Hands of Hope

Give Refugees a Hand

UNHCR video week

I'm going on vacation today - weehee! Maruka and I are going to Bermuda, and we're very excited to report back about the cultural quirks of that little bit of the world. I'm especially excited because I know nothing about it - I know there's a triangle, and shorts, but that's about it.
So will I be blogging from the cruise ship? No. But there will still be new material on this blog thanks to blogger's many nifty features. Over the next week I'll be posting videos from the UNHCR You Tube channel. They're really well done, and as many of you know refugee issues are near and dear to my heart. Have a good week!

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.

Ask a Mexican about assimilation and symbolic ethnicity

Multicultural NoVa

Loving this WaPo article about how the Muslim and Latino communities in NoVa are banding together. It just warms my heart, especially given all the anti-immigrant rhetoric and xenophobia we hear these days. What a great example of the salad-bowl theory of American acculturation (as opposed to the melting pot, which assumes that new arrivals will adopt the culture of the dominant group, ie WASPs).

When personal and public values collide

Decent people the world over do their best to live their values and work hard at their jobs while following the laws of the land. But what happens when any those three value systems conflict?
Feministe's Jill, in her post on anti-choice pharmacies sees it this way:

Yes, people absolutely do have a right to object to doing things they find immoral or wrong. And in places where people are legally compelled to be — school, for example
— the law should not force them to do things that violate their conscience. But when you voluntarily accept a job in a particular field, you need to be able to do your job. If you’re a pharmacist, that means you need to fill prescriptions — even if you don’t like the drugs people are taking. If you’re a Scientologist who believes, for example, that it’s wrong to use anti-depressants, and you feel so strongly about that belief that you cannot justify being a part of other peoples’ use of anti-depressants, don’t be a pharmacist. If you’re a member of Fred Phelps’ church and you think AIDS is God’s punishment for homosexuality, and in carrying out that punishment you don’t believe that any HIV-positive people should get medication, don’t be a pharmacist. If you’re a fundamentalist Christian who believes it’s wrong to use birth control, and your belief is that it’s also wrong to allow other people to use birth control, then don’t be a pharmacist.

Which I don't disagree with - that said, one could argue that the individual's right to be a pharmacist WHILE practicing his or her religion trumps the pharmacist's professional code of conduct. Being the agnostic child of American Catholicism and French laicite, I still side with Jill, though.

What about Ethiopian factory workers who want to wear their traditional long skirts and flowing scarves near conveyor belts? That does sound kind of dangerous - but mostly it seems to me that everyone involved (including the authors of the article and comments) is confusing Islam with Ethiopian tradition. Muslims of both sexes are enjoined to dress modestly, but there aren't any more descriptions of skirts, scarves, hijabs and burkas in the Koran than there are pictures of blue jeans and pantsuits in the Bible.