Here are my two cents. If being part of the sex industry is a conscious, uncoerced decision, to me there still shouldn't be any stigma applied to it. You know why? Because that's what it is: a job.
Unfortunately I cannot find a link for the life of me, but some time ago I read an interview with a group of young porn actors living together to share life expenses. Of course the interviewer asked the obvious question: being a group of young, sexually active people, this probably means that when you're together you're also, let's say, sexually active with each other, right? The answer was: of course not. When we're together, sex is the last thing on our minds - we watch movies, or play tabletop RPGs.
By the way, that's the same thing that happens to me: I'm a programmer by trade, and when I'm back home, I don't want to touch a line of code with a ten foot pole. (I'm exaggerating, of course, but this is why work and hobbies rarely coincide).
This is quite relevant to my point: I'm not expecting everyone to want to have a relationship with a sex worker - values and views on life differ. But the idea that their profession is reflection of some kind of twisted, warped mentality - or that their profession must also inevitably reflect horribly on the rest of their life - that, I don't agree with, because it's mixing causes and effects. And also because this could also be applied to other professions, and it doesn't make much sense there either.
Soldiers were discussed before. Let me add policemen to the mix. They are inherently risking their lives for their job, so they should never have relationships, or marry, or have children, right? How arrogant is for them to weigh so much on the shoulders of their dear ones, right? Except, they do have relationships, and marry, and have children. Thank goodness they do! Do they have a life more difficult than other people? Probably, and the same is true for their dear ones. But their profession is not making them worse people in and of itself. (By extension, I find this true also for other high-risk professions: have a look
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, for curiosity's sake).
And things could also be pushed further. As I've said, I'm a programmer. In my country and trade, some IT consulting agencies are quite infamous for requiring an inordinate amount of effort and free time dedicated to projects (yes, months or even years of crunch time is not a reality in the videogame industry only). One in particular is known in my circle as the "widowmaker": I can personally attest the stories of two consultants from the same firm, years away from each other. One of them was dumped after some months by his then girlfriend because of his working conditions, that left him totally "enervated" in his scarce free time, and the second one was married, and his wife was one step away from asking a divorce. He left the job to save his marriage, basically. Well, I'm lucky enough not to be part of such an agency, but I can assure you that when crunch time is required, if I had a wife or children I would be quite absent from their lives - comparatively more than a sex worker, maybe.
Summarizing: the profession by itself is not the issue. People, context and circumstances are the issue. And if you ask me "would you ever see yourself having a relationship with Dahlia, or Mina, or Felicia?", I'll tell you: probably not - but not because of their profession, because we come from backgrounds way too different, and we don't have much in common.