Customer Reviews

The Sexual Contract

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book is one of those singular works which takes up a kind of genealogy of the intellectual foundations of modern gender relations. Her critiques of the major Enlightenment political philosophers covers a lot of ground and does it well.

Implicit is a critique not just of the conservative and liberal tradition, but of the patriarchy contained within the Left as well. As usual, feminism provides some of the most sophisticated critique of Left organizational practice, not just in relation to women, but as a whole.

Obviously, one reviewer was looking for something a bit more right-wing. But her work her follows alongside her defense of ideas like a minimum income, which are not intended to 'make people work' (in a society where 'work' equals 'exploitation' and alienation, the struggle against the imposition of work is the struggle against inhuman conditions.)

Especially in relation to women, however, her position makes sense, since 'housework' is work, and work for capital at that, which goes unwaged. The struggle for a social wage is the struggle for recognition and against the imposition of the endless work which is capital's goal for women.

Some people may not like this book because they think that we have now found the best of all worlds, but the continued gendering of inequality, oppression and labor indicates that maybe its time for more fundamental transformations.

This author follows the logic of "pure contractarianism" to its theoretical conclusion: which is that the assumptions built into Rousseau's, Locke's and Hobbes' original "Social contract" is either a "reciprocal agreement about rights and obligations between equals;" or (turning it on its head) is "a political fiction about one group (males) right to dominate another (females)."

First exposing this flaw and then following its implications to their philosophical and logical endpoints, Ms. Pateman shows that trying to ignore the flaws and contradictions implicit in existing "social contracts" used as the primary vehicle to frame Western concepts of freedom and equality (i.e., the U.S. Constitution, etc.) by giving them an "after-the-fact" progressive twist, or worse by glossing over their deeper meanings and implications, is to render them meaningful only to members of the dominating group (men), and their socially adjusted willingly duped females.

According to her, if we take at face value what demonstrably is recognizable as modern patriarchy and allow its implied exploitative meanings of dominance to act as a "stand-in" for reality, that is, as "the extant social contract," we are engaging in a dangerous and unnecessary form of self-delusion, a form that denies the rights and genuine freedoms of more than half the human population.

She shows how when women "go along-to-get-along," allowing the poisonous implications of the flawed model of human freedom to get played out in everyday American society and social experience, we end up with the societal contradictions that we see everyday, in which marriage arrangements, sexist employment contracts, etc. amount to little more than the "contracts" that exist between pimps and their street whores.

The upshot of the book is that by exposing the flaws, delusions and self-contradictory sexist implications built into the flawed versions of the "social contract" (as her compatriot Dr. Charles Mill's did with respect to race, in his "The Racial Contract"), Ms. Pateman is able to reset the parameters for the fundamental theoretical vehicle that frames Western social and political experience.

This treatise is cleanly if not always clearly written and is without a doubt the work of a seasoned Philosopher going about her daily business. I should have read it first before having read Charles Mill's the "Racial Contract" for it is clear that much of his work leans heavily on her work. But since I only learned about it through Mill's book, I had no choice but to read them in the order I received them. 1000 stars

This book was assigned as part of a college course on Gender and Race in American Political Thought. This was the first such book I'd read that didn't rely on political cliches to make it's point. Pateman offers a sensible and attainable solution and offers a look at gender relations that isn't steeped in anger, but maintains an urgency. It's a must-read for anyone who thinks they know the answers. My hat is off to Pateman.

Hmmm. She given herself quite a hill to climb, and as usual does what she sets out to. I'm not a big fan of Pateman's, but this is surely one of her most important works. Her ideas challenge some of Western culture's core beliefs about individual freedom & our relation to the government, but Pateman plots her course & writes something worth responding to.

Written in difficult prose, Pateman's message appears to give the impression that women are the victims of the original political theorists. However, I must say one thing: Why is this book still noteworthy? I've met Pateman on many occasions, and I think it's important to know about her other (strange) political views. For instance, she believes in the "minimum income," which means that someone will be paid regardless of whether they work or not (that's a great incentive to work--not!); she also appears to believe that women are suffering incredible discrimination in today's workplace, which does not appear to be true. I'm not sure why she's considered such a great theorist. Great theorists, in my views, revolutionize how we think about society and promote productive policies that create economic growth, prosperity, optimism. That is not the case here. Sorry!