Recently came across this article when surfing the news:
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'Sworn virgins' dying out

SHKODRA (Albania) - DRANE Markgjoni is one of Albania's last 'sworn virgins' - an age-old custom in which women assume the role of a man and are accepted as such by their family and society.

'My life has been a dog's life,' lamented the 87-year-old, gazing away in her modest home in Shkodra, in northern Albania, where religious paintings mix with photographs of her deceased loved ones.

Yet the octogenarian insisted she had no 'regrets'.

She quickly smiled again as she recalled memories of a destiny shaped by the weight of tradition and the exacting conditions imposed by the post-World War II communist regime of Enver Hoxha.

Dressed in old pants and a dark jacket, with her white hair trimmed short, Ms Markgjoni, who never learned to read or write, tried to protect herself from the cold in her icy home.

She was born in Bajram Curri, in the north of the country. From the cradle, her marriage was arranged in line with the custom of the time.

But on her wedding day in 1949, her husband fled Albania for neighbouring Yugoslavia, a common occurrence during the difficult post-war period. Several hours later, Hoxha's police arrested all the men from his family.

Ms Markgjoni suddenly found herself alone with the women and children of her husband's family. She said the marriage was never consummated.

And that is when she decided to 'convert,' adopting 'the role of the man of the house' in line with the centuries-old Albanian tradition of sworn virgins.

The decision meant renouncing forever her gender, pushing aside the possibility of being like other women, of having another husband, bearing children and, of course, engaging in sexual relations.

'I didn't have any other choice,' she said, recalling how she was deported to the south of the country with the women and children of her fiance's family. -- AFP
Source: http://www.straitstimes.com/Breaking%2BNews/World/Story/STIStory_359360.html?vgnmr=1
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This certainly made for an interesting read. While the practice is mostly confined to the northern parts of Albania today, those who uphold them still embrace very patriarchal notions.

Common reasons for opting to be a Sworn Virgin is either due to the oppression of women in their society and thus the choice so that they can be respected as men, or that similarly as the circumstance of Fafafinis, the household is lacking in males.

It is to be noted that being a Sworn Virgin in not a sexual orientation but a matter of CHOICE to go to such extremes to change their destiny.

Once the vow is taken to become a sworn virgin, the woman becomes a man, and society refers to her as a "he". She will be expected to act like a man, dress like one, and even talk like one. They are then not expected to perform any roles that are traditionally designated to women such a cooking or cleaning. These expectations and labels placed on her once the oath is taken clearly illustrates the view that only the man is capable of running the household, and that even while allowances are made for woman to undertake this role, their gender will have to be first altered to fit expectations.

Even then, while fully subsumed within her role as a male, the sworn virgin is pretty disadvantaged, being unable to bear children, marry or have sexual relations with a man anymore. I was wondering whether this rule applied to lesbians, since they, in their new gender of being a man, could now 'legally' have a female spouse and at the same time respond to their sexuality, though i could not find anything conclusive on it. Nevertheless, the highly patriarchal and conservative society that this tradition operated in probably also meant that homosexuals were strongly subverted and homosexual practice outlawed.