The Purity Myth convincingly and rather disturbingly details out how much momentum you can get behind a social movement by invoking people's fear and loathing of female sexuality, particularly young women's sexuality. What's interesting about this movement is that two different arguments have developed from anti-feminists on what specifically makes female sexuality so dangerous, and why it needs to be controlled. I'm going to quickly describe them with the caveat that many conservatives switch seamlessly between these two arguments, depending on their own perceptions of what the audience needs to hear right then. These arguments work together for the final goal of bringing state power to the task of controlling women and punishing independent sexual choices, and aren't really in competition with each other on a functional level.

1) Uncontrolled female sexuality presents a danger to the social order and to masculinity in particular, and so it must be controlled through chastity rules, abortion bans, and social customs bringing women under male control. This is what I'd call the "Old School" argument, and generally speaking, it's still the more popular one on the right. Most images of female independence on the right are those of murderous, castrating women who need to be tamed lest they bring Western civilization to its knees. Pictures of bloody fetuses, fears that emergency contraception will start teenage sex cults, warnings that the HPV vaccination will cause girls to turn into sluts, freakouts about "The Vagina Monologues", and prosecuting teenage girls for sending nudie pictures of themselves to their boyfriends all fall under this banner. They all send the message that female sexuality is violent, scary, and out of control, and that the only solution is to put women under strict control through social stigma for sexual behavior and laws such as abortion and contraception bans.

2) Women don't really have sexual desire to speak of, which means that all the scary manifestations of young female sexuality are just evidence that young women are being misled and perhaps even coerced by predatory men. Therefore, we must control female sexuality for their own protection. If #1 is the malevolent patriarchy, then #2 is known as the benevolent patriarchy. Usually, it's just an attempt to smuggle #1 in by making it seem less misogynist. Sometimes you'll even see the patronizing purity pushers pretend to be feminists under the auspices that they want to make women second class citizens for our own good. Feminists For Life even puts the word "feminist" in their title, even though they straightforwardly argue that women should be forced to bear children against our will, and they seem to think all women want the same thing at all times (to have more babies), and that if a woman has an abortion, it's because someone else made her, and that it's never a freely made choice.

Right now, the right is trying like hell to get everyone to frame their arguments as paternalistic instead of malevolent. The reason for this is that the mainstream media is easily duped, and they'll believe that you're "feminist", so long as you claim that your desire to control women's sexuality is rooted in concern for women. The anti-choice movement is trying to argue for bans on abortion on the theory that abortion is bad for women, because it goes against your natural desire to bring every pregnancy to term, and you'll be cursed with depression and even breast cancer if you do it. The "hook-up culture" panic Jessica describes is another flavor of the same paternalism. Critics argue that young women could not be making a free choice to have casual sex, because it's against our nature, and all we really want (no matter what we say) is to lure some unwilling young man into marriage by withholding the sex until he produces the ring.

The latter is definitely the more dangerous form of anti-feminism, since it's rooted in a faux concern for women. It also creates this tautology where you can't push back against it. Assuring people that your casual sex experiences didn't scar you for life just draws suspicions than you're in denial.

Luckily, Jessica prepares for this eventuality in her book by bringing forward a whole host of statistics to prove that, despite all claims to the contrary, sexual liberation and access to reproductive health care has not damaged young women, who are healthier and happier than ever. Which is, if you put aside the paranoia and think about things realistically, is how it should be. Paternalists like to make a fuss over the emotional dangers of casual sex, but they don't tell you that it's way more emotionally damaging when you're rejected by someone you actually committed to like good girls are supposed to do. They waste a lot of effort promoting unproven claims that abortion causes depression, but they ignore the host of evidence showing that childbirth can cause depression.

The good news is you can often poke a conservative working argument #2 until they crack and reveal argument #1 lurking behind the facade. If you're the sporting type.