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 social contract through the lens of feminism and democratic theory. More than twenty years after publication, Pateman’s opus remains a relevant critique of political theories that ignore the profound connections between feminism and democracy. As indicated by the title, The Sexual Contract seeks to demonstrate that underlying the supposedly free and equal civil social relations based on a theoretical contract is a relation of subjugation that Pateman calls ‘the sexual contract’. She begins by breaking down the philosophical basis of social contract, bringing out the often obscured patriarchal presumptions in the ideas of contract and of civil society that were developed during the period of the Enlightenment. She argues that the theory of social contract is inconsistent with both democracy and feminism, because it presumes the subjugation of women, and she demonstrates this through her analysis of the foundational philosophical works on the social contract.

Pateman does not use the typical feminist arguments that the sexual contract is coercive due to the lack of freedom of choice of whether to marry, or that it is exploitative because the conditions of the contract are not equally beneficial for all parties. Despite the fact that she acknowledges that they are important in themselves, the genius of Pateman’s argument lies in her ability to go beyond these problems into the question of whether such a contract could ever be equal or free. She outlines how the concept of marriage contracts have hidden the broader sexual contract, where men (as a caste) are provided access to women’s bodies both in the divided public and private spheres of social life. Pateman does not only use the idea of sexual contract to analyse the adaptation of patriarchy to modern political structures, instead she also brilliantly counters the entire theory of social contract itself. Using women’s subjugation as only one example, Pateman argues that all contracts which involve property in the person, such as marriage contracts, employment contracts, and the social contract between citizens and government, inevitably create relations of subjugation.
Property in the person, Pateman explains, is a fundamental presumption of social contract theory. While this is fundamental to social contract theory, there are many problems with this idea. First, there is the logical inconsistency of the alienation of a person’s abilities or labour from themselves, which Pateman neatly dismisses, since a person’s entire self is necessary for the use of either. Therefore the question is not of contracting labour or abilities, but of contracting a person’s entire body and mind. Second, the idea that a person can be contractually obligated to hand over the use of their body to another, submit to the will of another, but at the same time be free and equal, is shown to be completely absurd. Any contract involving property in the person “(c)reates a relationship of subordination” (69). The idea of free and equal contracting under such circumstances is revealed as an ideological fraud.

When applied to the idea of the traditional sexual contract, that is the exchange of women’s obedience and their bodies for sex and domestic labour with men’s protection and economic support, the problem of women’s subjugation in all areas of modern social life can be clarified. Rape was (is) not seen to be possible within marriage because wives were (are) seen as having contracted away their sexual choice. Rape of another man’s wife is problematic because it goes against the fraternal order. Domestic violence continues to be a problem predominantly of men abusing women, or even murdering them. Sex work and pornography continues to be about men having access to women, or at least images of them. Women continue to be underpaid for their work outside of the home, and continue to be responsible for more than their share of the work inside the home. The question might be posed of how it is that even when divorce is rampant and women have entered the workforce in such large numbers, have abolished so many sexist laws and effected so much social change, women’s subjugation continues on such a massive scale and such a consistent basis. Pateman would answer that these developments, although important and necessary, have not changed the fundamental structure of the sexual contract, because it is imbued into our social relations on all levels.
Her later chapters show other examples of contracts involving property in the person, beginning with slavery and the idea of the ‘civil slavery contract’, and moving on to prostitution and surrogacy. Prostitution, or in more contemporary terms ‘sex work’, is a very important issue for feminism, and often a dividing line between different feminist perspectives. As in the case for domestic violence, rape, and women’s domestic labour, Pateman’s thesis delves deeper than less radical feminist analyses, not only looking at questions of exploitation or unequal contractual terms. Certainly the idea that ‘wage slavery’ is inherently exploitative is not new, having been a long-held position of socialists and anarchists, but Pateman deftly ties in the sexual contract with the idea of the ‘civil slave’ to clarify the importance of understanding women’s oppression in critiques of capitalist economics. When she applies her considerable intellectual skills to the issue of sex work, she comes up with a refreshingly respectful yet accurate assessment of the difficulties: she refuses to either accept that sex work (as it is practiced in the modern world) can ever be a free and equal exchange no matter how theoretically ideal the circumstances, or to allow sex work to be viewed as a problem of women.

