Assignment 2 – The Sexual Contract
The way I interpreted Carole Pateman’s argument is the original contract not only excludes women but also subjugates them. The ‘natural state’ is used to enable this imbalance of power in the original contract. Reminiscent of the idea of “moral autonomy” that we discussed last week, the natural difference and constructed definitions of gender allow men to declare themselves as having political right via their rational thought and entrance into contracts, while simultaneously excluding women.
While Pateman offers a few different interpretations of the original contract, the key interpretation proves that rather than creating political right, the original contract creates patriarchal right, using the contemporary definition of patriarchal rather than the archaic meaning (paternal rule). This interpretation states that people, in their natural state with their natural rights gave up those natural rights in exchange for protection from the government, transforming those rights civil rights, and creating a contract of agreement between the governors and the governed. From that point people enter into countless social contracts, from the employment contract to the marriage contract. The privilege granted to men in the marriage contract, and to men of power in all other contracts negates the idea of fully free political right. In fact, as Pateman argues, rather than transforming natural right into civil right in the original contract, men turn natural right into patriarchal right, including sexual right, over women. This distinction applies to all marginalized groups, but Pateman is primarily concerned with women, and though all women must contend with male power, she is focused on heterosexual women and their relationships with heterosexual men. When she touches on identity politics, it is almost exclusively through the lens of the heterosexual female.
As the original contract gives men political right over women, including access to women’s bodies, it involves not only the social contract but the sexual contract (including the marriage contract, which exists in both spheres). Because contract theorists have chosen not to question this distribution of power, they embed it within their history of modern society. Left unexamined, it enables these theorists to focus solely on the social contract, thus eliminating the sexual contract, and therefore the private sphere in which it partially exists from the conversation. However, as Pateman argues, the private sphere and public sphere exist only in the definition of each other, there is not one without the other. The same is true of the social and sexual contract which are interrelated as evidenced by their interaction within the marriage contract, the prostitution contract and even the employment contract, all of which favor men and give men power. Contracts involving women have mostly been relegated to the ignored private sphere, and considered apolitical. Arguing that body politics exist becomes tricky, as Pateman explains, because the current construct of ownership in one’s own body is rhetoric created by the contract theorists who uphold the power of men. Regardless, women are left out of the original contract (easily noted in the myriad ways women haven’t been given the title of “individual”) and subject to the powers men who subscribe to this theory would describe as the their natural right. Women are therefore left to the private sphere, a realm recognized by civil society, but not discussed, nor considered political. The private sphere being part of civil society, but not part of the civil, or public sphere. The private sphere is considered the “natural” and “feminine” sphere, and is connected to civil society not just through its connection to the public sphere, but through the sexual contract (Pateman, pg 11).
