The Sexual Contract

“That individual freedom, through contract, can be exemplified in slavery should give socialists and feminists pause when they make use of the idea of contract and the individual owner.”

This quote exemplifies how Pateman’s consideration of the contractual defense of slavery sheds light on the relation of subordination that contract theory and contractual terms simultaneously justify and obscure. The legitimacy offered to slave contracts by contract proponents suggests not only that there are fundamental contradictions in contract theory, but also that socialists and feminists, who aim to eliminate relations of subordination, should be wary of trying to use contract to bring about their aims.

“If the problem has no name, patriarchy can all too easily slide back into obscurity beneath the conventional categories of political analysis.”

Pateman refers to contemporary suggestions that political discourse should abandon the language and concept of “patriarchy” since there is little consensus on what it means or its relevance to modern society. She counters this suggestion by demonstrating that “patriarchy” has taken a distinct fraternal form in modern civil society.

“In civil society all men, not just fathers, can generate political life and political right. Political creativity belongs not to paternity but masculinity.”

Here, Pateman reiterates that modern patriarchy is fraternal, not paternal (as literal interpretations of “patriarchy” would assume). Because of this fraternal configuration, contract theory and contractual relations can appear post- or anti-patriarchal, but as Pateman shows, modern civil society and political right are structured by this fraternal pact.