Her analysis of surrogacy is particularly ahead of its time, as Pateman foresaw the inevitable power inequality in a practice that is increasingly common, and now has become an international industry where wealthy people from powerful nations can contract for the use of the bodies of poor women from developing nations. In each of her arguments Pateman demonstrates why attempts in standard feminist and anti-capitalist analyses, using questions of exploitation or coercion to work within the framework of social contract to argue for liberation will inevitably fail because the philosophical foundation of modern life is based on domination, and not free contractual relations.
Pateman’s brilliance is in her willingness to shine the light of her analysis far beyond where many of her contemporaries in various academic fields were prepared to look. While others discussed readily apparent expressions of women’s oppression, Pateman looked beyond the surface into the very structure of society. She elucidates the presuppositions that the ideology of the contract is based on, and what it means in practice for women’s subjugation. The challenge of her work is to go beyond the obvious problems of exploitation and abuse- which is not to dismiss them but to attack the foundation upon which they are created. In doing so, the interconnectedness of the systems of inequality are laid bare. Feminisms which do not see the root of the problem have always had the difficulties of trying to understand how all forms of women’s oppression are tied together (and thus how they can be simultaneously dismantled), as well as being unable to integrate feminism with other anti-oppressive analyses.
The history of white Western feminism has been fraught with problems of internal racism, classism, and other systems of subjugation. Sojourner Truth asked “Ain’t I a woman?” in 1851, and yet so many years later many forms of feminism exclude or downplay the importance of white supremacy. Pateman’s analysis of a specific group in a specific time period (e.g. Western women and modernity) is so thorough that it provides a model for the analysis of many other situations, not the least of which she alludes to herself in this book and goes on to explore in later works, that of racial oppression.

Pateman’s book is not perfect. Notably, she sometimes veers into an essentialism which does not seem to fit with the rest of her thesis. Calling transsexual women “simulacra” does not strengthen her argument in any way, especially given the high level of systemic violence experienced by these women, which belies the idea that transsexuality is in any way “pretence” (223). While the transsexual body is read as a male body within patriarchy, transsexual streetwalking women can be disposed of in the same way as any other kind of woman prostitute. Transsexual women are seen as predatory, in the same way that other women deemed unattractive (e.g. “fat”) seek to entrap men into relationships while they fail to live up to the standards of acceptable women’s bodies, though the consequences for transsexual women are often much more severe. Thus, transsexual women fit neatly within Pateman’s argument about women’s subjugation, and she neither needs to nor logically should exclude them. One could make the argument that this oversight (or prejudice) is due to the era in which Pateman was writing, but this seems weak for two reasons. First, Pateman is amazingly avant-garde in all other aspects of her thinking. This is not an author who follows the trends set by others, instead this entire book evidences a rare originality in its analysis. Furthermore, the book has been reprinted much more recently, giving Pateman ample opportunity to retract a sentence that lends nothing to her argument and is irrelevant to her point.

Another problem with The Sexual Contract is the somewhat circular writing style. Pateman is rarely explicit about her own view, requiring the reader to reconstruct this based on what she does not say. Her actual thesis is often inserted almost as an afterthought in the midst of a paragraph, which makes it less evident to the reader. For example, on page 146, Pateman says:
The issue is not abstract, unconstrained liberty, but the social relations of work, production, marriage and sexual life. Are relations between women and men to be politically free, and is there to be collective participation in the task of deciding what is to be produced and how it is to be produced; or is political right to be exercised by men, husbands, bosses, civil masters?
This is an excellent question, and almost a summary of the book’s entire subject. However, the reader is more than two-thirds of the way through the book before she makes this point.
Further hindering the clarity of her argument is the structure of the book. Although the chapters each cover the subject they purport to, there is a lot of repetition of the same themes. This leads to a very thorough argument but it can also cause confusion, particularly at the beginning of the book when it is sometimes unclear where Pateman is heading with her meticulous philosophical analysis.

