My thesis: I believe the current legal landscape in the West regarding intimacy ignores the historical and cross-cultural 17:1 reproductive ratio and punishes non-preselected men to maintain the normalization of monogamy.

For men who were not preselected to participate in life through peer mate selection, the justice system's intent is often to punish those who try to purchase their way through intimacy. The lack of sexual and emotional integration for a significant portion of the male population creates a systemic instability that cannot be addressed by 21st-century archetypes of celibate sublimation (e.g., the monk or the philosopher).

The feminist movements of the recent decades seem to be divided on the issue of sex work. One side citing that sex work leads to objectification while the other side argues for pro right to choose (not sure by how much this debate divides feminists/women overall - curious to know). And the puritanical laws originating during the birth of the US are still enacted as a righteous cause for social cohesion. Apathy towards men who face this life is not only common, but encouraged. Life long bachelor men are heavily stigmatized despite the expectations for women having drastically changed through the decades.

Human trafficking is and should still universally be considered to be a wretched and depraved act and unfortunately still a fact of life in certain countries with legalized sex work policies, so if sex work were to be legalized in the US at the national level, I suspect that demand for it would be astronomically high with a host of unintended consequences which I suspect could cause the collapse of monogamy and American/Western society. The US government has always favored and incentivizes married couples but the law makers haven't been bringing these debates and recent trends mentioned here to the table. I haven't noticed this discussion get much or any attention aside from the Nordic model.

Although historically, a significant percentage of men never reproduced, In many ancestral cultures, 17 women reproduced for every 1 man. This number being on the rise in the West may be because the world and society as a whole would rather turn a blind eye for the sake of correcting gender imbalances since mainstream society doesn't find systemic biases towards men being problematic.

Open to rebuttals!