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In a normal, healthy, average relationship, a single man and a single woman partner together to provide each other with resources that would be difficult for the other to get. They do this because they have a shared vision of the future, a shared project to raise the next generation.
The historical norm was for a woman to be spinning cotton, wool, or flax from sunup to sundown to make enough thread to weave enough cloth to sew into enough garments for herself, her husband, and her children. There was a gendered world - every civilization had their own norms, but they all had norms surrounding what tasks belong to women (tasks that can be done by weaker people with the tendency to get pregnant and have babies/toddlers hanging off them.) For example, in a European village a man paid taxes by giving his lord crops, while women owed their taxes in eggs.
Men needed women's labor. Women needed men's labor.
There was a weird period in the 19th-20th century where machines took over a lot of the labor that women could do, while there was much less automation of male labor. Then in the later 20th century, the women's labor that wasn't automatable went overseas to cheaper labor. This lead to more "Homemakers" outside the upper class.
But now, the majority of the time, both men and women work outside the home. Both men and women need to labor productively to keep themselves in comfort. We are reverting back to the historical norm (except for the "women taking jobs they can do while minding their own children" part. We'd probably need to repeal the CRA and some license regulations before we could get there.)
I agree with you that my initial formulation was an oversimplification, although I don't think any of this has much bearing on what makes prostitution in particular morally problematic. You could reasonably argue that prostitution is inferior to a long-term committed exclusive relationship based on certain metrics; but as I pointed out in my reply to KMC, many other heterosexual relationships would be judged inferior on the same metrics. Being single would also be judged inferior on the same metrics. But no one thinks that being single, or having a series of different monogamous partners, is morally blameworthy in the same way that prostitution is.
Prostitution dumps the sex market, which is also one of the reasons women hate sluts/whores the most.
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Yes they do. Lots of criticisms of serial monogamy to be had and it's actually a historical outlier that the modern west doesn't publicly worry about the plight of men not being interested in marriage.
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