5 Assignment 02

In “The Sexual Contract”, Carole Pateman discusses how women are excluded from the social contract. Pateman is not referring to contract law nor does she refer to property in the literal sense. Rather she refers to the social contract in which authority is granted to state and civil law and property in the sense of personhood. Meaning, the system in which we surrender some natural rights in order to live and participate in a civil society and to have our political rights protected. From the social contract, we have social relationships, including the relationship between husband and wife (the marriage contract) and employer and employee (the employment contract). We are taught that these freedoms and protections are universal in a civil society, however due to society’s patriarchal structure, women are excluded.

When Pateman refers to patriarchy, she is not referring to the literal definition of paternal rule. Rather, she refers to society where women are subordinate to men not as fathers and husbands but simply due to the fact that men are men. In the patriarchal society, men have the freedom to move between the private and public sphere freely, to fully engage in the social contract, the marriage contract, the employment contract, the prostitution contract. Women are not. They are largely relegated to the private sphere, which is viewed as apolitical. As a result, their rights, particularly in such contracts as the marriage contract, are almost nonexistent. This results in further subjugation and a furthering of a patriarchal society.

While the public sphere is the only sphere as existing in a political sense, the sphere which benefits from the civil law, freedom, and equality brought about through the social contract, the public sphere and the private sphere cannot exist without one another. Just as ‘natural’ and ‘civil’ depend on one another for their existence, yet remain in opposition to one another, so do the private and public sphere. Because women exist in the private sphere rather than the public sphere, they are excluded from the social contract. However, they are not (and cannot) be excluded from the sexual contract. They are not equals in the sexual contract though. Their exclusion from the social contract results in a subordinate position within the sexual contract. To maintain this separation and subjugation, the public/civil sphere is viewed through a masculine lens, while the private/natural sphere is viewed through a feminine lens. Again, this furthers patriarchal rule and leaves women existing in a space that both is and is not political, enforcing subjugation and oppression.

Ive always questioned the phrase “all ‘men’ are create equal. Not in terms of …..but because of the usage of the term man itself. I find it interesting how society uses the term man to define citizens as a whole. It comes as no surprise that there’d be some tricky contract degrading women. The real question is why; is it really too difficult to fathom a reality where women receive the same respect as men. Not just in a financial sense but, but just as an human being. Hobbes stated that was no actual difference between men and women, but that sexual relation should be consented through a contract or by force. On paper, it states that it is against the law to discriminate against another based on religion, sex, racial etc. However, I feel as though it is only put in writing to shut us up. it’s like giving a dog a bone so doesn’t stare in your face while eating.

The recent election for example proves just that. I feel as though even if the opposing candidate was worse of moron that the Donald himself, Hillary Clinton would’ve still loss. Clinton did not loose the presidential campaign because of failure to impress citizens, but merely because she was a woman. It’s ironic how women are often seen as being emotionally incompetent, when indeed men. Even through job descriptions. A teacher jobs for example is considered a woman’s job because the nursing of a child is involved therefore the pay is a load of crap.

Another thing that stood out to me in the Sexual Contract read, is the determination of stature is based upon the father, grandfather, and his father so and so forth. As a child and even still till this day, it was always my dream to get married and change my last name. After reading the sexual contract, I do now question that policy. Why is that it is the man’s name that gets carried on for generations? I.e if you have a child, whether a girl or boy, it is the fathers name that is given as the child’s surname. It it such messages hidden in the sexual contact that intrigues me. I know for a fact that I am strong woman, but I am guilty of acting a certain away around my significant other. He doesn’t like me smoking (marijuana) because it isn’t “lady-like”. James Brown once said It is a man’s world (which obviously it is), but it is nothing without a woman. Men, they only hold us back, because they security fear what we’re capable of; Wouldn’t you agree?

Original contract basically constitutes two things i.e. domination and freedom. Here it should be realized that women are not treated equal to men, in other words, men are superior as opposed to women and therefore the contract is patriarchal. In a number of occasions that women are not treated as being powerful as men and therefore, in anything that is basically conducted, they are regarded as subordinate. This idea is absolutely inconsequential in the modern society and this has been replaced with civil society which is anti-patriarchal. In sexual contract, women are also seen as insignificant and men seen as dominant because they are believed to be the people giving this. It has not been realized that indeed in the original contract, there a half that is missing which need to be incorporated in order to make it complete. It should be known that other theorists have companioned this issue and since it was referred to as patriarchal has now been changed because this word cannot be used in the current society.
Indeed, there is a serious need for the women always to participate every single thing that men participate. This tendency in my opinion is primitive and has to end. In any case, women does it better than men why don’t they be given a chance to prove their capabilities? Women are actually incorporated in the contract when the social contract theory is brought about. In other words, this is the theory that advocates for freedom. That is, the inhabitants or those who occupy the state of nature basically exchange the insecurities of freedom to equals. This will bring a sense that when a man and women entire in a contract then they are treated as equals. It is also important to indicate that the contract theorists won in the process of defending the fact that there was a special half missing and also the important political part in the contract is not interpreted properly. In fact, political interpretation the issue of conjugal right emergences and in this case, the father s the one to exercise this to the woman and therefore considered patriarchal.
It is clear that the main reason as to why the very fundamental section has been omitted in the sexual contract is basically the misleading pictures actually given by the civil society about the contact marriage. In fact, patriarchal civil society has been categorized into two parts but happens that only one part is used and the other left out.

