The Sexual Contract - Lecture Review

Vocabulary flashcards covering the foundational concepts of Carole Pateman's critique of social contract theory and the establishment of modern patriarchy.

Social Contract

A conjectural history or political story explaining how civil society and political right are created through an original agreement between free and equal inhabitants of a state of nature.

The Sexual Contract

A repressed dimension of contract theory that explains how patriarchal right, or men's power over women, is established as part of the original pact.

Patriarchy (Pateman's modern definition)

A social order that is not merely paternal rule but a fraternal system where men as a group exercise political right and sexual access over women.

Paternal Right

Power derived from a father's procreative power over his children; historically contrasted with political power by contract theorists such as Locke.

Conjugal Right

The patriarchal power a husband exercises over his wife, which Pateman identifies as the true origin of political right, preceding paternal power.

Fraternal Patriarchy

The specifically modern form of patriarchy established after the overthrow of paternal rule, where men as a fraternity govern women in civil society.

Property in the person

The central idea in contract doctrine that individuals own their bodies, capacities, and attributes as a form of property.

The "Individual"

In classic contract theory, a category typically restricted to masculine beings who possess the capacities to own property in their person and enter into contracts.

Marriage Contract

The specific contract through which the sexual contract is displaced into the private sphere, establishing a wife's subordination within civil society.

Status to Contract

Sir Henry Maine's characterization of the shift from absolute paternal jurisdiction in families to social relations based on individual contractual agreement.

Contractarianism

Also called contract man theory or libertarianism, it is the view that social life consists of an endless series of discrete contracts between individuals seen as owners.

Civil Society

A patriarchal social order divided into a public sphere of civil freedom and a private sphere of natural subjection, where the two spheres are separate yet inseparable.

Law of male sex-right

A term for the patriarchal right established through the original contract that ensures men's orderly access to women's bodies.

Mastery and civil subordination

The relationship outcome of actual contracts that involve the exchange of obedience for protection, mirroring a master-slave dynamic rather than simple freedom.

Employment Contract

A contract entered into in the public capitalist market that creates a relation of command, allowing the capitalist to exploit the worker's labor power.