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.
Stana had four sisters; two brothers died young without children.1,2 Boyish since youth — smoking since age five, working in the field since age seven, and eagerly trained to shoot a rifle — Stana assured his ageing father that he would stay unmarried as a virdžina and look after the family in their village in the mountains of northern Montenegro.1,2 As researcher Antonia Young notes, “virgins” long challenged neighbouring cultures’ idea of gender as unchangeably bound to anatomy, but were expected to otherwise adhere to gender norms,5 so Stana chopped the wood and kept cows until a year ago (when one injured him, pushing him to move to a nursing home), while his sisters did the laundry.1,2
Researcher René Grémaux reports that Stana said “nature [was] mistaken” to have given him female form,6 and “consistently used the masculine grammatical gender while talking about himself,”6,6a though like several other Slavic virdžine he did not use a male name.6 Albanian virgjinesha
also uniformly describe themselves as men, but vary (sometimes from one
sentence to the next) the use of masculine and feminine pronouns,3,4 and most often use feminine ones.4 Both groups’ relatives and peers mostly use feminine terms, sometimes confusing young family members — the children of one virgjineshë’s brother asked “why do [you suggest] we call Lule ‘aunt’, when she’s a man?”2,4,8
Many other virdžine and virgjinesha also say they always felt male, not female, like many trans men around the world.5,6,7a Others say they took the role to avoid a life of submission to an arranged husband, or men in general, in a culture where marriages were often arranged without betrothed children’s consent.5,7 (Some, including Stana, flirted with and expressed attraction to women, and a few were sexually active.7,8,8a) A few, on whom cisgender researchers often focus to the exclusion of all others, took the role so as to head a house in which to care for their mother or sisters after the father’s death;2,5,7 unlike other virdžine, these sometimes resumed womanhood when the need for the male role passed.8c
The Slavic and Albanian “virgins” were the only societally-defined third gender(s) documented in Europe after Christianization until the modern era, the last survivals there (prior to the modern era) of a socially-recognized trans male status some researchers think was more widespread in pre-Christian times.9 Around the world, there have always been people whose gender did not match their groinal sex (i.e. transgender people), and there have always been societies that defined three or more genders (i.e. societies with non-binary genders and people), at every stage of recorded history and on every inhabited continent.10 “Virgins” existed in all the Balkans’ religious communities, Orthodox, Catholic, and Muslim.5
The last Bosnian and Croatian virdžine died years ago,2 making Stana one of the last, if not the last, among the Slavs. Fewer than a hundred mostly elderly Albanian burrnesha survive. There are many young people in the Balkans whose gender is not what other people “assigned” them right after they were born, but as in other places where the comparatively newer dogma that gender is binary has been steadily imposed by the influence of other, binary-based cultures, the third gender became an almost entirely closed class in Stana’s lifetime: old members were still respected,5,7 but younger transgender and non-binary people (and queer people) are seen as a new phenomenon, and often attacked.11
Last year, when Stana’s health declined, offers of aid came from across the
country and officials arranged for a room in a nursing home.2 At the very same time, 34% of Montenegrins told a pollster they would entirely “stop communicating with” any friend, acquaintance, colleague or neighbour if they learned the person was transgender or queer.11 Trans and gay pride events throughout the Balkans are often violently attacked and shut down.11 (Many Albanians long insisted gay people did not even exist in their country.8b)
Such severing of transgender and non-binary people from our long history around the world and within specific cultures is documented in other societies, too,(7,10a) for example among the Tewa along the northern Rio Grande. They traditionally recognized trans men and women as well as androgynes as a respected third gender, the kweedó. Unlike sworn virgins, kweedós’ sexuality was not restricted; they could take men and/or women as partners; unusually among American tribes, they could even take other kweedós. Over time, however, white and Hispanic ideas of a binary where cis men controlled cis women infected the Tewa. When researcher Sue-Ellen Jacobs visited them, the tribe introduced her to someone they described as the last kweedó: the gender had become a closed class.10a
For the next 17 years, Jacobs spoke with tribe members about their society, but when that kweedó died in 1989, the Tewa’s rich understanding of gender died, too: when Jacobs returned, the people who had introduced her to the kweedó in 1972 claimed the Tewa never had “people like that”. An androgynous child who would have been the kweedó’s successor, though defended by the women of the tribe, has been relentlessly attacked by the men. In 1992, a man carved open the androgyne’s stomach. “It will come as no surprise”, Jacobs wrote, “that this beautiful child’s self-esteem is at rock bottom.” Similar scenes have played out in many other American tribes10a and around the world.7
One thing everyone can do to refute the claims of transphobes that trans and non-binary people are a new phenomenon is remember people like Stana and remember just how ancient trans and non-binary are. One thing everyone can do to resist the claims of transphobes that trans people should not be “given” rights is to remember that trans people long had rights — what is new in many cultures is the effort to take them away.