Nonetheless, these problems of clarity cannot obscure the intellectual virtuosity of Pateman’s political analysis in this profoundly important book. Rarely have I read any other work in the fields of feminism or political analysis that so clearly demonstrates how intrinsic women’s subjugation is in our current social, political and economic structures. Pateman pinpoints exactly the source of the contradictions and problems in social contract theory, and she makes a very strong and thorough argument for the indivisibility of issues of women’s subjugation in modern societies from the question of democracy as a whole. Liberal feminism, libertarian capitalism, and patriarchal Marxism are thoroughly trounced without even being directly addressed, because they share common assumptions that Pateman brings forth from obscurity and unabashedly reduces to their absurd foundations.

For these reasons, The Sexual Contract is a remarkable contribution to political thought, and should be required reading for any student of political theory, feminist theory, or issues of democracy. It is not a particularly accessible text, due to Pateman’s meticulous engagement of classic Enlightenment philosophy, and because of the author’s somewhat roving writing style. This is unfortunate, as it offers such a unified and original critique of so many unspoken presumptions that continue to hold sway in political discourse today, on all sides of the political spectrum. An integral part of Pateman’s impressive academic career, this book evidences her importance as an intellectual and as a critic of social systems that work against democracy.
15 s Sara J. 114 525

Nunca sé cómo puntuar un ensayo sobre feminismo. No es una lectura sencilla ni rápida, tengo mil anotaciones y casi cada esquina doblada. Me ha hecho replantearme muchas ideas que tenía asentadas y afirmar otras. Eso ya me hace considerarlo bastante bueno e interesante pero necesito releerlo otra (o varias) vez.feminismo librosdel201911 s M.738 145

I don't know if I agree with everything she says, but it got me thinking a lot.

After all, the book shows how liberalism and the theory of contract are the genesis of many contemporary evils and it would be good to find a way around that rereading of the classic texts, as well as the true inclusion of women in a system of relationships where they are truly free, without the suppression of sexual difference. I must pose the warning that it's quite dense, it's not a simple and quick read.

The strongest critique I'd be daring to make is 'what is the way out?', which is, after all, essential. But we must not diminish the importance of the arguments leveled against a blank slate individual which now graciously includes women while denying their physical reality, more than ever in the wake of the trans trend. anthropology ethics feminism ...more5 s Stan25 12

The feminist take-down of contract theory, this book offers a gender-conscious genealogy of the development of contractarianism, and shows its fundamentally male-supremacist character. Good companion read with Merchant's "Death of Nature" and MacIntyre's "After Virtue."5 s Mariana12

Imprescindible.3 s Matthew31 13

I was forced to read this book as part of a university philosophy course. I use the word 'forced' intentionally here, since ordinarily I would lauded exposure to another quality philosophical text in a classroom setting. However, this screed rails against classical contract theorists with the following two beautifully ridiculous arguments:

First, that since all classical social contract theorists were men writing about dividing up the 'goods' of social organizations, they must have included women in those lists of goods (even though none seem to do so explicitly). Since they (presumptively) include women and sexual access to women as things validly the part of distributive justice, their contract theories should be rejected. That this first argument is specious is patently obvious. Not only do none of the theorists concern themselves with divvying up sexual access to women in any explicit way (at least none that I've ever encountered), but even if they did, that wouldn't be a call to reject their theories any more than it would be to reject modern evolutionary theory by critiquing Darwin's "Origin of Species" - the origial works don't usually reflect modern concensus in many academic discplines, particularly not ones with massive amounts of work being done in them.

The second argument is that all of the classical social contract theorists talk about "men" forming the social contracts, and since they excluded women from forming the contracts, they should be rejected. This argument is also ridiculous. At no period did men sit down in the fashion discussed in social contract theories and decide on social organizations, so there could never be any exclusion of women from such decisions. Now, admittedly, historically women HAVE been excluded from making the types of important decisions which impact them, but Patemon must prove that the current incarnation, in which women have EQUAL say with men (in fact, greater say if we are to believe modern demographical data), that the social contract is not in their best interest - an assertion which should be falsified in any democratic nation with a bare majority of women voters.

