The unspoken issue at the center of prostitution is causation

[Major Nikon]

199. Thanks for hanging that on my dudeneck

I've never used a prostitute and have no desire to do so, but I get the obvious implication you're trying to make which is that anyone who disagrees with you must use them on a regular basis. I just chalk it up to intellectual insidiousness, but if that's where you want to go, more power to you. It says more about you than it does about me if someone cares to think about it much, and if they don't they are probably not someone who has an opinion I value anyway. I don't agree that the idea of prostitution = rape is even in the same ballpark as mainstream thought on the subject and seems to be only held mostly by those who subscribe to the most radical ideas.

It's different from statutory rape because by definition sex with someone incapable of consent is rape which obviously applies to someone below the age of consent. In order to make that definition apply to adult prostitution by your logic you have to assume that someone who is poor, or addicted to drugs, or who is involved with a criminal element is incapable of giving consent. This might be true if someone is extremely intoxicated and incapable of consent. It might also be true if they are being forcibly coerced by a pimp. The former would constitute rape with or without a prostitution statute in most jurisdictions (and should). The latter would be mostly limited to street level prostitution which remains illegal in pretty much all advanced nations that have implemented some type of legalization scheme. The idea that most prostitutes fall into the latter category is also not well supported by the available data. Street level prostitution only constitutes about 10-30% of the prostitution market for pretty much all advanced nations and even within that minority data set there's not much to suggest that even most are represented by pimps. The idea that someone who is poor is incapable of consent in an advanced country with a social safety net where people don't starve is even less convincing.