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.