this post was submitted on 22 Oct 2026
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no? is there a better way to look at it?
Well the notion of a social contract arose concurrently with the rise of capitalism, and renewed campaigns to force women into spheres of domestic and reproductive labor.
So when talking about women's issues, I don't think Social Contract theory is exactly the gold standard
...that feels pedantic. call it an agreement or a covenant then. point being if you break the rules of society you can't be protected by them.
I don't think that's pedantic at all. Social Contract Theory arose in a particular place and time, under specific conditions.
Conditions which also involved a renewed subjugation of women in the name of that social contract.
The Hobbesian origins of the social contract are, notably, not merely an agreement, but an arrangement entered into by citizens, with a Sovereign who will protect them from themselves. Without a powerful state apparatus to create security, people exist in a state of nature where life is "nasty, brutish, and short".
This is historically inaccurate, and Hobbes was formulating his theories as a reaction to the English Civil War, which he was living through. But maybe you can see the parallels to this thread, which unnerve me.
People in this thread, in the same of an ostensible social contract, are desiring that state power be utilized to punish perpetrators of sexual violence in ways that are themselves also quite violent.
This feels emotionally satisfying, but it's an instinct that can hardly be trusted to protect the rights of women. When the social contract this violence is meant to enforce is being carried out by men, by a state populated by men, especially wealthy men, who run that state in their interests as wealthy men, I'm not sure it can be trusted to do what it claims to do.
That said, I don't think the solution is is to simply have more women cops, or what have you. Rather that any reasonable justice system ought to be rooted in genuine rehabilitation rather than the spectacle of punishment, and that this rehabilitative justice system he attached to a state project which is rooted, not in principles of bourgeois contracts, but in principles of solidarity, and providing all citizens with their basic needs.
Not only does this cut down on violence against women insofar as the material instigators of that violence are less common, but that it would ideally lift up women to leave abusive situations, and to speak up about them more readily.
Punitive 'justice' often prevents victims from coming forward because the abuser is often someone the victim also knows and loves on some level.
So long story short, social contract theory encourages punitive solutions to problems where punitive punishment is often a hindrance to real justice.
well today i learned that it's an actual theory. i was rather looking at it from the paradox of tolerance perspective.