Language is evolving, but not every statement about language is accurate.

The ideas that were expressed are not accurate.

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.

Sure, but that is true for ever job then. An unknown and hidden confounding factor explaining job choice and the problems of the job can always exist.

The general principle may apply to any job, but you wanted to study the population of sex workers in particular, and doing so requires collecting and analyzing data, in regard to sex workers, properly and sufficiently, toward a conclusion.

I only suggested that your conclusion may not be robust if sex work is disproportionately represented by populations that carry broader vulnerabilities to some of the difficulties that you inferred were directly consequences of sex work.

Right. The remaining possibility is the third variable. Membership in certain populations may be associated with increased likelihood of becoming a sex worker and also of experiencing difficulties that you are suggested are caused directly by being a sex worker. Such difficulties may appear after someone has become a sex worker, even while having an independence cause.

If two effects are correlated, then three possible causal relationships are possible.

A first effect may cause the second, or the second may cause the first, or a so-called third variable may cause both.

It is possible that an individual who has been afflicted by certain difficulties is more likely to participate in sex work.

It is also possible that individuals from certain populations are more likely to participate in sex work, and also, due to being associated with the population, are also more likely to be afflicted by certain difficulties.

Both possibilities must be considered as alternative to sex work causing such difficulties, to explain the correlation.

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?

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.

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.

Are you aware of any sources specifically evaluating participation in sex work as a causal factor in mental and substance disorders (as opposed to sex work represented more prominently in populations already affected)?

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.

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.

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.

Can you explain to me how sex work is “selling your body,” so to speak, where other work isn’t?

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…

1. Sex work has been stigmatized in various historic contexts.
2. Selling one’s body is an idiomatic expression that emerged originally to describe sex work.
3. Invocation of the idiom, by its own merits, imposes further stigma beyond any otherwise already apparent in some context.

Therefore, invocation of the idiom should be preceded by caution.

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.

Removed by mod

This is not me changing the context of the discussion.

We are taking an idiom that has been historically used to harm people, and deconstructing 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.

Removed by mod

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.

You can always save for a new one.

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”.

I am not following your explanation. The phrasing is extremely unclear.

The idiom is at least somewhat derisive, both historically and intrinsically.

What is being done is not one in the same as the idiom chosen to describe what is being done.