For those that don’t know, Zhaklin Lekatari is a successful journalist, television presenter, and Albania’s only sex blogger. Founder of the popular site tabu.al, she was inspired to start writing about sex, sexual health, and relationships as a way break down the stigma’s around such topics, and to find out more about her own self and sexuality. As a fellow sex columnist, feminist, and liberal thinker, when I sat down with her on a cold and grey Monday morning, I had a feeling that we would get on well.
As I find with most Albanian’s I meet, the conversation started with questions on what brought me to Albania, and what I think of it. Of course, my answers were positive, and I explained how I ended up here by accident, fell in love with Tirana, and as a freelance writer I have the joy of being able to work wherever I can plug in my laptop. Zhaklin has lived outside of Albania for many years- educated in Italy and spending seven years in Pristina, Kosova, she only returned to her native Tirana a couple of years ago before setting up Tabu in May 2017.
“Living in Kosova was a tough time. I was in a very toxic relationship (for about a year) and I found the place to be extremely patriarchal. I was always being asked why I wasn’t married or how I had managed to get my parents permission to travel there alone. The idea that I was there just because I was, didn’t seem to sink in and I just felt it was a very controlling society to live in”.
After working at an alternative radio station, URBAN FM and being the only female bartender in Pristina, the toxic relationship became too much and Zhaklin returned to Albania. At a crossroads in her life and with the aftermath of the break up still fresh in her mind, she decided to throw herself into something that she loved- journalism. Taking several jobs with local television stations, she is successful in her own right as a television presenter, but an idea she had considered back in Kosova was still burning in her mind. This idea was to launch a sex blog. First called “ABCedari i Seksit”, it later became known as tabu.al and the idea was to offer information on sex, health, relationships, feminism, and of course her opinions with the aim of educating Albanians whilst helping to remove the taboo around sex.
Issues with patriarchal and misogynistic attitudes
Zhaklin speaks passionately about her motivations behind the blog, mentioning the fact that although Tirana is a more open and cosmopolitan place, there is still an underlying issue with patriarchal and misogynistic attitudes toward women. These attitudes become even more prevalent when you visit towns and cities in other parts of the country and that there are significant problems when it comes to the enforcement of gender roles, high rates of domestic violence, a lack of awareness on sexual health, and the obsession with virginity and its association with purity. She also speaks about attitudes that common all over the world, not just in Albania; that if you are outspoken you must be on your period, that your place is in the home, that you must be sexy but not too much, and that women who are confident or sexually open are nothing more than whores.
Breaking down social stigma
Zhaklin sees the blog as a way to bring sex to the forefront of public discussion. After all, everyone is doing it and has been for millennia, and there is no reason other than societal constraints and leftover religious dogma that is preventing us from being open about something that is one of the most natural things that two consenting adults can do. As well as breaking down barriers around the subject, she hopes that her writing can further educate her readers. I enquired as to what Albanian children are taught regarding sex in school and it seems that other than the basic biology, they are getting most of their information from the internet. As we then discussed, this means we have generations of people that think sex is like it is in pornography. This coupled with the prevalence of unreliable sources, fake news, and biased information means that to get to the truth, they are having to sift through piles of information to draw a conclusion that could end up not being correct.
Laughing, she tells me about a blog she wrote recently on some reasons why Albanian men are not very good at sex. Of course, it went viral and she was inundated with comments, including some rather angry ones from- you guessed it, Albanian men. She explained her position that she didn’t think this was the case for all of them, but rather that it was a collection of anecdotes from friends and readers and was meant to be a tongue-in-cheek way of injecting some humour into the topic.
A positive response from all agegroups
Response to the blog has been overwhelmingly positive- her readers range from youngsters to the much older generation, “I was really surprised to have so many older readers as I thought it was a topic that would be more popular with youths, but they really respond well to it” she adds. Through her partnerships with several local companies, as well as medical professionals such as gynaecologists, she is able to present a comprehensive selection of articles that tackle pretty much every topic imaginable. I asked her if there is any topic she wouldn’t touch, and the answer was no because writing about things like sex means that to do it well you need to keep it classy. Involving humour, keeping it light-hearted, but factual means that bit by bit we can chip away at the oppressive stigma that has crushed something beautiful and turned it into something we feel we should be ashamed of.
Activism, equality, and education
But it is not just TV presenting and sex blogging that Zhaklin is so passionate about, she has also set up an NGO called Albanian Sustainable Development Organisation(ASDO) that aims to go into the community and conduct research, produce reports, and provide consultancy services in a range of areas including culture, art, environment, economic development, youth, gender equality, corruption, and other social spheres. She runs me through some of the ideas that she has in the pipeline for promoting awareness around issues like prostate cancer, as well as further encouraging gender equality and pushing for an increase in education around the topics of sex, gender, health, and equality.
Zhaklin is an inspiring woman and it was a pleasure to sit and speak with her about the role of sex and sexuality in Albania and the wider world, as well as our thoughts on some of the more X-rated topics that cropped up. Whilst my understanding of Albanian is limited so I am unable to fully follower Tabu, I hope to collaborate with her in the future on a range of activism and awareness raising projects, so expect to hear more about her in the coming months.
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