1. Citizenship and its exclusions: the sexual contract Week 8 2013 - 2014
Money, Sex and Power
Citizenship and its exclusions: the sexual contract
Week 8

2. Introduction Theme 2: sexual politics
When we talk about the politics of sex or sexual politics what do we mean?
We mean: power relationships between men and women in both formal groups or institutions in the public sphere as well as in the family which is consigned to the private sphere but which feminists have fought hard to show is not a private matter.

3. Sexual politics includes
Sexual politics refers to:
politics of motherhood (including contraception and abortion)
politics of child care.
Politics impinges also upon
marriage
divorce
women’s right to work outside the home
their participation in the armed forces
Pornography
advertising

4. Citizenship – formal and real
In liberal democracies, suffrage is the hallmark of citizenship. But, the right to vote is only one part of citizenship and other basic political and legal rights also have to be part of the equation.
If citizenship is to be meaningful in everyday life and of equal worth to all citizens, then each individual must be accepted as an equal participant in all areas of social and political life.
Citizenship is not just problematic for women; not all men are full and equal members of their polities. Poor men; men from a variety of racial and ethnic groups are politically marginalised or discriminated the world over. But women face certain problems which don‘t affect men.

5. Lecture outline 1. The social contract
2. Pateman and the sexual contract
3. How can women/feminists challenge these exclusions?

6. The social contract
Pateman – feminist critique of social contract theory
She argues that the social contract incorporates a sexual contract which excludes women from the political arena
Idea of social contract is metaphor for understanding government
Hobbes (1651), Locke (1690), Rousseau(1762): government should be for and by the people

7. Hobbes
To avoid the brutishness of nature, people must agree contractually to set up society and to collectively and reciprocally give up all the rights they have against one another in the State of Nature.
People must invest authority and power in one person or group of persons to enforce the initial contract. To escape from the State of Nature, they must both agree to live together under common laws, and create an enforcement mechanism for the social contract and the laws that constitute it.
Since the sovereign (one person or group of people) is given the authority and power to punish citizens for any breaches of contract, then citizens will have reason to comply with society’s moral codes and justice in particular.

8. Hobbes …
Living under the authority of the sovereign can be difficult but in order for the social contract to be successful, the sovereign must have absolute authority because that’s better than living in a chaotic and nasty state of nature.
No matter how much we object to how badly a Sovereign manages the affairs of state and regulates our own lives, we are never justified in resisting the Sovereign’s power because it is the only thing which stands between us and what we most want to avoid, the State of Nature.

9. Locke and Rousseau
John Locke’s writings followed those of Hobbes 37 years later; he argued that if the government fails to keep its side of the contract, then the people have the right to resist.
And Rousseau, writing 50 years after Locke argued that the free exchange of natural autonomy for protection and participation in socially regulated government could only be achieved through direct participatory democracy, thus introducing the idea of directly electing our representatives.

10. Social Contract
Different theories reflect desire to base legitimacy of government on choice of people governed
Emerged from increasing importance in 17th and 18th centuries of contracts in commercial transactions
Social environment of increasing individualism, secularisation, legalism

11. Critics of social contract theory
Governments based on coercion not consent (Hume, Bentham, Paine)
Run for the benefit of those governing rather than those governed
Most governments established by force
Claims of women to be recognised as citizens date back to the 18th century – they were not included in the social contract nor were they regarded as citizens

12. Pateman: the sexual contract
The social contract and liberal political theory generates
Liberal politics and the political freedom of (male) individuals
The sexual subordination of women to men in marriage
Social contract creates division between state and civil society
Requires sexual contract to maintain patriarchalism

13. Separation of state and civil society
Separation of political power from paternal power
‘masculine right over women is declared non- political’ (Pateman, 1988:90)
Original contract wasn’t only a social contract establishing freedom, was also a sexual contract perpetuating domination
Established men’s political right over women through conjugal right

14. Public vs private
Contract theorists created division between public sphere of civil freedom and private sphere of family
Pateman argues that women not party to the original contract, they’re the subject of the contract
Civil society referred to as the ‘private’ sphere in opposition to ‘public’ sphere of state
Family, where women are subordinated, is forgotten

15. Pateman
Exclusion of family and domestic arena not accidental – structural and systematic
Denial of political significance of sexual and marital dominance suggests patriarchy of no relevance to public domain
What social and political forces confined women to family and allowed men freedom of movement between private and public?

16. Important concepts 1. Possessive individualism
2. Contract, equality and subordination
Free ‘men’ are individuals who own property rights in their own persons and can enter into contracts.
Only men have rationality, independence and ownership of property in their own persons.
Women naturally inferior to men and lack ability to engage in rational, independent thought.
They’re not born free (as men are). Do not have ownership of property in their own person. Cannot be possessive individuals.

17. Marriage contract
If women lack capacities to make contracts how can they enter the marriage contract?
Male sex right based on coercion
Women do not have same civil status as men
In 19th century married women were the property of their husbands
Husband and wife one person and that person was the husband
Today rape in marriage outlawed in UK but not in some states in US

18. Sexual difference
‘the construction of sexual difference as political difference is central to civil society’ (Pateman, 1998:16).

19. Contract, equality and subordination
Contract can’t be understood as voluntary agreement between free and equal individuals
E.g. employers and employees unequal in terms of economic constraints, women and men unequal in terms of family constraints
Social contract creates political right in form of domination and subordination

20. Political fiction
Contracts claim to regulate voluntary and free exchange of services between individuals who own property in their own persons and capabilities
Exchangers are free individuals
‘We cannot contract out our services and capacities, while leaving ourselves free’ (Diana Coole, 1990)

21. Challenging exclusions
The personal is political - slogan
Sexual contract not confined to private sphere
It is about:
Institutionalising heterosexuality
Defining women as embodied sexual beings
How men claim rights of access and control over women’s bodies

22. Judith Squires Integrationist approach Transformational approach
Displacement or politicisation approach

23. Integrationist approach
Aims to include women in current political forms
Women recognised as independent, autonomous, rational, possessive individuals
Gender neutral politics
Women and femininity identified as problem

24. Transformationist approach
Change politics so it’s more woman friendly
Reconfigure political arena
Emphasises gender difference, recognises it, takes account of difference
Men and masculinity are the problem
Pateman adopts this approach – also Nancy Fraser

25. Displacement/ politicisation
Attempts to deconstruct gender
Way gender is constructed is the problem
Reorganise public/ private division in less patriarchal ways

26. Conclusions
Political theory is highly gendered, political practice resistant to women’s inclusion
Women’s exclusion from politics and political theory is both gendered and political – requires explanation
Sexual contract provides basis for the social contract, excludes women from full political and sexual citizenship