The gender vendors : sex and lies from Abraham to Freud / A.L. Jones.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Jones, Al, 1949- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Sex role--Philosophy.

Sex role.

Biology--Social aspects--Philosophy.

Biology.

Nature and nurture--Philosophy.

Nature and nurture.

Feminist theory.

Philosophy.

Biology--Social aspects.

Physical Description:

ix, 261 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Lanham : Lexington Books, [2014]

Summary:

The Gender Vendors: Sex and Lies from Abraham to Freud pursues a Western historical trail of lies about sex and gender. 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. The Gender 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 the 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, early modern witch hunts, medicalization and criminalization of gender nonconformity, and campaigns against women's rights. The examination is structured around particular watersheds in the history of seed-and-soil; for example, Genesis, ancient Greece, early Christianity, the medieval Church, early modern European witch hunts, and the campaigns of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries against women's suffrage and education. The neglected story of seed-and-soil matters to everyone who cares about gender equality and why it is taking so long to achieve. Book jacket.

Contents:

Part I Seed and Soil: The Groundwork 27

1 History Matters 29

2 The Psychology of Selling Gender 47

Part II Seed and Soil: From Abraham to Freud 57

3 Abraham's Seed 59

4 Covering the Field 77

5 The Science of Sex: Aristotle's Seed and Soil 95

6 The Seeds of Christianity 111

7 Burning Desire: The Witch as Female 129

8 The Nineteenth Century: Less Sex, More Lies 145

9 Freud's Fantasy 157

Part III Seed and Soil: Contemporary Ramifications 183

10 The Contemporary Legacy 185

11 Fair's Fair 213.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780739190968

0739190962

OCLC:

880566096