I think, if we’re to view this from an ethical point of view, sex means many different things to many different people. Examples: sex is for procreation, sex is for pleasure, sex is a uniquely bonding experience, sex is for love, sex is unappealing and unimportant, sex is wonderful and extremely important. None of these ideas are definitively true or untrue, but peoples’ opinions on sex vary wildly. From my perspective, we are not treating sex as taboo, sinful, distasteful etc and many of us have views regarding sex reflected in the examples above… we are criticizing financial, transactional coercion – and coercive sex is… not “sex” as it is commonly understood, it is sexual assault or rape. Even in the unlikely circumstance that the John and the person in the sex trade are attracted to each other and both are very happy to be having sex, there exists a huge power imbalance that cannot meaningfully lend itself to totally consensual sex. Money is food, shelter, transportation, medicine. Money is life. The John in this scenario sits atop one of the most incredible power imbalances that could possibly exist without straight up having a literal weapon - the threat of financial violence. The way a boss holds our livelihoods over our heads on the barest of strings they can slice at any minute, except for the vast majority of us, we don’t have to get fucked by our bosses. This financial, transactional, coercive nature of prostitution/the sex trade is what makes it undesirable, not puritanical ideas about sex. In the manner I have described it, there is no better word to describe this ‘sex with threat of violence’ than rape, and as communists and feminists it is important that we talk about this and shine a light on the millions of people being sex-trafficked (~25 million at any given time!) and abused being swept under the rug via a narrative ever-shifting towards “sex work is real work”.