Montenegro is the place of revolutionary trans struggles.
A conversation between a trans activist and an anthropologist

This text presents snippets of an ongoing conversation between two friends from Montenegro, Jovan Džoli Ulićević, a trans activist and biologist, and Čarna Brković, an anthropologist. We met many years ago, during the activist meetings that led to the creation of one of the first Montenegrin NGOs working on the LGBT issues, “Queer Montenegro”. Today, Jovan is one of the founders and director of Association Spectra, which is the only trans-led organization in Montenegro working on promotion and protection of human rights of transgender, gender diverse and intersex persons, and a member of the Trans Network Balkan, a regional trans and intersex organization. Čarna is a political anthropologist, who obtained her PhD in social anthropology from the University of Manchester. Among various research fields, her research topics include gender and sexuality, humanitarianism, the state, and the epistemology of humanities and social sciences. Due to shared interests in the relationship between social theory and social change, we have had various long, mutually inspiring, and diffi cult conversations over the years. The text in front of you is a compilation that includes an interview with Jovan conducted by Čarna on the meanings and practices of trans activism in contemporary Montenegro and the English translation of a blog post written by Jovan for the Montenegrin audience “To be loved and/or to be a part of the change”. How one’s identity can be a space of resistance is the subject of Jovan’s blog post “The space of resistance”, of which an English translation is additionally available on the kuckuck website.1 In this blog post, Jovan writes more about his personal background, being female assigned at birth and growing up in a society where being different meant to be excluded and treated cruelly. The desire to belong was strong and Jovan started to adapt and behave like girls around him. Doing so, he realized how much the system favours those who follow its rules and that in a patriarchal heteronormative society personal and bodily integrity and autonomy are threatened, and critical thought is restricted, for those who do not follow its rules. With questioning his identity and the rules, Jovan’s identity has become his space of resistance.

The text in front of you brings Jovan’s voice and thoughts on his own work to the kuckuck readership. He illustrates a range of questions on gender, sexuality, social change, the relationship between the EU and the Balkans, the place of love and self-awareness in activism, on what it means to be an activist in Montenegro, and many more. Some of those issues have been discussed in more length elsewhere (Ulićević and Brković forthcoming) and if you are interested in exploring further ethnographic research on LGBT activism in Montenegro and the former Yugoslav region, you can find a list of relevant literature at the end.

 

The Interview

Čarna Brković: When and how did you become an activist?

Jovan Džoli Ulićević: Good question. The moment when I thought of myself as an activist was definitely the one when I came out publicly, in the media. Now I see it differently, my understanding of what it means to be an activist has changed completely. From my current perspective, I have become an activist a long, long time ago, when I started fighting for my own conception of justice as a much younger person. I became an activist when I started “arguing” with my high school teachers that everybody should have the same rights – EVEN LGBT PEOPLE – although I did not realize at the time that I myself belong to this community, nor that such issues should not be open for a discussion, especially with those who teach the Constitution as the school subject… I think that the defining moment when I shifted from “I never want to be an activist” to “I don’t want to be anything else but an activist” was a lovely sunny day at Biogradska gora,[2] which I spent with Marija.[3] We sat on a bench and talked and I realized I want my purpose to be to contribute to the change of the society for the better, towards what I feel a healthy society should look like, in which I would feel good, in which everybody would feel safe…

ČB: What does activism mean for you?

JDžU: To not be silent. For a trans person, activism takes place every time you tell someone your identity – and explain it along the way, because there is no coming out without an explanation when you are a trans person. A revolution takes place in this small, raw, very powerful act, during which you lay yourself bare in front of another human being, with a degree of uncertainty of how this person would respond – and then you answer a set of questions and change the whole system of gender understanding which this person used up until that point. For me as a citizen, activism means also questioning everything, not taking things as a given, simply because “this is so” and “the system works in that way.” I think it is important for us to continuously question reality and think of ways to redefine it so as to make it better for all of us.

ČB: What does an average day in the life of a trans activist in Podgorica look like?

