Ms. Földi thanked the partners and experts who have worked closely with the Association over the past 10 years for their assistance and expertise and talked about the history of the sex worker movement. According to Ms. Földi: “It has been an incredible achievement for our organization to get all levels of government to realize that sex workers need support. We hope that their willingness to help our cause will continue over the next 10 years and will lead to an improved legal framework for sex work.
Ms. Földi thanked the partners and experts who have worked closely with the Association over the past 10 years for their assistance and expertise and talked about the history of the sex worker movement. According to Ms. Földi: “It has been an incredible achievement for our organization to get all levels of government to realize that sex workers need support. We hope that their willingness to help our cause will continue over the next 10 years and will lead to an improved legal framework for sex work. Our major goals for the next decade are to resolve sex worker’ status before the law and to provide help for Hungarian migrant sex workers pursuing this occupation elsewhere in Europe.”
Mr. Árva provided a brief analysis of the evolution of sex work from a legal perspective. According to him, there have been important changes in the Hungarian sex worker community. The most common features of the average sex worker are the following: she tends to work indoors, has a high school diploma or is a college graduate, is divorced or raising her children all by herself, does not have a pimp but is afraid that someone will show up asking for “protection money” one day, and in general, is frightened by the police since she is not feeling any willingness to protect her on the part of police officers.
After this formal opening of the celebration, the group and a large number of sex workers marched to the Parliament building holding red umbrellas in their hands. In front of the building, a Hungarian poet, Dömötör László, recited poems about sex work with a crowd of sex workers holding up their umbrellas in the background.
Finally, the members of SZEXE shared a huge umbrella-shaped cake together with their partners and allies as well as media representatives. The event was followed by positive media coverage in the days that followed, proving that sex work is no longer a tabloid theme in Hungary and that the topic is getting treated more and more seriously in public discourses and in the media.