It's not a job when the most desirable "employees" are the least experienced ones.
The idea that sex is having something done to you, as opposed to something you're doing for or with someone, strikes me as a rather old-fashioned and sexist attitude. I'd like to believe that my wife and I share something better than that.
Of course, there are a lot of personal values tied up in this question, so I don't think that either your opinion or mine necessarily prevails. That being the case, I think the best indicator is what each individual chooses to do of their own free will.
The problem with "what each individual chooses" and prostitution is that it's extremely difficult to get an accurate reading of what people truly want. There's lots of coercion, pressure, and outright threats. I think it's fair to say that given the opportunity, most people would not choose prostitution. It's very important to have a society where no one ever feels the need to become a prostitute.
The whole "consent" argument also tries to ignore the question of harm. If someone consents to be harmed, should we harm them? If a drug addict wants to keep drugging themselves, should we not do anything about it? I'm not outright saying that prostitution harms every prostituted person or not, just that this question should be considered, not elided with the "consent" argument.
I'd say that is incorrect and based on incomplete understanding. I'd say it's a choice, made, no matter how incomprehensible, for money. Like other choices people make, eg choosing such and such career path, or such and such relationship, sometimes there's peer pressure. And because it's connected with orchestration by criminal enterprises, tainted by that association. However, when you come down to it, people could sell themselves before criminals wanted a cut. It works to consider how you might come to make that choice, and whether your assumptions about prostitutes are filtered through the landscape of what you perceive as your own possible choices.
So before I pronounce prostitutes as victims to fit a narrative of exploitation I've chosen (seductive also for it suggests my moral superiority that I would never make such a choice! :), maybe I'll remember it doesn't work to victimize the people I'm talking about by pretending they had no autonomy. Isn't that, the very same hypocrisy I'm trying to accuse others of? Using a person for a purpose? And when that person may have done the choosing, and I in my argument may be doing the using, haven't I neatly reversed the roles all by myself, and undermined the very argument I was making?
Tl;Dr - when you're talking about people you want to paint as victims it works to consider them as autonomous, choice making beings, to gain more accurate insight, even tho it's seductive to pretend that somehow you've more autonomy than they.
Stl;Dr - fantasising that prostitutes have no autonomy is trying to use them for an intellectual "dry sex", without paying, for the sake of argument without their consent! Definitely only for scoundrels!! :)
I've known three strippers (for reasons unrelated to their careers), and I know for certain that in all cases their choice of profession was absolutely a personal choice. The cost/benefit opportunity was the best one open to them, and they took it.
Like I said, stripping isn't the same thing, and of course anecdote isn't the singular of data. But my experience personally, and what I hear second-hand elsewhere, makes it difficult for me to believe that violence and force are significant factors in that world. And to the extent that they are present, it seems more likely that they enter the picture precisely because it's an outlaw black market lifestyle, and if allowed in the light of day that aspect would likely disappear.
Given the opportunity, most people would not choose to work.
That being said, from my neighbourhood, women who did chose prostitution could have done some other work instead. They picked prostitution because it was 1. easier and 2. it paid better.
A quick google leads me to http://www.quora.com/What-are-the-average-prostitution-price...
From this, it looks like the price for prostitutes increases with quality.
I'm in favor of legalization, but there is some economic research suggesting that at least in the short term, expansion of the market for prostitution (through decriminalization or legalization) results in a net increase in illegal trafficking, because market sector growth >> the substitution effect (whereby many customers prefer the legal alternative). It's not the simple 'ban it or legalize it' dichotomy that advocates on both sides suggest.
I think you're right about a certain segment of the market. After all, we know that pedophiles exist, so some "customers" would want the "services" of a child who lies there crying, which would require no "training". I think those would be few in number when compared to a legal market for adult prostitution, although they would necessarily be a larger portion of any illicit market.