JDžU: It depends on who you ask. :-) Mine looks like this: I get up at 6:30, take a shower, take my dogs for a walk, drink coffee, read something, have breakfast with Marija. A little bit before 9 we go out to work. And then it all depends. Sometimes I have to work in Spectra’s [4] office, so I write what needs to be written – projects, reports, I communicate withthe institutions. Sometimes I do not go to the office, but from one meeting to another. Then there are days I spend with the community, which means I meet with people individually, we chat about how they are doing, what they are up to, I give them information and support if needed, and I lead the self-support group. Sometimes there are difficult moments, so I spend my time in the emergency room or in the police… I don’t think there is an average day in the life of an activist, everything is very dynamic and you never know what to expect from a day – although I make an effort to have as many things as possible planned out.

ČB: What does trans activism in Podgorica look like and what does it encompass?

JDžU: Sometimes I have a feeling that I don’t know what it does not encompass. :-) This has also changed a lot over time. Activism for me used to be only putting people together, offering support, motivating people to fight for themselves and others… Now activism encompasses many other things. Working with the community is still the basis of our activism, it is the necessary foundation without which everything would be meaningless. But activism now also means working with the institutions, solving problems on the institutional and systemic level, a lot of visibility and a lot of telling our personal stories over and over again. Activism also means continuously leaving your comfort zone, e.g. when we all stand in the street and hold banners, or talk through the megaphone. It also means having jitters when we organize a major event to present our research, where institutional representatives and TV journalists with their cameras come to record us. It also means a totally regular day at the offi ce, when you sit at your desk and cannot move from your computer. I think it is necessary – although difficult – to take into account all those different aspects of activism and to appreciate them equally. We should not think of them as “more” or “less radical” forms of activism, especially because such evaluations can result in ideas about who is a “proper” activist and who is not “really” an activist. Due to such ideas, we may fail to appreciate all those who contribute in different ways. We may end up valuing only those who are very visible and in the front rows and/or glorifying the activists who are multitaskers and who sacrifice absolutely everything for social change. I think trans activism in Montenegro almost fell into this trap, but we fought back. :-) After some self-questioning, trans activism in Montenegro reached a point at which everybody’s contribution is valued and all of this – from giving speeches and holding banners to using the copy-machine – is understood as activism, because everything we do has a purpose and a goal.

ČB: Does trans activism in Montenegro differ from trans activism in Austria or Germany? Or in other parts of the world? If so, in what way?

JDžU: In my view, what makes the Montenegrin trans activism very different from a European trans activism is that it does not take activism for granted. It does not copy examples from larger NGOs that fail to question their internal power dynamics. I do not want to generalize, because I know there are fantastic European collectives as well as individual activists. However, what I think [European] activism generally lacks is questioning its values, principles, and procedures; it often lacks self-reflection regarding how we do things, why we do things. Some structures and modalities of work are necessary, because we function within the very system that we try to change. However, I also think nothing is set in stone. It is important to consider which narratives we can change. I see a major difference there. I think that trans activism in Montenegro places a major emphasis on the community and that it manages to resist to become just another NGO that works on identitarian questions. Trans activism in Montenegro tries to question the concept of gender (an open question is with what success), rather than simply to advocate the mainstreaming of trans identity. It tries to speak in favour of gender diversity and equality of all people, but it also adopts an intersectional approach – which is, unfortunately, often not the case in many activist contexts, except in a declarative sense.

ČB: Can we see trans activism in Montenegro as the repetition of a struggle that was led several decades ago in the “developed world”? How would you like the readers of Kuckuck to understand you and your struggle?

