this post was submitted on 10 Oct 2023
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I agree, but I for one am not enamored with the idiom of selling one's body.
That's the point, isn't it? If the term wasn't specifically coined for this, it's been long used to shame sex workers. Which is sort of funny, considering all labor involves selling your body in some form or another.
I am not following your explanation. The phrasing is extremely unclear.
The idiom is at least somewhat derisive, both historically and intrinsically.
Like I said, that is the point of the idiom. It's historically been used specifically towards sex work in a derogatory fashion.
However the reality of the phrase, "selling your body," is that it's true for all labor. One could argue it is especially true when it comes to something like construction work, which can be very hard on your body and impart long term health effects.
I think there's plenty of use in taking an idiom that's been used to harm others and flipping it back the other direction.
The idiom is not "true", or false, for particular varieties of labor.
An idiom carries the meaning understood from broader usage patterns.
Your analysis is not particularly accurate, that the intrinsic content of the phrase describes particular labor better than other, especially in the way you have argued.
At any rate, sex work is the context of the discussion, and how the phrase was employed specifically, from which my objection was raised.
As such your emphasis may seem to be misdirection, perhaps seeking pedantry or virtue signaling, more than engagement that is honest and substantive.
Good lord, you must be fun at parties.
I'm well aware of what an idiom is and how they're used. I understand that traditionally the phrase, "selling your body," is employing the idiom that means to engage in sex work. I also understand that this is what you're referring in the initial comment I replied to. I understand the idiom itself doesn't refer to other forms of labor because that's not how idioms work.
My point is that if you take the literal phrase "selling your body," you can very easily construe it to be just as true about any labor. Like I said, I'd argue this point is illustrated particularly well manual labor. You are commodifying the physical use of your body to achieve a task, often at a heavy cost to your body if done in the long term.
This is not me changing the context of the discussion. I'd very much argue that this is actually a very useful point to make in the context of sex work. We are taking an idiom that has been historically used to harm people, and deconstructing it. The intent being to point out how sex workers aren't any more, "selling their body" than people in other forms of socially accepted work.
Again I understand the idiom refers specifically to sex work, but if we deconstruct it we can use it to point out a hypocracy in the thought process of those using it.
You were deconstructing the idiom, and in doing so, you were erasing the context.
The comment that initially invoked the idiom employed it as a reference to sex work, following the original usage of the idiom, which is understood stigmatically.
I raised an alarm, and indeed, an exceedingly mild one, but instead of meeting my remarks on their merits, you preferred to engage in pedantry and virtue signaling, by attacking a straw man.
More, no one sells one's body, taken as the "literal phrase".
You can't do it. You can sell a car, a house, the shirt off your back, but everyone has exactly one body through life. I have mine and you have yours.
It is not particularly meaningful to analyze which labor is described accurately versus not by the phrase of the idiom, because the phrase has no coherent literal meaning. Hence, the phrase is understood only idiomatically.
Hooo boy, you're continuing to perfectly misread me and gloss over what I'm trying to say at key points, it feels. But I'm just going to skip over the first two points instead of continue to try and clarify them seemingly fruitlessly.
Let me try a different approach here since it seems I'm not communicating with you effectively.
First off, seems like we're both on the same side here: Sex work is real work, and it should be destigmarized. Cool? Cool.
The idiom, "selling your body," is derogatory phrase used to refer to engaging in sex work. It's used to separate or, "otherize," sex workers. Pretty sure we're still on the same page.
So, actually, I guess my first question to you is if the string of words, "selling your body" has no meaning outside of the idiom, how did it come to refer to sex work specifically in the first place? Obviously it was just a figure of speech someone used first right? And their implied meaning was that there is something wrong or immoral about selling sex, and specifically sex. Which is what got rolled into the idiom.
So, bare with me, and just humor me for a minute here.
Take just the figure of speech, drop the part where it's specifically about sex work. Can you explain to me how sex work is "selling your body," so to speak, where other work isn't?
Such was exactly the purpose of my first comment, that sex work and other work carry full parity in terms of social value and demand full parity in terms of social acceptability, yet the idiom itself should be invoked cautiously.
To my mind, its invocation is never particularly desirable.
The idiomatic expression, like all others, emerged from within a historic, social, cultural, and linguistic context, one that can in principle be elucidated, but whose elucidation would have no bearing on the accuracy of any claim or argument occurring in the current discussion.
My argument requires only three premises, all of which ought to be above dispute...
Therefore, invocation of the idiom should be preceded by caution.
Oh my fucking god dude I've been trying to make one single point that doesn't even necessarily directly dispute yours, and you've been the most insanely difficult person to have this conversation with.
Humor me for one fucking moment. I'm not trying to pull some gotcha moment, I don't even care if you agree. I'm just trying get you to understand the one single thing I've been trying to say this entire time.
