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...
- Sex work has been stigmatized in various historic contexts.
- Selling one's body is an idiomatic expression that emerged originally to describe sex work.
- 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.