JDžU: I would first like to know what the phrase “the developed world” means. :-) I was recently in Sweden. Balkan people tend to romanticize Scandinavian countries. I understood that the question of human rights of trans people is still a taboo topic there and that they only recently legally forbade the discrimination on the grounds of gender. I also found out that sterilization is still very much an issue and that, throughout Europe, there is a widespread lack of understanding that the question of trans people is the question of gender inequality. Once a Swedish police officer asked me – is it very difficult to live as a trans person in such a patriarchal country like Montenegro? I responded to his question with a question: “Do you know any country that is not patriarchal?” He said he didn’t. I think that patriarchy grows stronger in countries where people have nothing else to support them, and especially in countries that are not economically strong. Montenegro is such a country. I do not defend it because it’s mine – but I do think that it is important to critically question the image of “very patriarchal Balkan countries”. Before we mark any country as not-progressive, I think it is important to consider which resources it had at its disposal. And finally, I think that Montenegro is the place of revolutionary struggles when it comes to trans issues – especially considering that trans activism here is very young. Trans activism in Montenegro is represented by a diverse trans community which manages to explain itself in an understandable way to others and to do so in a not-pathologizing manner, breaking a lot of stereotypes about trans people as well as about gender.

ČB: In “To be loved and/or to be a part of the change?”, you think aloud whether it is necessary to be loved and appreciated in order to initiate social change. This distinction may sound somewhat odd to people outside of activist circles – a conventional, common-sensical assumption would be that people become trans activists because others do not like them (that is, because others do not accept them). Who are the people whose love and appreciation you sought earlier, considering it a constitutive element of social change?

JDžU: That act of thinking aloud was actually a privileged position which I could take only once I had become loved and appreciated. It stemmed out of a dilemma – what should I do when, as an activist, I need to make a controversial decision that some people will not approve of? You cannot agree with everybody at all times. What should you do when you want to be critical of something, but you fear that your criticism may have negative effects on the long-term goals which would bring benefits to the community? Or vice versa – what should you do when some (or all) people from the community want you to do things in a certain way and you think that doing it differently would be more efficient, better, more correct? Over the years, I learned that activism does not mean just being loud, but also knowing when, in what way, and how loud to be – all in accordance with your values. When we add the desire to please everybody to this, it becomes a hot mess, because people are pleased with different things for various (personal) reasons. I seek the acceptance of my community, so this dilemma was mostly about them. One example of such dilemmas concerned whether I should support the movement “Resist”,[5] because I thought that every activist group should make its voice heard about the questions of corruption too. Many from Spektra[6] shared this view, some joined the protests. However, the important thing for me was to approach the dilemma in a critical manner. So, I decided to not join the protests when I saw that they were supported by the political parties who strongly demonstrated homophobia in the past – and also when I saw that the protests do not pose social issues which I find crucial for activism. At that moment, a lot of activists and young people who know me expressed some degree of disappointment or surprise that I did not join this movement – especially since in my public speeches I regularly invoked civic values, solidarity, various social issues. And I have to admit that, in such situations, I felt a bit like I betrayed my own values. However, after a lot of thinking through, I realized that I actually felt sorry that my decision was not approved by a certain group of people. I still believed this to be the right decision, because I did not want to legitimize with my presence certain groups whose values are contradicting my values and all I believed in. I was not going to join them for a single purpose to bring down the current government. In that particular case, I decided to think more critically, to consider all the aspects of the protests, various motivations of various groups, as well as potential effects of this on the community I belong to and which I advocate for. Such decisions are not easy, they are not made on a daily level. But I think they are necessary to be made, with a lot of thinking through, critical reflection and self-awareness.

ČB: Is some kind of love needed/necessary for social change? If so, what kind of love would that be? If love is not necessary for social change, what is?

JDžU: It is definitely necessary, love towards yourself and other beings. Love that is free. Love that thinks through itself and others. Love that does not possess nor wants to possess. In addition to love, self-awareness and continuous self-questioning are also necessary. The precondition for all of this is knowledge – not just intellectual, but emotional knowledge. The more we understand ourselves, the easier it is to reach self-awareness in love too.

ČB: What is the relationship of the Montenegrin trans community towards traditional third sex/third gender practices in Montenegro, such as sworn virgins[7]?

