I don't accept your premise. Men don't go into sex work to the same degree because there isn't enough economic demand for their services. On the other hand, lots of men in bad economic circumstances end working as small-time drug dealers, another line of work that involves willing economic participation (and could thus be called victimless crime), measurable social externalities (which is why it gets criminalized), the possibility of easy money but also a serious risk of violence and exploitation, and a lack of access to other work-related social institutions (labor standards authorities, financial services, dispute resolution through the legal system etc.).

Of course not all prostitutes are forced into that line of work by necessity (as I've said from the outset, and don't intend to repeat further). But it's a mistake to generalize form your experience and assume that none are. I could equally well infer that it's the sort of people who like to spend their leisure hours gambling who are lazy, since gambling by definition offers the possibility of a large quick score rather than the painstaking accumulation of wealth. Or I might infer that since poker is a game of bluffing as much as of luck, it suited at least some of your companions to present themselves to you as shiftless and lazy so as to tempt you into more reckless betting - after all, don't prostitutes specialize professionalize in pretending to be whatever others expect them to be?

Now really, I don't have any strong personal opinions about gambling, plus I for all I know you and your friends used to play for pennies and the primary payoff was the enjoyment of each others' social company; I'm just trying to point out pitfalls in generalizing too much from a limited sample. It's facile to say 'x just does y because s/he is lazy' - it might be that X has great difficulty getting any other kind of job due to having spent the last 10 years engaged in Y, which is not anything you can put on a resume.

In any event if she's so desperate this is the only way she can put food on the table, state interference with her trade puts her life in jeopardy, no?

It depends. In the case of Redbook, as discussed in the article, I think state interference is a bad thing because it seems to have functioned as a platform for women (and others, but mostly women) engaged in this line of work to organize themselves economically and reduce the harmful factors by spreading worthwhile information, from access to better STD-mitigation practices to screening out clients known to be dangerous or abusive. Indeed, one of the key features of Redbook (as I understand it) was that it reduced the traditional leverage of pimps over prostitutes.

On the other hand, if state social welfare agencies come across some cracked-out hooker turning tricks for $20 or someone who's been trafficked across borders for organized sex work and thus doesn't have any of the protections of citizenship or legal residency, it's not doing those persons any favor to say 'well, at least you're on the economic ladder, carry on I guess...' What they need is probably safe housing, maybe drug detox, counselling, education and a boatload of other resources - but that gets expensive, isn't a popular political expenditure (partly because of attitudes like yours), and involves a lot of bureaucratic/ administrative overhead both within state agencies and in the nonprofit sector.

I made no such assumption. But you don't have to talk to too many men to realize their wives and girlfriends use sex as a means to control them.

Maybe it's just that I'm confident and self-reliant enough not to feel dependent on anyone else for my sexual identity (for want of a better expression), but statements like that seem very biased to me. Men are only controlled by their sexuality to the extent that they find it burdensome to obtain consent for sexual activity, no? I mean, look at the not-inconsiderable number of married men who have affairs, long-term mistresses, or hire prostitutes; by definition they find outlets for their sexual drive outside of their marital/conjugal relationship, yet choose to remain within that relationship, so they must be motivated by other considerations besides access to sexual activity. I'm pretty skeptical whenever I hear claims about 'women having men by the balls,' so to speak.