Tagging people who liked this so that they can see the update like I've promised:

@milokissa707 @magimthings @aro-on-the-loose @oxoxevoledicius @cringelordofchaos @brizgallows

Are there any queer south slavic people on here who are willing to talk about how pobratimstvo and posestrimstvo is very queer? I have a few reasons to believe this and I'll probably make a post about it or I'll reblog it on this one. So if anyone is interested like this so that I can tag you when I make the post or reblog it with your own opinion on this if you'd like to :)

Here's a bonus for my fellow serbian/croatian/bosnian speakers. This is a description of pobratimstvo from a novel from 1910. You can't tell me this doesn't sound gay....

"Nečista krv" by Dobrica Ćosić, 1910.

Are there any queer south slavic people on here who are willing to talk about how pobratimstvo and posestrimstvo is very queer? I have a few reasons to believe this and I'll probably make a post about it or I'll reblog it on this one. So if anyone is interested like this so that I can tag you when I make the post or reblog it with your own opinion on this if you'd like to :)

There is something I'd want to add to the things he talked about it this video.

1. Pobratimstvo is way more prevalent then posestrimstvo in the tales, both written and oral, and I think this ties up well with what Nik talked about when he mentioned sworn brotherhood among soldiers. Pobratimstvo was easier to transform into something entirely heterosexual given the closeness of relationships between soldiers which develops with all hardships they go through. So pobratimstvo then became a word used for close male friendships because unfortunately in our society that is something very rare. On the other hand, close female friendships are common and posestrimstvo couldn't assume a meaning that would entirely separate it from possible queer connotations. Many girl best friends are exactly what romanticized pobratimi are but since that is considered normal for women having another special category would be a bit weird.

2. Did anyone ever hear about this custom between a man a woman? Like a sworn sibling relationship? No? Well there is a way man and woman can become family and that is through marriage. Sworn siblings would be so cute I really hope that was a thing but I doubt it.

3. This might seem weird but calling someone brother or sister or sibling doesn't mean much depending on the context of the culture. For Orthodox Christians every other Christian is considered brother or sister because they are all children of God. This is something that is used often for many categories. You will hear phrases like "my serbian sister/brother" or "men you need to protect your sisters" etc. and none of those things mean biological siblings. There's also this thing that is a bit archaic but you can still come across it in old books. Once they get married, husband and wife would call each other's parents mom and dad and the parents would use words such as son or daughter for the husband or wife of their child. It's like calling every old man or woman baba or deda as if they were your own grandparents, which we still do.

It's hard to talk about anything when there's not much information but queer people definitely existed in early slavic communities and since they had things such as pobratimstvo and posestrimstvo there's no way queer couples wouldn't use it as marriage. I don't even need sources for that it's perfectly logical. These things for sure were practiced by queer people, that wasn't even the question, the question is just how often and how aware of it were other people.

Are there any queer south slavic people on here who are willing to talk about how pobratimstvo and posestrimstvo is very queer? I have a few reasons to believe this and I'll probably make a post about it or I'll reblog it on this one. So if anyone is interested like this so that I can tag you when I make the post or reblog it with your own opinion on this if you'd like to :)

I was reading through some articles about queerness in Yugoslavian history and art and they mentioned a chapter from a book called "New Approaches in History and Theology to Same-Sex Love and Desire" by Mark D. Chapman and Dominic Janes. The chapter in question is written by Nik Jovčić-Sas and it is called "The Tradition of Homophobia: Responses to Same-Sex Relationships in Serbian Orthodoxy from the Nineteenth Century to the Present Day".

Here is a video of Nik talking about this at the University of Cambridge in 2017:

His presentation is very good and he more or less talks about everything he talked about in the chapter but if someone still wants to read the book feel free to dm me and I'll send it to you.

Are there any queer south slavic people on here who are willing to talk about how pobratimstvo and posestrimstvo is very queer? I have a few reasons to believe this and I'll probably make a post about it or I'll reblog it on this one. So if anyone is interested like this so that I can tag you when I make the post or reblog it with your own opinion on this if you'd like to :)

Slowlyyy but surely adding more sapphics in traditional costumes to my gallery hihi

(Sorry for the edited version! Had to add them like that so I can keep adding them in this post and 10 is the photo limit <3)

Being Serbian and not religious is complicated enough, but being queer on top of that is even more complicated and that's concerning.