[1] Montenegro’s Last ‘Virgina’ Dies, New York Times / AP, 2 August 2016.
[2] Gordana Knezevic, The last ‘sworn virgin’ of Montenegro, The Guardian (UK), 13 June 2016 (mentions Stana’s birth year, 1936, and last wish to be remembered as his father’s only long-lived son).
[3] Antonia Young, Jenna Rice, Renegotiating Gender Norms, in Albania: Family, Society and Culture in the 20th Century (2012).
[4] Carly Dickerson, Linguistic Expression of Gender Identity: “Albania’s Sworn Virgins” (2015).
[5] Elena Becatoros, Tradition of sworn virgins dying out in Albania, Die Welt (Germany), 6 October 2008.
[6] René Grémaux, Woman Becomes Man in the Balkans, in Third Sex, Third Gender: Beyond Sexual Dimorphism in Culture and History, ed. Gilbert H. Herdt (1994), and Mannish Women of the Balkan Mountains, in From Sappho to De Sade, ed. Jan Bremmer (1989).
-[6a]: Either not aware of this or simply not respecting it, many Balkan and English-language news articles use feminine pronouns.
[7] Stephen Murray, Will Roscoe, Eric Allyn, Islamic Homosexualities (1997).
-[7a]: ...despite suggestions to the contrary by some authors, including [4], who seem to assume, based on their own failure to encounter people with such a motivation, that none exist.
[8] Antonia Young, Women Who Become Men: Albanian Sworn Virgins (2001) (which, despite its title, also covers Slavic ones).
-[8a]: Some sources, including [4] and [5], say that specific virdžine and virgjinesha were not lesbians, which is trivially true given that most adopted their trans-male status as trans men, and does not contradict evidence that some were attracted to women. Some (including in [5]) joined (other) men in teasing and flirting with girls. Stana said (per [8]) that were it not for his oath not to marry he would have married a woman. A few did even have long-term sexual relationships with women (see [7]). [7] even records a couple who are now explicitly termed “lesbians” because one did use “sworn virgin” status as the best available approximation for and legitimation of butch lesbian status. It has long been common for members of cultures which are constructing gender categories and assigning people to them — and for outsiders viewing the culture — to conflate gender with sexual orientation; see e.g. Walter Williams, The Spirit and the Flesh: Sexual Diversity in American Indian Culture (1992) which views a range of North American tribal gender categories through the lens of sexual orientation, or consider how straight trans women today are often attacked by homophobes in homophobic language as “gay”. Nonetheless, as with American “two-spirits” (see [10a]), gender and not sexuality was the defining quality of the identity — sexuality of any orientation was indeed nominally prohibited by the oath “sworn virgins” took.
-[8b]: The Slavs and Albanians traditionally failed to understand and conceptualize female homosexuality. At the time of her writing, Young reported that even in Albania’s capital there were few lesbian role models, contributing to the general sentiment among heterosexual Albanians that lesbians did not exist in Albania.
-[8c]: In other cases a return to womanhood was said to be forbidden, and it (and any violation of the oath of chastity) was allegedly punishable by death, but [7] notes the absence of evidence that any punishment was ever carried out, and [8] describes the usual, more reserved, reaction of the community to such events.
[9] Carol Clover, Maiden Warriors and Other Sons, JEGP 85, 1986.
[10] C. and M. Ember, in the Encyclopedia of Sex and Gender (2003), observe that examples exist “from every continent.” PBS has a map, noting: “On nearly every continent, and for all of recorded history, thriving cultures have recognized, revered, and integrated more than two genders.” For specific examples, see e.g. S. Graham Davies, Challenging Gender Norms: Five Genders Among Bugis in Indonesia, Case Studies in Cultural Anthropology (2006), and S. Graham, Sulawesi's fifth gender, Inside Indonesia 66 (2001), covering the Bugis’ gender system, and:
-[10a]: S. Lang, Changing Gender in Native American Cultures (2010), and Two-spirit People: Native American Gender Identity (1997), covering many American tribes’ trans categories as well as nonmale/nonfemale genders; particularly interesting is S. Jacobs’ information on the Tewa in the latter work.
[11] Michael Lavers, Poll: Anti-LGBT discrimination, attitudes common in Balkans, Washington Blade, 31 October 2015.
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