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.
Repository 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