The last known virdžina (“virgin”) in Montenegro, Stana Cerović, died on August 1st, at the age of eighty.1,2 Montenegro’s virdžine were part of a set of closely-related trans-male or third-gender categories found among the South Slavs, who also call them tobelije or muškobanje, and the Albanians, who call them burrnesha or virgjinesha. They are people who were initially (right after they were born) assumed to be women, but who later adopt masculine clothes and tasks, refer to themselves as men, and are respected as such after they take an oath to remain chaste — the reason they are collectively known as “sworn virgins” or just “virgins” in those local languages and in English.3,4
As in many other societies, the influence of neighbouring binary-based cultures made the Slavic third gender a closed class even before Stana died. There are as many young transgender and non-binary people in the Balkans as there have always been in every society, but because they have been severed from their historicity and are treated as if they were a new phenomenon, they are often rejected. One thing everyone can do to overcome such claims that transgender and non-binary people are new and noisome is remember people like Stana, and remember just how ancient such people are.
