It wouldn't really be "sex work" if they weren't doing it in exchange for something would it?
Yes, we have currency as a placeholder for trading goods directly but people who perform sex acts for other goods like drugs are just as stigmatized and no currency was involved.
And if people are just having sex with a fun of it then it's not sex work either, it's just sex, which is less stigmatized now then it was 30 years ago but it still has a stigma attached to it, otherwise slurs like "skank" and "slut" wouldn't exist.

We are talking about the world’s oldest profession here. Prostitution far predates the invention of currency, as transactional sex goes farther back than recorded history.

Currency is not needed for prostitution. All that is required is payment, in any form. This occurs during transaction, which constitutes trade.

I don’t think making prostitution more difficult by requiring barter solves anything at all.

If you get paid for it you are a whore, if you do it as a hobby you are a slut.

The stigma is there, regardless of the money aspect. They will just use a different word.

I wanted to disagree with this, but I actually think you make a rather compelling argument.

There will always be exhibitionists and people who just like to fuck, but sex work is, by definition, transactional. You're not going to see a society with free communal whores who aren't being compensated in any way.

I don't think you'd have prostitution in a currencyless society. They wouldn't be prostitutes at that point.

People who have sex with people just because they enjoy it already exist. It's not new and it won't meaningfully increase just because a society becomes currencyless.

Without an economic incentive, sex workers will stop existing entirely. It won't be work, and they won't have any need to do it. They won't be compelled to have sex with you just because you have money now. There will still be people at a bar, club, or whatever who will have sex with someone they like for little or no reason, but again, that's not new.

a lot of the stigma surrounding sex work in the modern day (that doesn't just boil down to misogyny/gender norms/religion) is based on the fact that selling intimate aspects of one's self places a set value on something that many see as sacred

The fact that most of the times the stigma only clings to the person selling and not the person buying makes me think that this is actually a negligible part of the stigma.

Huh? Are you just talking about like a girlfriend?

What?

A prostitute that isn't paid...

Isn't really a prostitute are they?

You're looking at this as an economics issue. But I think it's a fundamentally a biological or evolutionary artifact. Evolutionary biology has intraspecific competition for access to mates to mating opportunities as a driver for change.

Organisms work to prevent the resource from being exploited just like water, habitats, space, etc. It's other women that would lose if access to mating opportunities are tied with monetary transactions, and a few would benefit. Minimizing prostitution helps the female of the species be more selective about their mates, and increases the "value" of their interactions.

There's evidence for this.

Trans priestesses attended temples in Mesopotamia and were very highly regarded.

Well, this is the weirdest shit I've ever read.

I don't think it matters whether the exchange of value involves currency or not.

There are things that most people find to be unethical to "sell" (exchange for value in a transaction). Those include actual human beings (slavery), military or political influence (bribery), and murder.

I believe that sex work in often included in that list because of a lengthy deep history of protection of "bloodlines." Of course, there has always been sex work, but those who offered such services - especially women - were by definition unconcerned about their own "bloodline," which must then mean that their "bloodline" was not worth protecting. That meant that providers of sex work were necessarily "lower" people.

Today, and especially in the global West, the notion of "bloodlines" is more associated with bigotry than high status. That's why we're calling it "sex work" now instead of "prostitution," for example - and sex work is more socially acceptable now, even if it's not super high on that scale. Because that cultural thing about "bloodlines" is well-entrenched and runs very deep.

Big doubt. Sex work was stigmatized back when there was only bartering. The stigma isn’t about the money at all. It’s about the nerve of someone to use their body to get by. Until people stop caring what other people do with their body, this issue will remain.

Interesting thought. I think most issues stem from bigot assholes who consume the produce but are not allowed to due to their background/upbringing/social "norms". And those within their normative set not willing to provide, because of the same background/upbringing/social context.

Also, w/o currency there will be other forms of compensation, like a certain amount of work time, or... (p.e.) a handful of apples... due for a certain set of services.

Additionally there is always a percentage of plain idiots who would socially not be able to ascertain this kind of services w/o paying, and these seem to need to demonize the servicer to feel better about themselves.

Sry if I busted this comment, brain is fried after work.

places a set value on something that many see as sacred; something that shouldn’t have monetary value.

I'd say it's the other way around - because it's labor that is (mostly) being performed by women (or stigmatized as something "only women do") it's considered to be of no value whatsoever. How many women do you know that performs work such as housekeeping, child-rearing and/or marital sex essentially at own cost because this type of labor carries no monetary exchange value in our society?

I'd say sex work falls into that category - but it gets stigmatized because sex work can actually allow women to escape such labor and not be locked into literally playing housewife to the capitalist mode of production (ie, wiping a company man's arrse so that he can concentrate on making capitalists richer).