This is a funny thread. By any name, exchanging sex for money/goods has been happening between the sexes since before we were technically human. Primate females (incl. humans) routinely withhold sex from males until we pay them. Payment can be in the form of money, housing, "financial security", physical security, goods (food, etc.), the list goes on. Men have been used as ATMs by wives, gfs, hookers, basically, women, for literally millions of years. In return, men use women to fuck. We do so because we get really horny and our instincts tell us to fuck them, so we do. We'll even pay to do it. Even when very horny, the avg. woman withholds sex until she gets some kind of payment. Imagine a world where men, too, withheld sex until we got paid. Hell, the overpop'n prob. would go away inside 50 years. Most women would die w/out reproducing. (Not a bad idea, really. Earth could stand to lose about 7,900,000,000 humans.)
So argue all you want about titles: SB, escort, SW, hooker, wife, girlfriend, girl-you-met-in-a-bar, etc. These names are all just context-sensitive labels for the same thing: prostitute.
But I don't imagine that such is a dirty word. My mother was a prostitute. She just had (presumably) a very short client list and lived with her john. She even had kids with him! But she was a whore who got married to her no. 1 client. No more or less than any other woman who has ever lived. And us men are just johns. Husband, boyfriend, fwb, etc. Whatever. We're just johns.
Not that I like this. But it's reality. And I am nothing if not ruthlessly realistic.