Paola Revenioti – a Greek LGBTIQ rights icon standing in this weekend’s parliamentary elections – stepped out onto Syggrou Avenue for the first time when she was 16 years old. It was the mid-1970s, just after the fall of the junta that had ruled the country since 1967. Syggrou Avenue, which runs from the centre of Athens to the sea, was known as a main street for sex workers.
“It was amazing”, the transgender artist, activist and now 61-year-old MP candidate, recalls. “All of a sudden, people worshipped me – often the same people that would ridicule me, and shout “faggot!” at me during the day. Don’t get me wrong, things were rough. There were knives and things... But I could be myself. And I could survive”.
Survive she did. Over the years, Revenioti has campaigned tirelessly for human rights. In the 1980s she published a magazine of “revolutionary homosexual expression”. In the 1990s, she organised Greece’s first Pride festivals. This weekend, she’s on the ballot of MERA25, the Greek party of the DiEM25 European movement founded by ex-finance minister Yanis Varoufakis.
But it hasn’t been easy; she’s also been arrested more times than she can count. Revenioti met us recently, at a café opposite Athens’ central train station, and talked to us about the journey she’s been on, and the significance of her parliamentary candidacy.
This neighbourhood has a local reputation for petty crime, homelessness and drug use. But Revenioti, who lives nearby, points out that it is also rich in culture – with immigrants from Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Central Asia. “It’s one of the areas where you realise”, she says, “that Athens is now a multicultural metropolis, where we all have to learn to live together.”
