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No, not all work is equal, but it is all work. For example the US government has people it pays to kill other people or steal things or even have sex with people (honeytraps et al). But generally private individuals hiring assassins to kill people or thieves to steal things is frowned upon. Sex work is kind of like those, but slightly more acceptable for private actors probably.
Sex work or murder work or stealing work are subsets of work which have different valences depending on the particular scenarios for various cultural and sociological reasons. It's bad if I steal your bike, it's good if a CIA spy steals uranium from a terrorist planning to blow up New York. So (depending on your point of view) sex-work could be acceptable with strangers, but bad if with family (as we have seperate taboos about incest), or it could be bad with anyone.
A nuanced position where sex-work is work, but is not the same as other types of work would probably be my position. Personally I think making it illegal is counter-productive, as that probably increases likely harms to those who partake, and like gun control, there is no way to actually really enforce it. But I also wouldn't suggest putting it in the jobs fair at my local high school.
Though beyond that I think there are different levels of sex-work even within that, from physical prostitution to cam girls, sex line operators and glamour models some of which are much more acceptable than others. I think if my daughter wanted to become a model, I would probably have a frank conversation about the likelihood of success, potentially predatory behaviors and the like, but if the choice is taking her top off vs working in a mine, or even on a factory floor, then she might be less at risk doing glamour modelling or something. Manual physical labour is particularly over time much harder on the body than many people give it credit for. Do I want her to be an ex factory worker who lost a hand in an accident like my neighbor, or to have been paid to take nude pictures? That's a much tougher type of call to make.
That's the motte. The bailey is "sex work is work in the sense that it is like other types of work".
Nobody would even bother saying that sex work is work if all they meant is your motte.
Well the point I was arguing about was KMC saying sex-work was not work at all. So in that case, that is indeed just the point I am putting forward. If people are arguing it isn't work at all, and you disagree, then you do have to bother saying it.
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This is the tricky thing about stigma and shame, they are blunt instruments. It's difficult to shame sex work just enough that society doesn't outlaw it entirely, but not so much it is preferred.
I'd suggest this is where tension from towards both sides is useful, as nuanced positions are hard to argue for shame. So one side argues it is entirely normal, the other that is it entirely shameful and wrong, and hopefully you end up somewhere in the middle.
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