The Sexual Contract

There has been a revival of interest in contract theory since the 1970s. Contract theorists emphasize conjectural histories about the original contract as well as interpretations of major political institutions, giving their attention to social and employment contracts. Pateman argues that not only do these dominant interpretations misrepresent social and employment contracts, but that they typically ignore the marriage contract altogether. This absence, she suggests, indicates the repression of the sexual contract in both contract theory and the original agreement. Thus, the failure of contract theory interpretations to acknowledge the roles and obligations of women within civil society obscures the contractual character of modern patriarchy. Furthermore, feminists and socialists are implicated in this failure.

Stories, understood as conjectural histories, are how humans make sense of themselves and their social world, and one such story is that the authority and legitimacy of state and civil law and government originated in a contract. The original contract is a social-sexual contract, but the repression of the sexual contract obscures that the new civil society created through the original contract is a patriarchal social order.