My opinion is that sex work should be legal. It would enable involuntary virgins to get a good sex experience for payment; they will be guaranteed a good sex experience with a sex worker: no harassment, good education, and a fun time.
Sex work gets shamed by ~~people~~ puritans because of payment for sex and it's "sinful"; yet these same ~~persons~~ puritans get and have sex for free out of "passion" or marriage; they also discriminate against minorities in sec.
EDIT: Apparently there is an implied difference between sex work and prostitution. I mean sex work.
EDIT 2: I messed up the writing of my post. My real opinion is located in this comment:
Oof. I didn't realize there was way more exploitation than just sex traffickers. It totally makes sense though; sex trades are a product of capitalist exploitation and the existence of private property. (Naturally under communism, the prevalence of sex trades would be heavily reduced.)
It seems like I couldn't communicate my ideas properly beforehand. I don't want people in the sex trade to be criminalized; I want pimps and johns to be criminalized.
Only a few hours ago: I wanted to support a sex trade industry that didn't involve rapes or rely on economic coercion. I just wanted disabled people, who keep getting discriminated out of sex,^[Sexual Ableism]^[Dating With Disability: How to Rise Above Sexual Ableism]^[Dating with Disability: Choose Your Dreams Over Sexual Ableism] to be able to feel better about their lives; a lack of sex can cause mental health issues in some people (even though this shouldn't happen). (However, having sex probably won't fix the issue, it will just hide the problems until later). Now I feel like shit...
Countries where sex work is legal and regulated (Holland, Germany, Canada, Australia...) all registered sensible drops in human traffic, venereal disease spreading and rapes. People sell their bodies for food or money since the dawn of time and always will, like it or not. Keeping it illegal only favors criminal organizations and fodders a culture in which people are not allowed to do what they want with their own body, whether it is selling it, changing it or whatever. Edit: added links to studies made by people smarter than me.
A long time ago someone shared a study with me that claimed that legalization of sex work leads to increase in trafficking. Sadly my reddit account is gone so I can't find it anymore.
edit: thank you google scholar
Study: The challenges of fighting sex trafficking in the legalized prostitution market of the Netherlands
Study: Does Legalized Prostitution Increase Human Trafficking?
Plus the source you linked for human trafficking is not a primary source. A lot of sources it links are actually for decriminalization which drastically different from legalization. A bunch of other links like the NYT article are behind paywalls so I couldn't read them.
@ksynwa There's a problem with "human trafficking" aspect as well.
"Trafficking" problem is as engineered as "prostitution" or "drug" or "abortion" problem is. It's borne of inablilty of some people to cross borders freely as they want. So they go to backalley traffickers.
Decriminalize human movement, and "traffickers" will lose their base.
@pH3ra