All in all, a shockingly awful read.non-fiction3 s Hanna O'Connor40 2

En riktig klassiker. Kan ibland kännas att den har några år på nacken men gör inte så mycket!3 s William46 1 follower

I was very disappointed, especially near the end, where we get a brief discussion of trans issues and homosexual marriage. She denies trans people (or specifically trans women, she doesn't appear to be aware trans men exist) can be or transition to the opposite gender as their sex assigned at birth, and she claims marriage is intrinsically between a man and a woman (as part of a critique of marriage to be fair).

Many aspects of her discussion involve equivocations between libertarian-style/Hobbesian "contracts all the way down" contractarianism and all other social contract theories (such as Locke and Rawls, who explicitly do not start with contracts as the only source of morality). The latter are acknowledged to be distinct only briefly to say that they've "smuggled" non-contractual aspects into their theories through appeals to "nature" - not accurate especially for Rawls. The same often arises in her discussions of man/woman, where she seems to blur the lines between her discussions of actual men and women, and the masculine and feminine as symbols (esp. in the chapter on prostitution). This leads her to make some claims that are less morally outrageous but I still think wrong, such as that only women can be prostitutes.

Many of her critiques do hit the mark, but on topics marital rape that are far more obvious in retrospect. Often these critiques coincide with contractual feminist critiques of marriage, and it isn't obvious what she's doing differently in many of those passages. She does do a good job of introducing forgotten feminist critics (or at least, ones who I was not familiar with) and incorporating empirical sources (esp. discussions of prostitution and to a lesser extent in her discussion of surrogacy). There are also interesting critiques of Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau, and to differing extents I buy the claim of hers that they rely implicitly on a previous sexual contract. Her key insight is that women would not choose to enter the social contract under the conditions they have if they were seen as full parties to the contract (almost a direct quote, but I cannot find it right now, I believe it is in her discussion of Hobbes).

She makes a few other criticisms that are good (e.g. the worry that self-ownership implies the civil slave contract is permissible is still widely held, that pornography, prostitution, surrogacy, marital rape, etc aren't all distinct issues but rather that they ought to be addressed together). Some of the conceptualizations are at least new to me, such as status versus contractual versions of patriarchy, or the inclusion of Freud as a contractarian. But overall I wasn't happy with the book and I am not convinced of any of the main theses, that contractualism both assumes the personhood and non-personhood of women, or that making marriage more contractual isn't a viable strategy for feminists.philosophy politics2 s Arotella73

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. 2 s Ermina302 3

Mislim da se ovaj spis komotno može svrstati u tre?i val feminizma, pa kome se da ?itati nešto radikalnije ideje, slobodno neka pro?ita. edu1 Sally1,477 52

A feminist critique of the social contract philosophers (Locke, Rousseau, Kant, Hobbes, etc), the current social organization built on their views, and modern contract philosophers. My takeaways: the Enlightenment idea of social contract was one among men, not men and women (they really meant that all MEN (not people) are created equal, and liberty, equality, FRATERNITY). I hadn't read the contract philosophers' comments on women, who all but Hobbes considered as innately inferior and naturally subject to men, incapable of reason or of understanding and following universal principles, and fit only for the private (as opposed to the civil) sphere subordinated to one of the "free and equal" men (father, husband, master). Civil society was formed of those men who were not subject to another person and who in the private sphere could be master of wife, minor sons, daughters, domestic servants, apprentices and slaves. Civil society depended on its members being supported by those in the private (domestic) sphere and civil law largely did not apply to those in a man's household. A friend of mine was one of the first people to take advantage of the then-innovative (mid-1980s) program by the local police dept to aid domestic violence victims. When she phoned a friend who worked at Scotland Yard and told him about how she'd been helped, he said that Scotland Yard wouldn't consider any such interference in domestic matters. This book made that detective's thinking very clear to me.

