Document Type
Article
Publication Date
5-2016
Journal
Law and History Review
Volume
34
Issue
2
First Page
537
Last Page
539
Abstract
In this effective and engaging book, J. Shoshanna Ehrlich uncovers the hidden agendas underlying the long history of the law's regulation of female adolescent sexuality. Ehrlich persuasively demonstrates that a multitude of laws purporting to protect public health in one form or another in fact "encode the value of female virtue into law based upon a set of assumptions about their sexuality" (3). The book spans a wide time period, moving chronologically through a series of legal reform movements targeting young women's sexuality, from the 1838 effort to criminalize seduction to the modem-day movement promoting abstinence-only sex education. Although the book does not discuss some of the most heated issues surrounding young women's sexuality todaysuch as rape and abortion-Ehrlich's careful historical. storytelling illuminates how gendered sexual purity norms drive much of the law regulating adolescent sexuality.
Recommended Citation
Maya Manian,
Book Review J. Shoshanna Ehrilich, Regulating Desire: From the Virtuous Maiden to the Purity Princess,
34
Law and History Review
537
(2016).
Available at:
https://digitalcommons.wcl.american.edu/facsch_lawrev/2120