"Freedom in Transition" by Aleksandar Crnogorac

BRANCA ARSENOVIĆ

was born in 1937 in a small village called Dvorovi, not too far from Bijeljina in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Prior to transitioning she was married five times. She has a daughter and one granddaughter. Currently she lives in her place of birth.
„I completed my sex change in the (now distant) 1995. I had to sell more than half of the land I owned in order to accumulate 10,000 Deutsche Marks to pay for the medical procedure. I went to the operation like one goes to a wedding, happy and with no fear or doubt in my mind. When I came back home, nobody in my village said a word to me for three years. I do not care what people think, I would do it all again; the only thing I would change is that I would have done the operation earlier. That is the only thing I would do differently if I could.”

IGOR ILIĆ

was born in 1993 in Šid, Vojvodina, where he also grew up. He completed his studies in Philosophy at the University of Novi Sad in 2017, as well as Women`s Studies at the Faculty of Political Science and the Schools of Human Rights in Belgrade. Currently he lives between Belgrade and Šid, he is unemployed, and is considering starting his next educational chapter by enrolling in psychotherapy school. He loves psychology, bioethics, and working with people.
“The core of my identity is not the fact that I am a transgender man. I am also a person who has dreams, fears, strengths, weaknesses, ideas, wishes, successes, and failures. Being trans is an important part of my life, but not the most important one. Trans people also have an ethnicity, and they are also someone`s kid; they are not all the same, some are employed, others are not, some are highly educated, others are not, some are believers, others atheists, they are rich, poor, healthy, ill, friendly and shy…Just like all the other members of society.”