The second takeaway was that women, despite having gotten many legal rights, won't really achieve equality in a system that assumes that its free individuals have their domestic needs taken care of, as men used to have, and so are free to give the bulk of their time and effort to matters in the civil sphere (jobs, politics, etc). Simply inserting women into the traditional male-oriented paradigm is not enough; it leaves matters in the domestic sphere very distorted as women act as "equals" in one sphere while still carrying the traditional domestic or private sphere that is necessary for the care of children and the elderly.

This is an academic book, and while not light reading, it is very clearly written.political-philosophy social-justice-action women1 Merve289 43

Pateman'?n asl?nda teorik yakla??m?nda kusurlar eksiklikler ve anlam veremedi?iniz baz? keskin yarg?lar? olsa da özellikle döneminde ç???r açan bir eser yazm??. T?pk? Rousseau'ya kar?? Kad?n Haklar?n?n Gerekçelendirilmesi adl? eseri yazan Marry Wollstonecraft gibi. Pateman da özellikle sözle?me teorisyenleri aras?nda öne ç?kan Rousseau ve Toplum Sözle?mesi adl? eserine kar?? yaz?lm?? diyebiliriz. Sadece ona deginmiyor tabiki di?er teorisyenlerden de söz ediyor ve cinsler aras?ndaki ili?kilerdeki/ sözle?melerdeki e?itsiz in?alara i?aret ediyor. Bunun ard?ndan Pateman'dan oldukça etkilenmi? Charles Wills'in Irksal Sözle?me'si ve Bar?? Ünlü'nun Türklük Sözle?mesi eserlerini okumak tamamlay?c? olacakt?r diye dü?ünüyorum. Sözle?me asla sadece bir sözle?me de?ildir çünkü.

Ülkemizde kad?n çal??malar? görece geç ortaya ç?kt??? için de türkçeye çok geç kazand?r?lm?? Cinsel Sözle?me bana göre. Ele?tirel bir gözle günümüzün ko?ullar?yla kiyaslamadan okunmal? ki özellikle Bat? dünyas?n? ?ekillendiren siyaset ve toplumsal tarihinin çok de?erli dü?ünürlerinin kendi özgürlükçü (!) kuramlari ile e?itsiz ili?kileri sözle?me ko?ullar?n? toplumsal yap?lar? kültürel önyarg?lar?n? nas?l olu?turduklar?n?, bunlara nas?l katkida bulunduklar?n? gösteriyor.1 Alice Blackwood24 1 follower

I recognise that this is a seminal feminist text, and it was probably better when it was written, but viewed from a third-wave feminist lens it did not age particularly well, though Pateman thankfully sidesteps any overtly TERF-y arguments. The analysis of Filmer vs Locke and the way that contract theory managed to relegate women to a permanently unequal status is probably the best part of the book, and I found some of the arguments about contract as it relates to sexual consent particularly relevant for today's world. This book was a dense read at times and definitely a work of critical theory rather than a feminist manifesto.1 Omesh Dwivedi6 1 follower

When people think of contract, they think of Rosseau and other modernist contract thinkers. Mills' racial contract and Pateman's sexual contract bring into perspective what modern contract theorists forget about. Great read!1 elizabeth amber3 3 Currently reading

another required school read, but enjoying pateman's further (and necessary) exploration of traditional social contract theory1 Alexandria Avona34

This is one of the darkest books you may read as a feminist. It speaks about the fact that philosophical heroes Kant in one breath spoke about categorical imperatives and in the other said that political agency did not apply to women. Their hypocrisy evaded them.

What is most disturbing about this book is the application of Hobbesian State of Nature to the woman. The book clearly states that sex is not subordination, and that whenever it is, it is considered rape, or violent encounters of intercourse. Yet, many women know the true reality of what sex has become (and has been for ages) in such an entitled male world.

