Challenging Taboos: Testimony
22 July 2005
by Selvijan Rašidova1
I am a Romani girl and I live between two paths.
One path is tradition which I must respect because I have to preserve my family's reputation. This path is narrow, it gives me no space to move, but I must follow it simply because I was born a Romani girl. I do not have the right to choose the other path – the one which allows the individual human being to reflect and to make choices how to steer her own life. If I chose this latter path, I am afraid I might lose my parents. So I shall live between two paths practicing tradition. I shall never be a person who can say, "I have an idea, I know to solve the problem". Someone else will always do it and I shall stand aside, watching someone else deciding for me, unwilling to hear that I already know what I want.
I grew up in a place where there were no other Roma living, in a socially integrated family, educated parents, and brothers. My parents taught me to study, to finish university, to be what I want to be. I got the freedom to decide what I want, to study where I want and my family always supported me. But I was also raised in the spirit of our tradition. I was taught to keep the tradition because it is a part of our identity. One of the traditions persisting in the Romani families in Macedonia is the custom and the myth of virginity. When a girl is getting married she needs to prove her virginity on the first night of marriage in order to keep her family reputation. Otherwise, she will be exposed to public humiliation and her family will lose the respect of the community.
Three years ago my dream came true and I became a student in the Law University in Skopje. I started to work in the NGO sector with other Romani students from all over Macedonia. In November 2001, I was invited to participate in a leadership training organised by the Open Society Foundation – Macedonia, with another 12 girls. The purpose of the training was to teach us how to become a leader. I never imagined that I would have get involved in an initiative such as virginity cult research.
Everything happened accidentally. The group consisted of 13 Romani girls from 10 cities in Macedonia. During the coffee break we started discussing the issue of us, Roma in general, the issue of tradition, our origin, culture, etc. We stopped at one of these points -- on the issue of customs as part of the Romani tradition. We started wondering whether we wanted to respect our own tradition and whether we – as its future carriers – would preserve it as it is with all of its practices. With a bit of hesitation and precaution we started discussing the cult of virginity. That cult unfortunately is still present with the Roma and very often is the sole criterion of the chastity of a girl. We slowly started opening ourselves when we realised that almost all of us were thinking in the same direction. It was unanimously concluded it bothered all of us. We wondered whether we as a group of 13 young girls could do something to challenge that custom and how?
Knowing that the issue of sex is a taboo for Roma, we deliberated on how to "reach" the people so as to make them speak about the cult in order to hear their opinion on it and their attitude on whether it should be changed or not. We decided to conduct a research using questionnaires.
We prepared three questionnaires for the three groups of interviewees: young girls, boys aged 14-25, and their parents. We carried out the surveys in the cities where we lived and included a total of 660 interviewees and then we analysed the results with the assistance of a psychologist. The results were published in a booklet "On Virginity" in three languages -- Macedonian, English and Romani.2
We tried to include all Romani neighborhoods, to become part of each Roma environment characteristic for the respective surveyed cities. In the course of the survey, various problems arose. For example, I faced the problem that part of the young people feared that their parents might show up in the room during the interview and see what kind of questions they were answering. They even advised me not to interview their parents in order to avoid problems with them in the aftermath of the interviews.
The results helped us to determine how much the young people were independent in choosing their ways of living and at the same time to survey their level of awareness regarding the impact of tradition on their lives. The parents were interviewed so as to find out their attitudes regarding the independent choice of their children with regard to deciding on their lives; where they saw the roots and the needs for the existence of the virginity cult custom; and whether they believed it should be changed. This research was the basis and guidance for the subsequent activities directed towards overcoming such taboo issues among Roma. It will also help us to raise awareness particularly of the young girls of their right to decide about their own body, about the choice of the spouse and about their lives in general.
After the research, we went back to the same towns and held public debates on the same topic. We invited four experts to take part on the public discussions: a doctor, a psychologist, a Muslim priest and a Romani woman activist.
I was surprised by the presence of many parents in the audience and it was the first time where young people could talk in front of the older about tradition. There were people who supported the initiative and called us "brave girls", others, however, thought we were "radicals".
I hope that this step of ours will encourage many to speak openly about what bothers them and find out the way to overcome the problems. I also hope that this project will encourage the Roma from the other countries in the region and everywhere where such problems exist, to start thinking whether someone else should decide for them, and to undertake specific action to eliminate such a degrading custom.
And at the end…instead of comment: "In the same way that you need your right to be free, your right needs you to choose it".
Endnotes:
- Selvijan Ra?idova is a student of law at the university of Skopije, Macedonia. She was a member of the research team which conducted the survey ?The Right of Choice? in Macedonia in 2002 and has been an intern at the European Roma Rights Centre.
- Details about the survey results are available at the website of the Roma Women?s Initiative: http://www.romawomensinitiatives.org/youngleaders/eng/index.htm.
