Language, Individual & Society, Volume 16, 2022

Abstract: Most of the contemporary societies are organized on the basis of a binary gender concept, according to which each individual is rigidly gender-defined in the framework of the dichotomous division to male and female gender. A certain number of people do not identify themselves with the sex allotted to them at birth, a problem arising regarding their inner comprehension of gender, which does not correlate to the sex. Those people are called transgender people. Due to the fear of being stigmatized, and not complying with the generally accepted social and moral norms, these persons are uniformly put into one of the two socially determined genders – male and/or female gender. By this act they become socially, medically and legally “invisible bodies”. The right to sexual orientation and gender identity is a universal human right. Therefore, problems of transgender people should be dealt with from the point of protection of fundamental human rights. However, for transgender persons, persons of the “third gender”, adjustment of gender identity in the Republic of Serbia is a restrictive and conditioned right – it is conditioned by a medical treatment lasting for a year and the opinion of competent medical professionals – endocrinologists and psychologists. Moreover, they face discrimination in all the spheres of public life, including the language used when referring to them. The authors in the paper discuss the legal procedures of adjustment of gender identity and the consequences that preconditioning by the perennial medical treatments leads to. Such legislative causes the “vacuum” regarding the living and legal conditions, which results in these persons being “trapped in the wrong body”.