The Sexual Contract

Chapter 3 discusses the master-slave contract and ideas regarding voluntary subjection encapsulated in classical and contemporary social contract theory. Regardless of where social contract theorists fall in terms of their rejection of or justification for various forms of slavery and servitude under contract, they share patriarchal perspectives that not only obscure the marriage contract’s resemblance to a slave contract, but also explicitly justify conjugal right. 

Contract theorists’ defense of civil subjection rests on the doctrine of natural individual freedom and equality. In other words, civil mastery and civil subordination depend on voluntary commitment, i.e., contract. This voluntary subjection only extends to men, as they are the free and equal individuals who can enter into contract and subject themselves to other men. Women, however, are born into subjection, as contract theorists suggest through the inclusion of sexually differentiated “natural” capacities and attributes in their theory. Although this sexual differentiation happens in both classical and contemporary contract theory, it is less noticeable in contemporary theory because the individual is presented as sexually undifferentiated, dropping sexual relations from the contract story even as it defends and endorses conjugal right.

The contradiction in the defense of conjugal right is that while women lack the status and capacity to enter the

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