self-interests. Kant does argue that sex combined with love, in people of developed aesthetic taste and moral sense, is a moral positive that comes from civilization but it does not effect the degrading aspect of sexual passion:
Because sexuality is not an inclination which one human being has for another as such but is an inclination for the sex of another, it is a principle of the degradation of humanity, a source of the preference of one sex to the other and of dishonoring it so as to satisfy an inclination. The inclination a man has for a female is not directed to her as to a human being; rather, for the man the humanity of the female is indifferent and only her sex is the object of his inclination.
The sex act reduces a both male and female to the status of a thing. The right of personality for both women and men is violated when it comes to sexual passion for its own sake. When it comes to the female person, Kant views women as inherently inferior to the male person. Understanding the ways he does is crucial to understanding Pateman’s criticism of his marriage contract. The female person to Kant is inferior or weaker than the male person in terms of nature and society. It is an inherent inequality that Kant views as unchangeable. The male is stronger and will always physically dominate the female to Kant. Accordingly, women lack political or civil reason and; therefore, “women in general…have no civil personality, and their existence is, so to speak, purely inherent” (Pateman 169). This is why woman cannot develop their morality to encompass universal rules (as Kant’s concept of the good and the right demands), and it is why they must be relegated to an inferior position to their husband, or master, in the domestic realm (i.e. marriage).
When it comes to the marriage contract, Kant views it as a mutual use of the two parties involved, the only mutually agreeable manner in which they can engage in sex ...