The author makes the clear point that in a world where you can't expect to not be raped and you can't expect equal exercise of justice as a woman, it is in your interest to not have children. The children will hold you down. He makes it clear that many civilizations that relied on rape luckily died out on this point, and will continue to.

In addition, the author speaks of political life as that which creates value. Rape is the failure to validate that agents are actually exchanging and not validate an exchange as actual. No benefit comes to the other party, in fact harm, and no compensation is made (they juxtapose this in contrast to the prostitute that has no pleasure from the sex but nevertheless is compensated). The economy is destroyed by rape as the agent so demanded never wants to exchange again because nothing of equal or greater value to that which was demanded from them is provided.

Finally, they also speak on the truth that there is no such thing as consent in a world where women do not have equal access to justice. If a woman cannot expect the justice of a man, then contract is just a sham to make the pain a little less. If this is the case, then it's true that women are in a state of nature and benefit from not having children who will hold down their survival where they can't expect to not be raped. They need to be able to leave the rapist unburdened. Having a child due to being unable to expect not being raped and not having the rapist see justice will hold them down.

The closing remark is that while men feel they have the sex-right (the unspoken right to have sex with a woman they find attractive) without believing that she also has a compensation right, women in high sexual demand will see their nonsexual labor depreciated to quietly suggest more can be made fulfilling the male sex right. Yet, by giving into this market should she do so, she sacrifices the value of her nonsexual labor perhaps permanently. Thus, neither choice is optimal to her and her best bet is to try to lose sexual attractiveness as much as is possible and to remain in the nonsexual labor force.

This book will make you sick but it will also open your eyes.

Women live in a state of nature. We can no longer expect rapists to see justice, it is clear. It is important to not have their children.philosophy CalebAuthor 2 books9

The scholarship in this book remains impressive, covering a vast breadth of early modern thought on paternal, patriarchal, and fraternal foundations of political right, with a bunch of Freud thrown in. For me somewhat surprising, however, is that it hasn’t aged so well. The core insight—that notions of social contract between free and equal individuals are parasitic on a prior, unacknowledged denial of women’s freedom in a sexual contract between men for sexual access to women—remains radical and thought provoking. (See the first part of Mary Rawlinson’s book Just Life for an update on this idea of the fraternal reorganization of patriarchal right.)

The problem with Pateman’s approach is that the argument equivocates between positing a flaw in the social contract narrative (i.e. revealing a contradiction that casts those theory into doubt) and positing a real account of the historical/logical origins of sexual subjection. Because she does not signal when she ventriloquizes Hobbes or Locke and when she speaks in her own voice, the argument seems often to beg the question. And maybe it does.

For those seeking to read this book seriously, I recommend Nancy Fraser’s commentary “Beyond the Master/Subject Model” in Social Text (1993) which really sheds light on Pateman’s dependence on a 1980’s radical feminist notion of power inequality as subjection. Also, check out Moira Gatens’ “Sex, Contract, and Genealogy” (1996) for a Nietzschean/Foucauldian critique that has since become a classic starting point for queer theorists who seek to distance themselves from feminism. (IMHO Gatens does this maneuver far more elegantly than Janet Halley and her cohort of contemporary feminist/queer sex warriors, but that’s a debate for another day.)


Tiffany Starling84 40

3.5

Un livre très intéressant qui est venu compléter, pour ma part, des lectures matérialistes et radicales du féminisme.
Il n'a cependant pas été facile à lire, c'est écrit de façon très "académique", à en perdre un peu le fil par moment... Avant de le lire, j'aurais probablement du me replonger un peu dans le contrat social de Rousseau afin de comprendre plus facilement les références que Pateman y fait.
Pateman aborde dans un chapitre relativement long les rapports entre le père et le fils, et entre le fils et la mère, qui m'a rappelé les théories de Refuser d'être un Homme de Stoltenberg, sorti l'année suivante.
Le chapitre sur la prostitution se distingue de toutes les façons dont les feminismes abordent habituellement le problème, il constitue à lui seul la pépite du livre, c'est pourquoi je le conseille vivement. feminism non-fiction hannah 124