JDžU: I don’t think there is such a relationship. Society rarely talks about sworn virgins and trans community is still a community with very limited access to knowledge. I think that the community still struggles with existential themes and so does not spend too much time on the historical concepts and traditional identities. I also think that many young people, including trans people, are repulsed by everything traditional – precisely because they link the traditional with transphobia and homophobia – so they do not invest themselves in gaining this kind of knowledge. This is another important question, because I think that without knowledge about the generations before us we cannot authentically shape our own generation nor avoid adopting the terminology that comes from the dominant narratives which are not related to our cultural context. However, I think this is one of the issues that will be addressed in the future when some of the burning issues calm down.

 

To be loved and/or to be a part of the change[8]
By Jovan Džoli Ulićević

Ever since I was born, I have always questioned things, I have been full of dilemmas, I have pondered whether this or that or something tenth would be the correct way to act. In my relationships with people, I have always tried to take into account the whole context of our relationship, the background of people’s reactions, the possible reasons behind their words and deeds – all in an effort to better understand people and to make my own actions more sensible to others. This has saved me many times from being judged, discarded, quickly shunned away, or misunderstood. I consider this to be one of the skills a person needs to cultivate in order to grow; and since growth is my priority, I am immensely happy when I notice it in myself and others.

One journalist asked me in an interview – what motivates my continuous activist fight and what do I want to demonstrate to others if I take myself as an example? I said that the life of trans people is a continuous fight, a fight that cannot be avoided. And that I want to demonstrate that one can be different and still fight – first for one’s own life and then for the idea that we are all worthy of dignified life in which it is possible to realize our desires, yearnings, and needs.

In the last several years, I have been living as free as possible and I have continuously yearned towards growth and progress – towards my own idea of a better person. I also frequently faced another dilemma – What is an activist? Am I one? Am I the kind of activist I wanted to be? And what motivates a person to become an activist?

I do not need to emphasize that the life of an activist is far from easy. For me, every step of activism has had its own magic as well as exerted challenges. One rarely discussed challenge is a perpetual desire to be loved and for everything we do to be met with approval and accolades. Why is this a challenge? As someone who is different and as a person who faced the lack of love in several relationships – as well as in my very existence in our society – I naturally craved confirmation and love from everybody. “You are great! You are really brave! You helped me so much! I don’t know what I would do without you! You are doing an amazing thing for the society!” And so on, and so on. These assertions fed me. I loved being loved. I was available to everybody at any time during the day or night. I could not stand the chance of missing an opportunity to do anything for anyone – to listen to someone for 5 minutes or 5 days non-stop, or to share everything I have – because this is what activists are supposed to do. You are not an activist if you are not facing difficulties, if you do not suffer, if you are not everywhere. In the meetings; on TV; writing activist statuses on Facebook; listening to the people; being available; having the phone ringing at all times. Free time must not exist – the less free time there is, the better and more respected you are as an activist!

How is this related to the desire to be loved and to be met with approval as a challenge of activism? It is very human to want to be loved, because we are social beings. However, there is something else as well. The lack of love in our past shaped us and conditioned us to not love ourselves enough. In a very long and very useful conversation with Mari, my deepest mirror, my life partner, and oftentimes my personal psychoanalyst, I reached a revelation that this desire makes me suffer because I still do not recognize the relevance of my work in an authentic manner and my self-acceptance is not as high as I had believed it to be. Boom! What do you mean – I am not empowered enough? What do you mean I still need others’ approval that I am good enough?

Sometimes people criticize me. Sometimes those are the people whom I thought I helped the most, or with whom I had the weakest boundaries. I disappointed some. How do I deal with this? By saying to myself – that’s ok. Because I am not just an activist; I am also a human being. It is impossible to satisfy everybody with my actions. I am glad to have faced this challenge since it pushes my personal growth further. I see this challenge as something we activists need to resolve with ourselves in order to continue bringing the change we want.