Drop the context around the figure of speech for just a second. Once again, I'm not trying to pull a trick or some shit here.
If you didn't have the context around the phrase, would you be able explain to me how sex work is “selling your body,” so to speak, where other work isn’t? I understand this isn't an opinion you hold.
Personally? I'd say no. I can't think of a way that isn't some ridiculous mental gymnastics.
If someone truly believes sex work is amoral because you're "selling your body" and you can illustrate the point I just said you force them into a logical corner. They can either:
Choose to be ignorant and/or hypocrite, stick their head in the sand, and ignore you.
Recognize that sex work is just as valid as any other work.
Or
By taking the time to deconstruct the idiom and point out how idiotic it is (excuse the pun), you can take the power out of the phrase. By doing so you're taking a weapon out of the arsenal of people who want to use the idiom to harm people.
You insist you understand the concept of an idiom, but you have been consistently unable to apply the concept meaningfully in the current case.
Take an example.
Tie the knot is an idiom for entering into a marriage.
Is it a problem that no one would never deduce the overall meaning simply from the literal semantic content?
Do you have a need to deconstruct it?
Amazing xD
They were AGREEING with you all along mate. Please see it. Please.
Jesus christ mate. All that to make a near identical point to the person you argued with.
What a waste of effort.
I wrote a comment that ought to have been received as extremely straightforward and uncontroversial. Its length was only about twenty words.
There was no reason it needed to become a problem.
You're absolutely right! You then interpreted a response which agreed with you as a problem though, and everything that followed made you look a right tool.
Someone was literally just pointing out that the stigmatisation is ironic given the same logic used in the idiom could be applied to many industries. They acknowledged that it wasn't, and that the stigma was associated specifically to sex workers, but basically were just having a chuckle that the logic used to denigrate a whole industry could be just as easily applied to lots of "respected" career paths too.
Yeah, it's probably more akin to a rental or timeshare setup (or so I've heard).
It would be a more direct and accurate metaphor, though of course still potentially stigmatizing for the same reasons.
Unfortunately, others are often unwilling to engage thoughtfully or sensibly.
They lurk on the shadows, ready to pounce on a straw man, in order that they may claim they slew Goliath.
Their tactics are successful in the same way as clickbait.
It's literally done daily by sex workers, manual laborers, models, actors ...
Very true. I sold my body at work today and now I'm just a disembodied consciousness floating around in the ether, posting on Lemmy.
You can always save for a new one.
What is being done is not one in the same as the idiom chosen to describe what is being done.
They certainly are one and the same, you're just scared of stigma.
Stop imposing your judgments on me.
Do you understand the concept of an idiom?
It seems not, as you have insisted the particular idiom describes what is being done "literally".
It is "literally" what is being done. I went to work today and "sold my body". That was a use of my time and energy that I can not get back in exchange for money I need to survive.
Arguably labour is intrinsically linked to the body providing the labour BUT selling does suggest handing over property on a more permanent basis. Would you be happier with SpaceNoodle saying they leased their body, given they committed to a set time period that their body could be used for their employer's (lessor's) purposes?
I would make the following recommendations, ordered as beginning with the most important:
To put it simply, just avoid the whole concept.
Selling is surrendering ownership through an exchange, usually exchange for currency.
The statement is vacuous, almost entirely affirmed merely by the meanings of the terms, and lacking any substantive contribution.
Consider, for comparison, the following proposition:
Arguably air travel is intrinsically linked to the aircraft providing transport.
Weren't you having a go at someone for pedantry earlier in this thread...?
Selling one's body is effectively a useless phrase. It had been used pejoratively, historically, to describe sex work. It has no other meaning.
The entire issue should seem very simple.
That doesn't sound like an answer to the question I asked....
Yes I no longer have those cells that were replaced while I was working, if you want to go the ship of Theseus route. That's not what I'm referring to though and you know that.
I understand the intended meaning. My objection is against the insistence that the language is being used literally.
No one literally sells one's body. No one ever, not once, has done it.
The observation should be one that is plain and simple, but somehow there is a prevailing need to pretend that the idiom is any more than a derisive characterization of sex work.
The idiom emerged from a historic context that imparted its meaning, through cultural constructs quite distinct from any that have been asserted in the discussion.
It is simply not the case that just as has been said, at various time, of sex workers, that through their work they sell their bodies, so too do construction workers, or any other kind of worker, also sell their bodies.
Your pedantry is annoying. Language is ever evolving. The saying is perfectly fitting.
Language is evolving, but not every statement about language is accurate.
The ideas that were expressed are not accurate.
You're the one uncomfortable with the phrase, buddy.
My restating what you said is not a "personal attack," and does not warrant uncouth insults.