Becoming a Woman-Man: Notes on the Phenomenon of Sworn Virgins in the Balkans

The phenomenon of female cross-dressing and gaining the social role of a man has been witnessed in the tribal patriarchal society of the remotest parts of the Dinaric region since the nineteenth century. Once found within both Slavic and Albanian populations, today sworn virgins have been rapidly vanishing, and are rarely still found in northern Albania. The fact that occurrence was equally common among Orthodox, Catholic, and Muslim populations in the remotest mountain regions points to the phenomenon's ancientness. As women who aspired to the social status of men, sworn virgins did not cease to be women; only the “degree” of their womanhood or manhood varied. Examining this social phenomenon as a third gender, this article contextualizes it through Judith Butler's theory of performativity. It also focuses on the relatedness of the phenomenon to the ancient past, turning to existing theories, but also providing an original contribution to the third gender debate.