Antiwork

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:

1. Avoid referring to sex work by selling one's body.
2. Avoid referring to sex work by leasing one's body, or any similar variation of the same theme.
3. Avoid referring to any work by any phrasal variation already proscribed for the case of sex work particularly.

To put it simply, just avoid the whole concept.

selling does suggest handing over property on a more permanent basis.

Selling is surrendering ownership through an exchange, usually exchange for currency.

Arguably labour is intrinsically linked to the body providing the labour

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.

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’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.