this post was submitted on 10 Oct 2023
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Antiwork
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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.