Tatomir Vukanović Explained

Tatomir P. Vukanović (1907–1997) was a Serbian ethnologist of the Balkans region of south-eastern Europe.

Born in Vranje, Southern Serbia, he concentrated on the history, folklore and culture of the Serb and Roma (Gypsy) inhabitants of Yugoslavia in general and the southern province of Kosovo in particular, as well as in gender issues, most specifically of sworn virgins,^{[1] [2]} the latter due to the fact that he himself was gay^[3] which in homophobic Socialist Yugoslavia led to his marginalisation as a scholar and demise from positions of authority to which he had aspired as a Josip Broz Tito's partisan guerrilla petty officer.

Bibliography

• "The Vampire". Four articles in Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society (JGLS) from 1957 to 1960
• "The Gypsy Population in Yugoslavia". JGLS, Third Series, Vol. XLII, Nos. 1-2 (January–April 1963), pp. 10–27.
• "Ritual Communion Among Gypsies in Serbia" (1964). JGLS 43:22
• "Gypsy Pilgrimages to the Monastery of Gračanica in Serbia" (1966). JGLS 45:17
• Romi (Tsigani) u Jugoslaviji. Vranje: Nova Jugoslavija, 1983

Notes and References

1. Cf. a text about "Third gender"
2. “Sexual tendencies toward females seem to be present in [some cases], albeit in a rather limited and repressed way. Although I found no trace of liaisons with women, cohabitation of masculine ‘sworn virgins’ with female partners is not completely unknown. I know of three such couples, in two of which a sexual relationship is actually indicated. At least two of these three couples were bound by ‘blood-sisterhood,’ a kind of ritual or spiritual kinship that, however, does not usually include living together. According to Tatomir Vukanovic, sworn virgins were in some places ill reputed for ‘certain abnormal sexual relations’ with their blood-sisters.” (From the chapter “Woman Becomes Man in the Balkans” by Rene Gremaux; of “Third Sex, Third Gender: Beyond Sexual Dimorphism in Culture and History” Edited by Gilbert Herdt.)
3. As remarked by Dejan Medaković in Efemeris