The Sexual Contract - Lecture Review

This set of vocabulary flashcards covers the key concepts, figures, and theoretical frameworks presented in the transcript regarding the intersection of social contract theory, patriarchy, and feminist critique.

Social contract theory

A political story or conjectural history that explains the creation of civil society and the legitimacy of modern government through an original contract.

The sexual contract

A repressed dimension of contract theory that establishes men’s patriarchal right over women and represents the missing half of the original contract story.

Patriarchal right (Sex-right)

The power that men exercise over women, which the author argues is the true origin of political right.

Paternal right

The literal meaning of patriarchy referring to the power of fathers; classic contract theorists argued this was distinct from political power.

Conjugal right

The original dimension of patriarchal power involving a man's power as a husband over a woman, which precedes his power as a father.

Modern fraternal patriarchy

The structure of modern civil society where women are subordinated to men as a fraternity rather than to the literal power of fathers.

Law of male sex-right

A term following Adrienne Rich used to describe the orderly access by men to women’s bodies established through the original contract.

Property in the person

The central idea in contract doctrine that individuals own their own capacities and attributes, which they can then contract out to others.

Status to Contract

Sir Henry Maine's aphorism describing the transformation of the old world (based on paternal jurisdiction) into the new world (based on individual agreement).

Coverture

A common law doctrine where wives were considered the legal property of their husbands.

Civil slave contract

A contract that involves the ultimate form of civil subordination, which the 'standpoint of contract' considers legitimate if entered into voluntarily.

Contractarianism (Libertarianism)

The most radical form of contract doctrine where the 'individual' is treated as a masculine owner and the bedrock of all social associations.

Private sphere

The 'womanly' or 'natural' realm within civil society that is excluded from the 'public' political sphere but provides its necessary foundation.

The marriage contract

The mechanism through which the sexual contract is displaced in classic texts, creating the impression that patriarchy only concerns the private sphere.

The employment contract

A public-market contract that, along with the marriage and prostitution contracts, upholds men's right and creates relations of mastery and subordination.

Mastery and civil subordination

Relations created through everyday contracts (like employment or marriage) that mirror the original contract by exchanging obedience for protection.

Standpoint of contract

The view that social life and relationships properly consist of an endless series of discrete contracts with no limits on their content.

Sir Robert Filmer

A seventeenth-century patriarchalist who claimed that political power was paternal power and originated from the procreative power of the father.

G. D. H. Cole

A theorist who argued that critics of capitalism focus too much on poverty (inequality) and overlook the issue of slavery (subordination).

Analytic Marxism

A contemporary academic movement that uses the idea of property ownership in the person and rational choice theory to analyze social relations.