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The sexual contract

Front Cover
8 Reviews
Stanford University Press, 1988 - Social Science - 264 pages
In this remarkably original work of political philosophy, one of today's foremost feminist theorist challenges the way contemporary society functions by questioning the standard interpretation of an idea that is deeply embedded in American and British political thought: that our rights and freedoms derive from the social contract explicated by Locke, Hobbes, and Rousseau and interpreted in the United States by the Founding Fathers.

The author shows how we are told only half the story of the original contract that establishes modern patriarchy. The sexual contract is ignored and thus men's patriarchal right over women is also glossed over. No attention is paid to the problems that arise when women are excluded from the original contract but incorporated into the new contractual order.

One of the main targets of the book is those who try to turn contractarian theory to progressive use, and a major thesis of the book is that this is not possible. Thus those feminists who have looked to a more "proper" contract- one between genuinely equal partners, or one entered into without any coercion- are misleading themselves. In the author's words, "In contract theory universal freedom is always a hypothesis, a story, a political fiction. Contract always generates political right in the forms of domination and subordination." Thus the book is also aimed at mainstream political theorists, and socialist and other critics of contract theory.

The author offers a sweeping challenge to conventional understandings- of both left and right- of actual contracts in everyday life: the marriage contract, the employment contract, the prostitution contract, and the new surrogate mother contract. By bringing a feminist perspective to bear on the contradictions and paradoxes surrounding women and contract, and the relation between the sexes, she is able to shed new light on fundamental political problems of freedom and subordination.

  

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Review: The Sexual Contract

User Review  - Michelle - Goodreads

Carole Pateman's The Sexual Contract is perhaps her most acclaimed and recognized work in a very distinguished academic career. Published in 1988, the book analyses the classic political theory of ... Read full review

Review: The Sexual Contract

User Review  - Arotella - Goodreads

Very much a political theory book aka hard to read. Had to slowly work my way through this one for one of my classes. Worth the time and effort though. Read full review

All 8 reviews »

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Contents

Patriarchal Confusions
19
Contract the Individual and Slavery
39
Genesis Fathers and the Political Liberty of Sons
77
Wives Slaves and Wage Slaves
116
Feminism and the Marriage Contract
154
Whats Wrong with Prostitution?
189
The End of the Story?
219
Notes
235
Index
261
Copyright

Common terms and phrases

argues argument become capacities century civil slave civil society claim classic contract theorists classic social contract conjectural history conjugal right contemporary contract doctrine contractarian coverture created criticism depends discussions domestic economic employer employment contract enter example exchange exogamy father fatherhood female Feminism feminists Filmer fraternity Freud genesis Hegel Hobbes housewife human Ibid individual as owner J. S. Mill John Stuart Mill Kant labour power law of male Locke Locke's male sex-right marriage contract married married couple masculine means men's merely Mill modern patriarchy mother mother-right mutual original contract original pact parties paternal right patriarchal right person political fiction political right private sphere problem prostitution contract Pufendorf question Rawls relationship Rousseau servant sexual contract sexual difference slave contract slavery social contract theorists socialist status story Subjection of Women subordination surrogacy contract surrogate theory unfree labour wage labour wives woman women's bodies worker

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References from web pages

JSTOR: The Sexual Contract.
We hear an enormous amount about the social contract; a deep silence is maintained about the sexual contract" (1). For Pateman, the original contract is ...
links.jstor.org/ sici?sici=0022-3816(199005)52%3A2%3C693%3ATSC%3E2.0.CO%3B2-J

Carole Pateman
In the Sexual Contract, Pateman addresses very seriously what she calls 'contractarian' theory. Such theory provides an account of the 'origin' of freedom ...
www.cddc.vt.edu/ feminism/ Pateman.html

The Sexual Contract(s) of the Third Republic Charles Sowerwine ...
Sixteen years ago, in The Sexual Contract, Carole Pateman argued convincingly that .... Pateman, The Sexual Contract; Geneviève Fraisse, Les femmes et leur ...
www.h-france.net/ rude/ 2005conference/ Sowerwin.pdf

chasing poetry: carole pateman's "the sexual contract"
(In Carole Pateman's The Sexual Contract. In arguments that prostitution is merely one expression of a natural appetite, the comparison is invariable made ...
ijsje-en-snoepjes.blogspot.com/ 2004/ 10/ carole-patemans-sexual-contract.html

Pateman's dilemma
That feminist critique culminated in The Sexual Contract, ..... In The Sexual Contract, however, Pateman suggests that these socialist ...
www.springerlink.com/ index/ H86G168179M72381.pdf

Feral Scholar » Blog Archive » Excerpt: The Sexual Contract
The sexual contract is — in a very real sense, though not a strictly legal one any more, with the abolition of couverture and the erosion through struggle ...
www.feralscholar.org/ blog/ index.php/ 2006/ 04/ 20/ excerpt-the-sexual-contract/

Review Articles : Carole Pateman, The Sexual Contract (Polity ...
Automatic download [Begin manual download]. Downloading the PDF version of: Thesis Eleven Yeatman 26 (1): 151. (524K) ...
the.sagepub.com/ cgi/ reprint/ 26/ 1/ 151?ck=nck

University of Chicago Press - Feminism, the Individual, and ...
Feminism, the Individual, and Contract Theory. The Sexual Contract. Carole Pateman. Susan Moller Okin. Cited by. Kathy Miriam. (2007) Toward a Phenomenology ...
www.journals.uchicago.edu/ cgi-bin/ resolve?id=doi:10.1086/ 293216

2005 Benjamin Lippincott Award
Citation: The Sexual Contract is a striking and highly original account of the ... The Sexual Contract also offers a striking re-evaluation of an array of ...
www.apsanet.org/ content_20647.cfm

Male Power and Contract Theory: Hobbes and Locke in Carole ...
Carole Pateman’s The Sexual Contract offers a powerful re-interpreta- .... based on original acts of conquest (the sexual contract) is systematically ...
journals.cambridge.org/ production/ action/ cjoGetFulltext?fulltextid=275449

About the author (1988)

Carole Pateman is Reader in Government at the University of Sydney, Australia, and the author of many books, including The Problems of Political Obligation.

Bibliographic information

QR code for The sexual contract
TitleThe sexual contract
AuthorCarole Pateman
Editionreprint, annotated
PublisherStanford University Press, 1988
ISBN0804714770, 9780804714778
Length264 pages
Subjects › 

Social Science / Gender Studies
  
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