The state of Florida executed Aileen Wuornos in 2002. Lisa Montgomery, a woman with an eerily similar history, died by federal execution on January 12, 2021. The world needs to know the full realities of all kinds of abuse of children, the way it often leads to prostitution, and the forms of abuse to which some johns subject the women they pay for sex.
This review was originally published in Dignity journal.
When Dr. Phyllis Chesler’s groundbreaking, courageous, profoundly insightful book, Women and Madness (1972), was published nearly 50 years ago, it changed the world for all of us who read it. It was a revelation about how women were treated in the mental health system—unjustifiably called “mad” for such things as refusing to do the housework, for loving women rather…
