Female purity shifted from inner moral conflict to a dogmatic value per se

Evidence

For example, the concept of the ‘purity’ of women is one of the invariables of popular culture. In the earlier phase this concept is treated in terms of an inner conflict between concupiscence and the internalized Christian ideal of chastity, whereas in today’s popular culture it is dogmatically posited as a value per se. Again, even the rudiments of this pattern are visible in productions such as Pamela. There, however, it seems a by-product; whereas in today’s popular culture the idea that only the ‘nice girl’ gets married and that she must get married at any price has come to be accepted before Richardson’s conflicts even start. — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 220

Categorization

• SEED: A testable case: run this exact purity-as-value-per-se move on contemporary streaming romance — does it hold, or has the invariant changed in post-Adorno capitalism?
• XREF: Directly relevant to the reader’s goal of honest falsification — this specific claim about ‘purity’ is a good probe for where Adorno’s 1960s observation may strain against a later cultural object. — connects to: Industrial capitalism erased female wantonness into hygienic respectability; Christian doctrine institutionalized women’s subordination despite early egalitarian impulses — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 204; Society coopts the mother’s influence by sanctifying her as guardian of morality — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 369 (+3 more)