sexual contract
Carole pateman explains that while women have no part in the original contract with civil society, they are not left out of the “state of nature,” this makes me wonder what are they trying to say about woman as a whole? The civil society is structured; you make an agreement before entering into a community. With civil society comes civil freedom and social contract. By learning to live together in a civil society we look out for one another, we learn to be more rational and moral. In a “state of nature” it is the complete opposite. With “state of nature” its believe that society makes us, before a society existed we as people were different. With “state of nature.” We have physical freedom but there is a lack of morality and rationality.
Now referring back to Carole Pateman who explains that woman had no part in the original contract with civil society but all parts of the “state of nature,” are they trying to say that woman doesn’t have any morals and are irrational? Do our desires and impulses have a reason behind it? The inclusion of women in our civil society, seems to be only included when a man is involved. There is a sense of domination over a woman Carole Pateman’s explains and this domination is of course a man. A man’s power as a father comes after he has exercised the patriarchal right of a man (a husband) over a woman (wife). (pg.3)
The civil society seems more as a man society than a woman’s society. A woman living in a civil society according to the reading seems to be more submissive, to the man. Woman are the subject of the contract. The sexual contract is the vehicle through which men transform their natural right over woman into the security of civil patriarchal right . (pg.6) The fact that men made the original contract shows that woman never had a chance of being incorporated into the sphere of civil society. Men are the ones with the higher power, they are the patriarch, all adults even woman want to enjoy the same civil rights and exercise their own freedom with out someone looking down on them. Why can’t women have just as much power as the men ? why must a man have domination over a woman and have the right to enjoy sexual access to a woman?
