unfreeradical @ unfreeradical @lemmy.world

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2 yr. ago

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.

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.

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.

I agree, but I for one am not enamored with the idiom of selling one's body.

you can be anti-Israel without being antisemitic

The media tend to promote the narrative that the Palestinian struggle is inherently antisemitic. They offer very limited information about any liberatory factions that depart from the characterization of being hateful toward Jews.

Many defend Israel based on an assumption of its Jewish inhabitants facing an existential threat.

Based on information from mainstream outlets, there is little reason to doubt it.

Socialism is the political movement seeking to transfer control of the economy from billionaires to the public.

As the video explained, billionaires are a problem only with respect to their role in society. We seek to eliminate the role, not the individuals. If they change their role, then they are not a problem.

Markets may occur in a socialist economy. Abolishing markets is preferred by some socialists, but would be feasible only if a viable replacement becomes available.

I have known only exceedingly few to ignore the events you referenced, and most are themselves ignored if not attacked for doing so.

The objection you seem to hold is that the aspiration to assimilate owners and workers as one class is inseparable from the perpetration of atrocities.

I have come to reject such a view, and in my comment tried briefly to encourage representing events with their total historic context.

Respecting the particular events, the Soviet Union was not the only country to conduct mass detention during the Second World War. I am not inclined to defend any in particular, though others may seek their own opinions.

Socialists at large have tended to oppose structures of power, most notably, the one greater than all others, capital. Unfortunately, capital, as all power, defends itself however it must, ultimately by force. Otherwise, it not would not have continued to hold power.

When violence has erupted, it has been because the powerful would not relinquish their power by will to those who have had been harmed by it and turn against it.

In the present, we should try to understand how we may minimize unnecessary conflict.

At the same time, many are dying and suffering under the cruelty of current systems We should not forget the reasons we seek to end them.

Do you favor continuing to live under systems through which most of society is subject to the coercive conditions of labor, enforced by the capitalist class?

Events from over a hundred years ago have exceedingly limited relevance to the crises of the present day.

Also, I would question the robustness of your claim as you have framed it. Much of the atrocities following the Russian Revolution occurred within the Civil War, which entailed invasions from foreign powers, and in which both sides were perpetrators and complacent in such activity.

You could encourage surreptitiously your workers to organize, but doing so would be only meaningful if you genuinely accept that they would act against your own interests, and that you would be placing yourself also against other kinds of risk.