08/04/2008 - By Chuck Monan, Preaching Minister

Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground."
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
~ Genesis 1:26-27

From the location of Kruje, Albania, New York Times writer Dan Bilensky notes,

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 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.

This brilliant idea can be traced back 500 years to the Kanun of Leke Dukagjini, a code of conduct that has been the veritable gospel for the clans of northern Albania to the present day. The Kanun severely circumscribed the role of women to taking care of children and maintaining the home. A woman’s life was only deemed worth half that of a man, but a virgin’s value is the same as a man’s: 12 oxen.

The reason the custom of the sworn virgin developed in the first place was because of another unlovely Albanian tradition, the blood feud. A vicious, relentless, unforgiving code of vengeance left many males dead, and unmarried women stepped in to the vacuum of leadership. Bilensky explains,

Known in her household as the ‘pasha,’ Ms. Keqi said she decided to become the man of the house at age 20 when her father was murdered. Her four brothers opposed the Communist government of Enver Hoxha, the ruler for 40 years until his death in 1985, and they were either imprisoned or killed. Becoming a man, she said, was the only way to support her mother, her four sisters-in-law and their five children.
Ms. Kequi lorded over her large family in her modest house in Tirana, where her nieces served her brandy while she barked out orders. She said living as a man had allowed her freedom denied other women. She worked construction jobs and prayed at the mosque with men. Even today, her nephews and nieces said, they would not dare marry without their “uncle’s” permission.

When she stepped outside the village, she enjoyed being taken for a man. “I was totally free as a man because no one knew I was a woman,” Ms. Keqi said. “I could go wherever I wanted to and no one would dare swear at me because I could beat them up. I was only with men. I don’t know how to do women’s talk. I am never scared.”

When she was recently hospitalized for surgery, the other woman in her room was horrified to be sharing close quarters with someone she assumed was a male.

Being the man of the house also made her responsible for avenging her father’s death, she said. When her father’s killer, by then 80, was released from prison five years ago, Ms. Keqi said, her 15-year-old nephew shot him dead. Then the man’s family took revenge and killed her nephew. “I always dreamed of avenging my father’s death,” she said. “Of course, I have my regrets; my nephew was killed. But if you kill me, I have to kill you.”

The sad thing is that not only is the Kanun adhered to by the majority of citizens who are Muslims, but  Christians there also live like this.

God made us male and female. We have not been called to interchangeable roles. But we all have worth, regardless of gender (Galatians 3:26-29). Whenever societies deny God’s plan to substitute their own, degradation always results.