halimi on any of those points, a priori, but I think there's probably more nuance to be found. I'd love to see articles written from either the husband or the wife's perspective, rather than from the perspective of a detached observer.