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Well, either society normalizes a trade, in which case it carries no stigma or shame, or doesn't, in which case it does. I'd say it's that simple.
Not really, no. The stigma has at least two types, and a society (we'll assume a monolith society for maximum simplicity) can stigmatize both, one, or neither.
One kind of a "stigmatized practitioner" is shunned because he is seen as if he unduly extracts value from society as a whole, particular strata or random victims. Examples: street thug, politician, john, pimp, top 0.001% OF model, business owner.
You shun those from a position of morality, good-thinking and justice. At the same time, you recognize that those people are better off in some way, even if you try to sour grapes it.
The second kind of a stigmatized practitioner is shunned (or at least, their job/patronage is) because it is seen as viscerally, materially disadvantageous for himself. Examples: beggar, hermit, retail clerk, street sweeper, common prostitute, alcoholic barfly, OF whale.
Those people are either looked down on or pitied, but very rarely envied. Those who think of those people with disdain use the stigma on the field as a weapon against the practitioners (while often being fine with perpetuating/patronizing the trade itself, like those who eat at mcdonalds and still believe mcdonalds is not a real job for real people), while those who pity them weaponize the stigma against the field (which usually has type 1 beneficiaries, to boot).
Regardless of how you feel about individual participants or whether you are one, it is not incoherent to stigmatize the trade as a whole. It does not "make zero sense" for women to want to end sex work in its current iteration (which they see as mostly exploitative of women) while minimizing collateral to type 2 sex workers. That you don't empathize, or perhaps see ending sex work or ending the stigma against sex workers as against your interests, doesn't make it illogical.
Wait retail clerk and prostitute are equally shunned? I feel so out-of-touch.
Who said equally? I said that they are. Have you never heard anyone sneer at unskilled menial/service labor and insinuate that to stay at such a job for too long (or at all, in some cases) is a failure of living life? The way customers treat them, or the way approximately no one ever in the history of the earth wanted to work in retail if they had a choice?
I have heard people sneer as you say. This does not mean I agree with them. I worked retail for years when in school, I waited tables, I was a clerk at a gas station/convenience store, I was a bartender, I once was a floor waxer, I used one of those blowers to clean leaves, I have done all manner of such work. Some of the most interesting human interactions I've ever had were in such jobs. As far as I'm concerned these jobs constitute honest labor, and, as my dad would have said, build character--I do not feel similarly about barflies, beggars, or (common?) prostitutes. I found it jarring that you lumped them together. You may of course disagree and that's fine.
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The more snobbish PMC types might sneer at retail jobs in general, but a girl who works part-time at Target while she goes to college isn't going to get anywhere near the kind of lasting stigma her classmate with an OnlyFans is going to get.
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