So, here is the key question – do I want to be loved and praised, or do I want to be part of the social change that will bring freedom and a dignified life to trans persons (and to many other people who will be able to live in a freer society)? These two things do not necessarily exclude one another, but neither do they have to go together. We need to understand that it is essential to remain open for opinions, suggestions, criticisms, as well as to remain faithful to your own vision and focused on that which will bring its realization – this is necessary for personal growth. In order for people to recognize the quality of your work, they need to work on themselves – they need to have their own opinion, to resolve their inner conflicts, to continually observe their own needs, and to question their own values. All of you who know me – if you think that I have changed over the years – please be certain that I have and that I intend to continue to change! Stagnation is not an option for me – and I look forward to all those whose growth I notice now and whose growth I will start noticing in the future!

At the end, I would like to share the vision that guides my activism. What I strive for is that every trans person in Montenegro and the whole region[9] has the right to self-determination; that they have the right to make decisions about their own life and body; that they can get a job and education; that they can work on themselves! I wish to see us growing, developing, being visible in all spheres of society. I wish to see us participating in decision-making processes! I wish to see us loving our bodies and experiences; developing deep fulfilling relationships; having families that accept us. I wish that future generations will not experience what our generations and those before us have experienced! Sometimes I need to be reminded of this vision, especially when the urge to please and to be praised overpowers me and tries to push me back to the vortex of insecurity and self-sabotage. In such cases, I repeat to myself: My vision is not to be loved, nor to be perceived as a martyr. We guide by our own example and we, trans people, have been victims for far too long. The time has come for us to be the actors and the protagonists of our liberation. So – do not love me. I do not need to be “Džoli whom everybody loves.” Instead, do take a look back at yourself, to the core of your values, and you will see if we share the same vision. If we do share the same vision – and you think we can pursue it in a different way – that is ok. There is not just one path towards the change. The vision I describe above is founded upon the assumption that there are many of us who work towards its realization. Having understood this meant taking a new step in my life and activism – new growth.

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Additional to the printed edition:
Originally published in Montenegrin language at the website “Vjesnik slobode“ on 9 March 2019. Available at: https://www.vjesnikslobode.org/2019/03/05/mjesto-otpora/

THE SPACE OF RESISTANCE
By Jovan Džoli Ulićević

I was born as a female baby in 1991. I lived as a child unaware of my sex/gender until I started primary school when I realized how cruel the children can be if you are different. And I was different, in my gender expression (I did not quite fit with other girls). Also, since I was not part of the school “elite”, this difference was more pronounced (because when you have money or important parents, differences become blurry). The pressure was strong, as was the desire to belong, so I adapted when I started high school with its new environment and new social circles. I started to look and to behave like other girls. I very quickly realized how much the system favours those who follow its rules. Critical thinking and rebelliousness still made me stand out, but my gender conformity smoothed any potential points of contention, so my “activist spirit” was mostly forgiven.

However, I assert that it is not natural for a human to live in a cage, in a material, spiritual, intellectual, or social sense. A sense of suffocation and imprisonment in inauthenticity and conformity pushed me to the breaking point and towards a rebellion that was not forgiven.

In a patriarchal heteronormative society, women and trans people have a long history of being excluded, invisible, and repressed as well as a profound experience of being pushed to the margins. Our personal and bodily integrity and autonomy are threatened, our critical thought is restricted. We live under the constant pressure to adjust to the system or to suffer the punishment if we refuse to obey its rules. Our political and activist voice is placed under threat, so we are pushed to be silent, to suffer, and to satisfy ourselves with crumbles of respect, called “tolerance”. If we are uncompromising, then we live under the threat of further marginalization. In the end, the question is not just whether the space for raising our voice for our human rights is limited, but how much space there is for us to exist in the society at all – how much space there is for our thoughts and bodies to exist in a free, authentic, brave, and radical manner. We live in a system that does not appreciate integrity. How do we work on preserving, or breaking, the status quo? What is the price of freedom?

