Bodies are used commercially all the time, such as in manual labor, physical therapy, disability care, security, policing, military service, athletics, dancing, commercial modeling, ...

The problem that's particular to sex work is legal systems that fail to prevent coercion. This is exacerbated by religious advocacy groups that try to make sex work harder without making it safer.

It seems that you equate sex to manual labour, when it is one of our important biosocial functions (if not the central) that involves much more complex reactions and distortions at all sides (a prostitute, a client, an aware neighborhood/society) than kicking a shovel into the dirt or massaging a muscle. It’s always baffling how some people try to render it as just a mechanical process akin to workout and/or blowing a nose. If it’s kind of the same, why hiding it from kids and not serving clients right on the squares, like hotdog stands do.

gp: The more that is normalised, the more it damages all women - not just prostitutes

I’d argue it damages society as a whole. Even if prostitutes and all women could be fine and safe by some magic mean, distorted concepts of a “succesful social woman” hit men back as well.

I don't equate sex to manual labor, they are of course different. But it won't do to reduce manual labor or disability care to "kicking a shovel into the dirt" either. Each of the physical occupations I listed plays a critical social role and involves the mind and body of its occupants in a unique and significant way. See Metaspencer's critique on this point, "what is a knowledge worker".[1]

Much of the criticism of normalizing sex work seems to be masking a motivation based in religious morality which considers sex shameful. I believe that adequately protected professionals can be successful in sex work, just as they can in other fields.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDXPkor-Wxk

>It’s always baffling how some people try to render it as just a mechanical process akin to workout and/or blowing a nose.

at the end of the day, that's all it is. There will be people who put more thought and care into the action and treat it as an intimate ritual to be done on special occasion, and then there will be people who treat it as another biological commodity to manage like food or air. People do so regarding various other activities after all.

I don't think either viewpoint is invalid. it comes down the individual like every other action in our lives. but the argument here that it "damages women" arguably harms both of the described behaviors. One for feeling the action "binds" them to people that may otherwise be (or have become), incompatible or even toxic to them. But they were inside so they gotta stick around. And the other for making it increasingly difficult to perform an activity they enjoy.

> It’s always baffling how some people try to render it as just a mechanical process

I am equally baffled by people who try to render it as some supernatural mystical magical soul-corrupting[0] process ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[0] unless done between a married man and woman in the missionary position with the lights off for the sole purpose of reproduction and neither of them enjoys it, of course

Did I describe it in such way? Or is it you bending the argument to the opposite religious extremum? What for?

Paying somebody to do something physical and paying somebody to physically use their body are two completely different things

I think parent means "paying somebody so that you can physically use their body".

Clearly, paying somebody to use their own body to e.g. pitch hay for you isn't much different from paying them to use their own body to do any other kind of physical labour for you.

Paying people to be physically intimate with you is definitely different. But it's worth considering cases that don't involve sex: carers dress you, they wash you, including your sex organs and your arse, and they clean up after you.

All that is definitely physically intimate - arguably much more intimate than a 15-minute bump-and-grind session with a person that despises you.

If the two parties consent to the action and transaction, there's no business difference. governments have just decided one action is illegal while the other not.

I don't think that distinction is useful on this question. Lots of non-sex physical work involves just being present, and lots of sex work involves skill.

> Paying somebody to do something physical and paying somebody to physically use their body are two completely different things

I think if we were to explore and expand on this we would find the distinction to be non-existent. How and in what way are they different at all?

> It's said to objectify women... The more that is normalised, the more it damages all women. If you don't think objectifying women harms them, then that's not a "good" argument, I guess.

To accept the argument at all is to agree with the original premise. Which I don't, even assuming we could come up with a definition of objectification we could both accept. But... let's give it a go.

Let's posit there is a thing that happens called objectification. Whatever it is, it causes men to treat women badly, specifically, causes unwanted advances and sexual harassment.

A man somehow catches this because he can pay a woman to give him an orgasm. He doesn't even have to actually do it. Just knowing this is something he can do is enough. Then he goes out and... what? Expects to be able to pay every woman for orgasms? He won't treat his woman boss with respect? I'm trying to understand the mechanism here.

Does this same phenomena happen in any other arena of life? Is it a kind of bigotry? Does bigotry operate a similar way?

> ...the Johns are treating women's bodies as something that can be traded commercially. The more that is normalised, the more it damages all women - not just prostitutes.

Sex workers are "selling their bodies" no more than your local bartender or barista does. Sex workers provide a service no more magical than they do either. If you were to expand on this "selling their bodies", I think you will find that it is meaningless.

So, no, I don't think it's a good argument at all until we can demonstrate that "objectifying all women" is something that happens when prostitution is legal.

"Not all harmful behaviour should be criminalised."

my country certainly thought so with fast food a few decades ago, despite it arguably contributing to the obesity epidemic. And alcohol a century ago.

I agree with you, just pointing out society's hypocrisy.