okay no i havent read the entire thing but i feel the amount of time ive spent w it counts as me reading the entire thing right guys
just let me add to my reading goal okay
ANYWAYS i am a little too stupid to read the entire thing bc its really fawking hard guys HOWEVER NOW THAT I FKIN GET IT AFTER 50953483 YEARS shes changed my life a little omfg. who else up thinking about the oppression of women fr.
i do think pateman is a little crazy, still. BUT i also think a big part of me doesnt know whats going on so ITS ME NOT U PATEMAN FR.
5 stars for changing for my life a little but 3 stars for being a little inaccessible for silly girls 2 s Laura del Alisal17 2

Pateman makes the necessary connection between social contract theory, liberal ideology and what historically has been known as "the sex question". She proves that writers of social contracts had very different ideas for men and for women and how that affected the role of women in civil life. I was particularly interested in the points she makes regarding the contract of marriage and its relation to the contract of prostitution. Absolutely fascinating. However, there are tints of un-nuanced radical feminism (the typical comparison between heterosexual relationships and rape, trans-exclusion, etc.) which is often present in radical feminist essays, especially in the 80s. Notwithstanding of the biases, it's a thought-provoking seminal book that must be read by everyone interested in political philosophy or feminism. Kevin5

I have trouble understanding what she’s doing in this book, at a very basic level. I’m never sure what’s critique and what’s construction, or what the dialectic is. What I think I understand I disagree with in an uninteresting way. Maybe I have an analytic beam in my eye that prevents me from getting it. Some of it is definitely compelling, the bits about Freud, but I’m not convinced that Freud’s legacy is really responsible for much oppression in the world. Certainly a good thing to watch out for. Shreya88 25

I forgive the mild gender essentialism because Pateman does take pains to reject the category of the Eternal Woman as 'patriarchal fiction', and also she integrates black feminist critiques of racial differences among women, and also she seems less interested in defining 'woman' and more interested in what the state defines it as so as to regulate certain relationships, and also it was the '80s, and also you gotta read her takedown of Kant. Because that was ice-cold.2022 Daniela3

Dôsledná dekonštrukcia kontraktarizmu - náh?ady na texty klasických teoretikov zmluvy genderovou prizmou sú vždy š?avnaté. Pateman presved?ivo vykres?uje sexuálnu zmluvu zaru?ujúcu prístup mužov k ženskému telu ako základ ob?ianskej spolo?nosti a bratskej "rovnosti". Plusové body za to, že ma podnietila k prehodnoteniu názoru na prostitúciu/sex work (ku ktorej je ve?mi kritická), mínusové za explicitnú transfóbiu, ktorá príde ne?akane. 1988, no.feminism feminist-political-theory non-fiction eva18

Considero que acierta de pleno al señalar el "derecho conyugal" sobre el "paternal", incluyendo una intuición en relación con la maternidad subrogada. Excelente exposición de lo que implica el contrato de matrimonio y de la prostitución. Lo único a señalar negativamente sería cierto esencialismo en lo que sería la "mujer". leídos-en-2024 Carla RÁ35 2

Muy explicativo en cuanto al contrato social y su vertiente sexual. Un poco anticuado en cuanto a aspectos como la identidad de género, pero es comprensible teniendo en cuenta cuándo se escribió. Totalmente recomendable en cualquier acercamiento un poco profundo al feminismo. Elisa Pérez4

No es un libro fácil, en lo absoluto. Está lleno de teoría política que puede llegar a ser bastante densa. Sin embargo, me brindó nuevas perspectivas sobre diversos temas, principalmente sobre el origen del patriarcado y la manera en que éste se ha mantenido vigente.2021 Sr?an Dvornik1 review8

a deep analysis of legal and non-legal (social, psychological, economic...) bond established by non-personal relations of which a society consists, focused on gender relations Melanie Randle98 25

The Social Contract is a story of freedom; the Sexual Contract one of oppression. izad193 29 Want to read

REF: Ética para Celia de Ana de Miguelø_femina ø_política Andrea76 1 follower

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