There is a legend that, at some point, someone said who they were and no one responded – “So what? Why do you have to show off? What’s the point? We are all just people.” Yes, we are – unequal – people. Who is Džoli Ulićević? Among other things, he is what the society would call a man – not simply a man, but a trans man. This prefix speaks about violent experiences; the negations of my existence; attempts to reduce my life to someone else’s expectations, wants, and requirements. I have been lucky that this prefix does not speak just about violence, but also about an uncompromising desire to reach the truth, to breath in, to feel the sense of control over your own life, body, thoughts, present, and the future. The path of a trans man led me to feel on my own skin how the society treats girls, young women and women, trans persons, and men. From “you will never be able to do it” to “I congratulate you on your bravery”; from “You are a freak” to “Hey bro, how are you?”; from slaps to handshakes; from touching my body even when I say “no” to “Forgive me bro”; from “Is this a male or a female?” to “No one would ever say you had a sex change”; from “Happy 08 March” to “What are you doing at the Women’s March?”, and so on, eternally. My experiences oscillate between these two referent points, leading me to accept my women’s past, trans experiences, awareness of men’s privileges, and to take responsibility for being active towards a society without privileged persons but with personal responsibility.

This is why I accept myself and my identity. I hug it, I parade it in the streets, I live my own performance, knowing that I breathe freedom and authenticity. I intend to redefine it, to question it, to change its shape, to bend it, to jump over or to go around the norm, to write my own definition of what it means to be a man and a trans man, a human, an activist, a fighter for human rights, a person who celebrates diversity, who is enraged by violence and oppression, but who invests his whole life to remain full of love, tenderness, and care – towards oneself and others.

What does love towards oneself look like in the margins? How can we take back power in a system that overpowers us? When you start learning about love in your childhood through judgement, insults, spitting, then fear and shame become two dominant feelings in you. Conquering these tyrant-feelings means choosing life and love – and this choice needs to be made every day anew, each time you enter the ring in the morning with all the voices telling you “You cannot do that. You must not think that. You should not feel that. You must not exist.” To exist and to act in a daring manner, to exist authentically to your core – this almost always means risking your position in a society; losing it; becoming discarded. But it also means questioning the power dynamics to their core and undermining beliefs that have seemingly been set in stone centuries ago. The task is this: to shake up the whole system of power; to disassemble its parts; to disentangle belts and chains holding us; to see ourselves for who we are; and to initiate the process of unpacking the layered discomfort that starts in our bodies, experiences, and identities. How can we take back power? What would the world look like without labels? How can we bring back to life parts of ourselves that have been murdered and resurrect them from the ashes? Perhaps the goal is not to find the answers to these questions, but to explore options and to offer perspectives that are often invisible. Do we want to unlearn oppression that lives deep under our skin, or to smash it to the smallest pieces and to fully wipe out its existence?

If the answer is yes, then roll up your sleeves, take a deep breath, prepare Ibuprofen – because this will hurt, because you will cry and ask yourself a thousand times “Why did I need to start doing this?”, because there is no end to this struggle, and you will forget about its beginning too. However, one promise –absolute freedom – is in your hands and only you have the right to define it. It is not fiction nor a philosophical issue. People are capable of metamorphosis, they are fluid like water, they take the shape they set for themselves – and not even the strongest dams can forever hold water. You need only one crack in the dam – this will be enough to spread through all the bricks and to let the unstoppable torrent through. The torrent that shifts the riverbed, destroys everything around it, and brings life in its wake.

My identity is my space of resistance. And who are you? To be free you do not need to be trans, nor in the margins. All you need to do is to question everything you’ve been told and then to dare to create your own answers.