My apologies if you read an earlier version of this response. I accidentally posted before I was finished writing.

During week 2, we focused on the documents and declarations that Lynn Hunt views as precursors to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights passed by the United Nations in 1948. Hunt notes how discussions about “the rights of man” reorganized the relationship of French and American subjectivity to the sovereign, paving the way for discourses that emphasize rights as universal. Carole Pateman’s work takes a different view on “rights,” stressing how in social contract theory “sex right” is joined to such discourse. Hunt suggests that by defining natural rights in terms that stressed a right to property, theorists like John Locke engineered rights in terms that did not challenge slavery. This point becomes much more nuanced in Pateman’s work, I would argue. For Pateman, the conceptualization and arrangement of property and subjectivity (for white men of a certain standing) was joined to the bodies of women who were brought into civil society through the marriage contract.

As we discussed in class last Tuesday, one way of reading Pateman’s work and the distinction between public and private life that she stresses follows contract theorists like Locke and Rousseau who make women more a part of the environment that directors of it. In this way, the subjugation of women and their bodies are connected to the individuality that is being defined for men only. As Allison noted in her presentation, this understanding of women, as something less than an individual capable of making a contract, raises questions about the way equality is being instrumentalized through subjugation. We spent a good portion of class discussing whether and how the inequality that Pateman attributes to contract theory continues to define marriage today. I think Pateman is suggesting we consider as well how the arrangement and conceptualization of sexual difference becomes a way of framing a story about freedom and subjection (see p. 6, for example).

Building on this point, we should consider how the conceptualization and organization of the body (and differences between bodies) are connected to the stories we tell about life and its possibilities. This idea bears some kinship to the argument Wendy Brown makes in the essay we are reading for this week, on “Human Rights and the Politics of Fatalism.” If you have trouble following Brown’s essay, I encourage you to read page 460. There is a good synopsis of her argument at the top of this page where she ask us to consider how projects that aim to reduce or limit suffering are already joined to certain ways of imagining subjects and their potential. This point is repeated throughout Brown’s essay as she guides us through a substantive rethinking of Michael Ignatieff’s argument that human rights campaigns can be an apolitical attempt to reduce human suffering.

I found the reading of Carole Pateman’s Sexual Contract very interesting. Although it was a lot to read, research and understand I did find it to be very informative. In the Sexual Contract Carole Pateman mentions the word “Patriarchal/ Patriarch” fairly often. A Patriarch is a male controlled government and/or society. A government that is controlled by male dominance is one that will forever under mind women.

In the past women were viewed as property. When marrying a woman in the past, a man would expect to receive land, money etc. Women were the subject in marital contracts dominated by men. These women were not labeled slaves but with no rights, not being seen as equal to their male counter parts, and not having a role in the governing society in which they lived basically made them slaves. If a civil society is one that connects its people by similar interest and “collective activity, how can a woman in the past or even now feel like they matter in a civil society that does not view them equal to men?

Carole Pateman brings up numerous theorists from the past. She speaks on these three theorists, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Thomas Hobbes and John Locke and the social contract. A social contract is made by a community and/or society that wants to create or define rules, benefits, rights and duties for its members. Once again social contracts were created by men. The making of the social contract did not include women although they were part of the society.  In my opinion “social contracts” were hypocritical because they were supposed to be created by members in the society but women (members of society) were not making or were not part of making social contracts.

The state of nature- “is a concept used in moral and political philosophy, religion, social contract theories and international law to denote the hypothetical conditions of what the lives of people might have been like before societies came into existence.”  In the Sexual Contract by Carole Pateman mentions that “wives” were not mentioned. Since Marriage combined man and woman to husband and wife, “they appeared only in civil society”. Thomas Hobbs believed that in a civil society and civil contract that men had no need to over power women however, women we still and are still over powered by men. With all of this information in these readings I still wonder what needed to be done or what needs to be done in order for women to truly be treated, respected and viewed as equal to men?

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.

The Sexual Contact

While reading “The Sexual Contract” by Carole Pateman, I began to question my own contract that I live in my everyday life. I feel that being a Latina from immigrants parents, I can see how in some ways men in my family have dominate their wives or partners. This hit a nerve for me as I began to compare the original contract with the sexual contract. I know that times have changes especially in the United States. But in some countries, women are very suppressed and have no rights. Women are only used for bearing children and for their husbands sexual relieves.

