Summary
This is the story of how the author, and many other women, were classified and condemned as criminals or as mentally "defective", when their choice of lover may have been their worst crime. In a time that saw the rise of psychiatry, legislation against interracial marriage, and a populist eugenics movement that believed in eradicating disease and sin by improving the "purity" of Anglo-Saxon stock, Velma Demerson, and others, found themselves confronted by powerful social forces.