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Anmerkungen

[1]    Published online: https://www.kuckucknotizen.at/kuckuck/index.php/1-20-handeln. Originally published in Montenegrin language at the website “Vjesnik slobode“ on 9 March 2019. Available at: https://www.vjesnikslobode.org/2019/03/05/mjesto-otpora/

[2]    A forest and a national park in Montenegro

[3]    Jovan’s life partner

[4]    Association Spectra is the only trans-led organization in Montenegro working on promotion and protection of human rights of transgender, gender diverse and intersex persons

[5]    “Resist” was a protest movement which demanded systemic change of legal, economic, and political life in Montenegro in 2019

[6]    Trans NGO established and run by Jovan and other trans activists in Montenegro

[7]    Sworn virgins (virdžine, ostajnice, tobelije) were people of third sex/third gender in the mountainous parts of Montenegro, Kosovo, and Albania. They were female assigned at birth and introduced into male roles for various reasons: to become the “man of the house” in families with no male children, to avoid unwanted marriage, and so on. For more details see: Šarčević, Predrag., 2004. Sex and Gender Identity of ‘Sworn Virgins’ in the Balkans, in: Jovanović, Miroslav., Naumović, Slobodan. (Eds.), Gender Relations in South Eastern Europe: Historical Perspectives on Womanhood and Manhood in 19th and 20th Century. LIT Verlag, Münster, pp. 123–144.

[8]    Originally published as “Biti voljen i/ili biti dio promjene” at the website “Vjesnik slobode” on 14 October 2019. Available at: h t t p s : / / w w w . v j e s n i k s l o b o d e . org/2019/10/14/biti-voljen-i-ili-biti-dio-promjene/

[9]    “The region” (region, regija) is used in Montenegro to loosely refer to the former Yugoslav countries/the Western Balkans/Southeast Europe

 

Ethnographically informed literature on LGBT issues in Montenegro and the former Yugoslav region

Bilić, B., Kajinić, S. (Eds.), 2016. Intersectionality and LGBT Activist Politics. Multiple Others in Croatia and Serbia. Palgrave Macmillan, London.

Bilić, B., 2016a. Whose Pride? LGBT ‘Community’ and the Organization of Pride Parades in Serbia, in: Slootmaeckers, K., Touquet, H., Vermeersch, P. (Eds.), The EU Enlargement and Gay Politics. The Impact of Eastern Enlargement on Rights, Activism and Prejudice. Palgrave Macmillan, London, pp. 203–220.

Bilić, B. (Ed.), 2016b. LGBT Activism and Europeanisation in the (Post-)Yugoslav Space: On the Rainbow Way to Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, London.

Bilić, B., Radoman, M. (Eds.), 2019. Sisterhood and Unity. Lesbian Activism in the (Post-)Yugoslav Space. Palgrave Macmillan, London.

Butterfield, N., 2016. Professionalization in Sexual Politics and Activism in Croatia in the 2000s. Southeastern Europe 40, pp. 54–80.

Dota, F., 2017. Javna i politička povijest muške homoseksualnosti u socijalističkoj Hrvatskoj (1945. – 1989.) (PhD Thesis, University of Zagreb).

Kalezić, D., Brković, Č., 2016. Queering as Europeanisation, Europeanisation as Queering, in: Bilić, B. (Ed.), On the Rainbow Way to Europe. LGBT Activism and Europeanisation in the Post-Yugoslav Space. Palgrave Macmillan, London, pp. 155–177.

Kuhar, R., Takács, J. (Eds.), 2007. Beyond the Pink Curtain: Everyday Life of LGBT People in Eastern Europe. Mirovni institut, Ljubljana.

Švab, A., Kuhar, R., 2014. The Transparent and Family Closets: Gay Men and Lesbians and Their Families of Origin. Journal of GLBT Family Studies 10, pp. 15–35.

Ulićević, J., Brković, Č. forthcoming. Resilience of trans existence through solidarity in Montenegro: (non)pathologizing narratives of trans-gender lives, in: Bilić, B., Nord, I (Eds.), In Transition: Transgender Lives and Activism in the Post-Yugoslav   Space. Palgrave Macmillan, London.

Vuković, M., Petričević, P., 2019. Searching for Lesbian Voice: Non-Heterosexual Women’s Activism in Montenegro, in: Bilić, B., Radoman, M. (Eds.), Lesbian Activism in the (Post-)Yugoslav Space. Sisterhood and Unity. Palgrave Macmillan, London, pp. 133–162.