The Gender Vendors : Lexington Books : 9781498505369 : 1498505368 : 29 Aug 2016 : Among numerous ancient Western tropes about gender and procreation, ?the seed and the soil? is arguably the oldest, most potent, and most invisible in its apparent naturalness. TheGender Vendors denaturalizes this proto-theory of procreation and deconstructs its contemporary legacy. As metaphor for gender and procreation, seed-and-soil constructs the father as the sole generating parent and the mother as nurturing medium, like soil, for the man's seed-child. In other words, men give life; women merely give birth. The Gender Vendors examines seed-and-soil in the context of the psychology of gender, honor and chastity codes, female genital mutilation, the taboo on male femininity, femiphobia (the fear of being feminine or feminized), sexual violence, institutionalized abuse, the early modern witch hunts, the medicalization and criminalization of gender nonconformity, and campaigns against women's rights. T