>This does not address the above commenter's point, " ...bystanders and society as a whole can be harmed by conduct between consenting adults." How doe a sex between two consenting adults harm people besides those two adults and society as a whole? Your comment doesn't explain this, it's focusing on the purported harms experienced by one of the participants, not the bystanders.

For one, we are members of society and harm done to us en masse is harm done to society as a whole. For another, if you need some narrow conception of who gets impacted that excludes us, then generally prostituted woman have family or friends who are impacted by us being prostituted and our eventual death. For another, society misses out on the productive labour of a large number of women when instead of being able to pursue education or work to the extent we otherwise could, women are prostituted.

>And regarding your point that paid sex is not consent because they need money to afford necessities: the same can be said about pretty much any job. My plumber probably needs money to eat and pay rent, too. Paying someone who needs money to do a job is not something that society by and large consideration unethical.

Yes, and if you're unwilling to consider it unjust that people face starvation and homelessness for the crime of losing the unemployment lottery, we can argue about that, sure. But even someone who thinks that's fine for whatever reason should be able to see that similar coercion into sex acts is worse.

Impacted how? How is the impact of a family member participating in sex work distinct from, say, a fisherman going out to sea for months at a time, and substantial risk of dying. Stigma would be a good answer, but that's a direct consequence of social rejection of sex work, not due to sex work itself. Again, you've just given a vague assertion of impact, but haven't actually explained why this is different from any other work.

Also, how does participation in sex work impede the ability of women to pursue an education? How is someone doing sex work 20 hours a week any less able to get an education than someone working at Starbucks 20 hours a week? In fact, there are people who can afford education because of the profits from sex work so sex work also enables some people to obtain education.

And who says sex work is not productive? Sure, it doesn't produce tangible goods like manufacturing or mining. But the same criticism can be made of all entertainment industries. The fact that people are willing to pay for sex workers is undisputable evidence that theze services are in demand.

"Losing the employment lottery" as you put it, isn't an exception, it's the norm for the vast majority of people. The fact that people need to work to earn money to live isn't even remotely unique to sex workers. Nearly everyone is in this situation.

Nobody is coerced into sex, outside of sex trafficking which I don't think anyone in this comment section is advocating. If someone can make minimum wage in a retail or service job, but would rather have sex with people for vastly greater pay, why should society prevent that transaction?