You see, Serbs have a very unique history and bond with religion. Serbia was under Ottoman rule from the middle of the 15th century up until the begging of the 19th century which is a long long time. Being a part of Ottoman empire meant that they wanted to assimilate you and there were many awful things they did due but i won't go into that rn. What was weird about Ottoman empire compared to other oppressors was that they never banned different religions. Obviously your life would have been easier if you became muslim but it wasn't like they killed you for not doing that as Romans did. So Serbian people became very close to the church and it bound all of the folk customs and holidays to itself and saved them which is a great thing and I'm so thankful for that but nowadays it's impossible to separate them. Every aspect of culture is somehow made christian and Serbian people have accepted orthodox christianity as a part of their national identity. You can't imagine how many people I've met who were confused about how can someone be Serbian if they're not christian. And most of them don't even believe in God or what christianity preaches, it's a national identity for them. They can't imagine what Serbs actually are beyond the religion and it's sad.

Other important thing is that all of the holidays and customs are pagan. They have been pagan and then Serbs got christianised in a quick way which means that they just masked the paganism in chriatianity and called it a day. There's practiced whichcraft in Serbian orthodox christianity and people refuse to call it that because it's a normal christian thing for them. There's prayers, healing watter and oils, plants, various rituals for various days (not just Easter and Christmas but even those are completely different than how other christians celebrate them), there's days where you don't work or do certain things so that you don't get God angry, there's future predictions by looking in a cup or reading in the coal or hot iron and various other customs and beliefs. And no one accepts them as anything but chriatian.

So yeah separation of religion and nationality is crucial for Serbian people to move forward but it's also very hard to do and it's beneficial to the government so no one is doing anything about it. Nationalism is unfortunately on the rise among Serbian people and obviously christianity is also. There's people who are ready to fight for "holy places" and Serbian (read christian) values. There's diaspora that's trying to reconnect with their nationality and they just fall into christianty and nationalistic propaganda and it's awful. Most of these people are cowards so I have hope they won't do anything stupid as starting another war but it's still concerning. When your national identity is so strongly bound to christianty a threat to christian beliefs is a threat to your nationality and you already know who falls into that "threat" category.

Also, pagan slavic spaces got infected by fascists and white slavic supremacist? It's like what happened in nordic pagan spaces. I know I know it makes no sense for south slavs to be fascists when ww2 fascists targeted them but you have to understand that these people aren't smart enough to understand that and are egoistic enough to twist things to better suit their beliefs.

That's why queer Slavs and queer folk art and queer history of slavs is so important and even revolutionary in times and places like these. And of course this post is not against christians. One of my favorite things are loving non bigoted christians, especially if they are queer themselves.

a butch shepherd wearing the folk clothes/national costume from bosnia (specifically trebinje) and her weird little dog.

an elderly lesbian couple celebrating their slava :> it's a feast day so there's always metric fucktons of food and drink for all your family and friends. we got a roast pig, we got wine and rakija, plate of gibanica, vanilice, žito, slavski kolač, prebranac (this one is not a staple i jus like it), sarma, soup, etc etc.

hands u a butch from the sumadija region

HOW did i forget to post this its been MONTHS

serbian folk dancing gorls in a dancing troupe from sumadija drawn in a fineliner pen and scanned. one of thems in guy clothes bc i do what i want. they’re gay

what if there were two lesbians from serbia (srem and šumadija respectively) and they had two cats and a kitten. what if. and what if they kissed also

what if there were two butches from montenegro and they danced together (and dated each other), what then

also u should check out my balkan tag for more of this stuff lol

This article is from 2020 btw

Are there any queer south slavic people on here who are willing to talk about how pobratimstvo and posestrimstvo is very queer? I have a few reasons to believe this and I'll probably make a post about it or I'll reblog it on this one. So if anyone is interested like this so that I can tag you when I make the post or reblog it with your own opinion on this if you'd like to :)

Прајд, српска верзија 🏳️‍🌈

Pride flags, but characters holding them are wearing Serbian folk clothes. All were done in water colour.

oh, how romantic 🤍