Learn about Grisélidis Real (1929-2005), a Swiss writer, painter and prostitute, and her struggle as an activist in favour of prostitutes' rights.
“Whatever our detractors of both sexes may say, those moral fundamentalists who defend a 'virtue' that suffocates them, we reign without any competition in our field, which is compassion, elegance and a duly acquired knowledge of both the human soul and body.”
The above sentence, which is a declaration of principles, was written several decades ago by a woman who was, at the same time, a painter, a writer, a prostitute and, above all, one of the greatest activists in history in defence of the rights of prostitutes , today called sex workers. We are talking about Grisélidis Réal , a woman born in Lausanne in 1929 and who died in May 2005.
Buried in Geneva's Cemetery of the Kings, close to personalities such as Jorge Luis Borges and the reformer Calvin, this activist used her talent as a writer and her thirty years of experience as a prostitute to denounce the hypocrisy of Western civilization and its false morality.
Prostitute and intellectual
Born into a family of intellectuals, she lived in Egypt and Athens as a child. The death of her father, which occurred in the latter city when she was 9 years old, sent her and her mother back to Switzerland. It was in her native Zurich that Grisélidis decided to study Decorative Arts. Her poor relationship with her mother made her desperately seek a way out of the oppressive atmosphere of her home. That way was by getting married when she was barely twenty years old.
Her marriage was not a satisfactory one. She was a victim of abuse and left her husband. They had a child together and would have another with her new partner, but the Swiss authorities took custody of her children away from her, who were confined in a foster home. Reluctant to lose custody of her children, she illegally retrieved them from the aforementioned center and fled to Germany, settling in Munich. It was there, in that German city, that Grisélidis began to prostitute herself. She had to support her children. It was also there, in Germany, that Grisélidis learned to enjoy music such as jazz, Latin American rhythms, flamenco and gypsy music. It was there, too, that she lived for some time in a nomadic camp, welcomed by the head of a gypsy clan. That experience helped her write her novel El negro es un color . After that, and over the years, Grisélidis Reál wrote other works. Among them we can highlight Carnet de bal d'une courtisaine , Les Sphinx , La Passe imaginaire or Suis-je encore Vivante?
Free and rebellious, Grisélidis enjoyed the company of several lovers, experimented with drugs (as was appropriate for the times) and exploited the meaning of the word bohemian to the full. She even ended up in prison for selling marijuana in the barracks that the American army maintained in Germany after the Second World War.
Deported from Germany, she decided to take a step forward and get involved with the prostitutes' movements that had emerged in Lyon and Paris in the mid-1970s. She combined this struggle with her work as a prostitute in a popular Geneva neighbourhood, the Pâquis neighbourhood. Her clients included workers of the most varied nationalities. Arabs, Turks, Portuguese, Italians, French, Spanish... Grisélidis Réal's bed was, without a doubt, a hymn to multiculturalism and migration. It was precisely the atmosphere of this neighbourhood that Grisélidis took care to reflect in some of her writings.
Prostitution according to your vision
For her, prostitution was “an art, a humanism and a science”, and the defence of the rights of prostitutes became a moral obligation for her. The following actions she undertook are proof of this struggle:
- She was one of the leaders of the rebellion of the 500 sex workers who, in the Parisian district of Montparnasse, occupied the Saint-Bernard chapel in 1975.
- He has given lectures and participated in various events in cities as diverse as Amsterdam, Brussels, Frankfurt, New York and Stuttgart.
- She founded the International Documentation Centre on Prostitution in Brussels.
- She was co-founder of Aspasie, the foundation that helps prostitutes.
In a way, thanks to all these actions and her long experience, Grisélidis Réal became something of a spokesperson for prostitutes around the world. She wrote the following sentence, which we fully agree with:
“Only violence and cruelty that forces others, adults and children, to prostitute themselves without freedom or will are to be proscribed; and we condemn this injustice with all our strength, always, everywhere, at any time. Because we do not belong and will never belong to slaves, nor to torturers, nor to laws that are contrary to us, nor to the abuses of morality.”
Her funeral was attended by a large number of people. Among them were intellectuals, bohemians, students, colleagues and, of course, a good number of former clients. It is said that on the day she died, no one was engaged in prostitution in Geneva. Today, a street in the city bears her name.