Women through marriage and after having children are not incorporated into a sphere that “is and is not in civil society”. Women have no part in the being economically independent. Women had no say in their reproductive right during this time. Many women didn’t have a say on who they were going to marry. Men always dominated the whole concept of “family”. While times have change as more women are educated, have jobs, have rights on contraception. We are currently living in a time where if we don’t stand and have our voices heard we can lose those rights again. With only 3 weeks after being elected president of the United States, our President “Trump” has made it clear that he thinks he can make choices on women reproductive rig. As I continued reading “The Sexual Contract” by Pateman, “the original contract creates the modern social whole of the patriarchal civil society” (pg. 12), men go back and forth in the private and public sphere, their sexual rights runs in both. The men are quickly to claim the rights over sexual access to women’s bodies making it a “obligation” for women to fill their husbands or partners sexual desire. For the most part no one mentions the problems that come with excluding women from the original contract but new contracts are in placed. Where men can use women for sexual fantasy as in prostitution. Men will pay women for sex in many cases.

Moreover, women have been working hard to eliminate the indifference between men and women. Making the new term gender neutral a more unique definition. The contracts have in some ways defined what is masculine and feminine in modern times. I shall continue to read and educate myself on the different contracts. Also, I can change or teach my family on how be more gender neutral.

According to Carole Pateman in her book “The Sexual Contract” men dominated women and had the right to treat them as someone of less value. During a marriage, rape was considered part of a right that the husband had it (Pg.7). In the original contract, it was established that men had rights over women, they could dominate them because they were their subordinates. I believe this has been happening all the time, even today in some countries women are considered not equal.

Women were not part of the original contract (pg, 6) but were part in the contract of marriage. I assume women have been incorporated in a different way than men in a “civil society”, this was at the moment of the contract of their marriage and also at the moment of having a child.  In the natural condition, all men were considered “born free” and they were equal as any other men, contrary to this women were not considered “born free”  this means they did not have freedom and equality (pg, 6).

Pateman also explains that women didn’t have this freedom because they were considered subordinate, this means women should obey their husband all the time. According to Pateman, she mentions that in the social contract freedom becomes obedience and in exchange, protection was provided (Pg, 7), I believe women were feeling that protection when they accepted a contract of marriage.

The origins of the patriarch have been since the Seventeenth century where women knew that wives were subordinates by husbands. Women were also being exploited because they belonged to a contract. In this case, in the marriage contract, one of the parties had the right to make decisions and use the other party in the way that he wanted. In this case, the women were used sexually and also had to fulfill the tasks of the house (pg 8).

At present time  I believe that marriage contract has not changed much because even now women are dominated by husbands especially women who grew up seeing a man as the only one in making decisions in a marriage.  I think this subordination also comes from our culture, for those who come from countries in South America is very common that men dominate their wives. Even today the role of women in some marriages is to serve the husband and procreate a family, without having a voice in the relationship and only trying to accept their husband’s requirements.

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?

According to my understanding about what Carole Pateman states in The sexual contract, the original contract is both sexual and social. Patriarchal social order was part of the sexual contract, in which men had political power over women including their bodies. Women were not even considered individuals and did not have the attributes and capacities to enter into contracts, only men  therefore women were sexual objects being dominated by men. In this way women were left out of the original contract because they were not even mentioned. In the social contract men can enjoy their freedom. Also, the social contract was created by men for men. However, women came to form part of these contracts only through marriage, because it guaranteed the cicil patriarchal right since women continued to be the subject and the dominated by men. Through The marriage contract husbands had all the right to exploit their wives because it was all about domination and subjection. Subjection was given in exchange of protection in the case the relationship of worker and capitalist in which all the power rest on only one party. An example of capitalist industry was prostitution which the patriarchal right justified men demanding for women’s bodies for sale.

Hobbes the first contractarian, and his radical individualism doctrine influenced a lot in the thinking of the society regarding the original contract. Hobbes insisted that when married women become pregnant and give birth to their babies, mother have power over the child because she will offer protection to the child, therefore the child must obey her mother. In this perspective mothers had a political right over their children which is the power of an absolute lord. He also adds that there can not be a confrontation between two sexes because both are strong beings capable of killing each other. So, the only political right women can have is motherhood. Even though Hobbes seemed to give some kind of minimum power to women, in Leviathan he wrote that a family consist of “a man and his servants, a man and his children, a man and his children and servants, so in conclusion the father is the sovereign leaving women and mother out.

According to another contract theorist, Locke who thinks that as marriage is a agreement between two individuals, furthermore through marriage women are naturally subject to men. So, women freely decide to get married. This shows the incorporation of women in society, However, once married they are subordinate to their husbands which puts them in the same situation as patriarchal order.