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.

Yet, you chose to raise an objection.

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.

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.