Why don't women insist on a contract before sex?
I don't see much value in a drawing up a contract before most sex acts. When I decide to have sex with someone, I believe they will adhere to the usual standards of sexual behavior. In particular, I believe that if I say, "Hey, I don't like that, please stop," they'll stop. If they start passionately licking my armpit, and I find it ticklish and weird and unpleasant, I'll giggle and ask them to knock it off, and they will. If they're about to put their mouth somewhere rather more intimate, and I'd rather they didn't, I can say so, and they won't do it. I also believe that if I hand them a condom, and they take it, they're not going to pretend to put it on and then fuck me without the condom. And I believe that if I ask them to do something, they'll at least consider my request, because they want me to have a good time. All this is called "being a decent person." If you're not a decent person, then writing up a contract requiring you to be a decent person isn't going to help anything, because indecent people have no qualms about violating a contract. Someone who wants to rape me isn't going to think, "Well shit, I signed a contract saying I wouldn't rape her, so I guess I'd better stop when she says 'stop.'" Now, a contract would come in handy if we were planning to do something contrary to the usual standards of sexual behavior. For example, we might agree that "No, stop!" no longer meant "I expect you to cease and desist immediately," and instead "No, stop!" meant "Yes, faster!" while "Pumpernickel!" meant "I expect you to cease and desist immediately." This is common in BDSM, where people play games with apparent non-consent but still want some way to communicate genuine non-consent. You mentioned prenuptual agreements, and those are sort of like BDSM contracts: You are agreeing that things will not work in the usual way, because one or both of you doesn't like the usual way things work. A contract could also be helpful if we wanted the sexual encounter to go a certain way. I like sex to be improvisational, but if I wanted it to be scripted, I guess writing that down would help clarify expectations. "First, you will give me a back massage for ten minutes; then, you will give me oral sex for ten minutes; then, vaginal intercourse will commence and will include the following positions in the following order." But that doesn't sound fun to me. A prenup can serve that purpose, too. Instead of improvising your divorce settlement, you decide in advance how the property will be divided. Improvising a divorce is much less fun than improvising sex. I guess the pre-sex contract might be useful for people who don't feel comfortable sorting out sex as they go. But if someone isn't comfortable saying "I don't want you to go down on me" or "Let's use a condom" or "I really like anal," then I have to wonder if they'd be comfortable drawing up a contract and asking their partner to sign it.