Brittany Thomas assignment 2 The sexual contract
This reading definitely had so much information compacted in to it its had to talk about just one specific thing, however one of the major points I gathered from this reading was Rousseau’s point that the social contract forces individuals to give in to the state and civil law in which freedom becomes obedience in exchange for protection. I thought this was one of the more powerful points of the text because here you are as the individual and if obedience has to be exchanged for protection then how are you really free? If you as the individual have to be subjected to the state and civil laws that say women are not even considered an individual but in fact just property , how is that freedom, and disobedience to the law would result in you politically being unprotected by the state. This is not unlike today where there are many laws that are in place that should be irradiated but to obtain protection from the law u must follow the law and in the same case obedience is exchanged for protection.
Another interesting point that was made was about the classic theorist creating and basically defining what it is to be a man or a woman. Defining that only men are considered individuals and naturally all men are born free and created equal. The problem with this is that if one man is allowed to be ruled or governed by another man then how can they be equal? The answer is they can not be equal. This brings us back to the invention of rights. The rights defined were never meant to include women or blacks. They were meant for the white man who owned property such as slaves and money and status. There is no way you can start an argument off with all men are created equal while one man owns another, and whats even more disheartening is that women were not at all included in these liberties. As the author of the text stated women had no natural freedom and are not born free. They were automatically considered property of their father and then of their husbands. Hobbes explained that women lacked the attributes and capacity to be considered an individual. In this case to be sexually different is to be politically different. This brings me back to my previous point . the phrase “all men” is even less than literal because not only does it excluded actually certain males but most definitely excludes all women.
