Customer Reviews

A Wild Constraint: The Case for Chastity

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Jenny Taylor is a journalist and academic who has been interviewed on Woman's Hour on Radio 4 about her views on chastity. This is a well-researched and well-written book which discusses chastity as radical new lifestyle choice.

The bulk of the book is a review of the position of sex historically and the huge changes to society since the advent of the Pill in the sixties. The book is most successful as Jenny shows how contemporary views on sex shape the way society functions. I also found her discussion of the way that chastity was formerly seen within societies as the freeing and liberating choice as food for thought. She interviews a varied mix of people in the pages who give different impressions of life as sexual people or as those who are currently celibate.

Jenny Taylor helpfully highlighted some of the omissions in Christian teaching, where people are told to be celibate while they 'wait for the right person to come along', with the assumption that unless someone eventually finds a sexual partner their life is incomplete. However I felt the book was a little weak on 'life in all its fulness' for someone who has chosen chastity as a life option. The impression of the book was more as a list of what isn't working in society's views on sex and a brief look at a possible alternative which wasn't explored in enough depth.