Strange Bedfellows
Adventures in the Science, History, and Surprising Secrets of STDs
-
-
4.9 • 11 Ratings
-
-
- $11.99
Publisher Description
"Joyful and funny . . . Park uses science, compassion, humor, diverse stories and examples of her own shame-free living to take the stigma out of these infections." —The New York Times
With curiosity and wit, Strange Bedfellows rips back the bedsheets to expose what really happens when STDs enter the sack.
Sexually transmitted diseases have been hidden players in our lives for the whole of human history, with roles in everything from World War II to the growth of the Internet to The Bachelor. But despite their prominence, STDs have been shrouded in mystery and taboo for centuries, which begs the question: why do we know so little about them?
Enter Ina Park, MD, who has been pushing boundaries to empower and inform others about sexual health for decades. With Strange Bedfellows, she ventures far beyond the bedroom to examine the hidden role and influence of these widely misunderstood infections and share their untold stories.
Covering everything from AIDS to Zika, Park explores STDs on the cellular, individual, and population-level. She blends science and storytelling with historical tales, real life sexual escapades, and interviews with leading scientists—weaving in a healthy dose of hilarity along the way.
The truth is, most of us are sexually active, yet we’re often unaware of the universe of microscopic bedfellows inside our pants. Park aims to change this by bringing knowledge to the masses in an accessible, no-nonsense, humorous way—helping readers understand the broad impact STDs have on our lives, while at the same time erasing the unfair stigmas attached to them.
A departure from the cone of awkward silence and shame that so often surrounds sexual health, Strange Bedfellows is the straight-shooting book about the consequences of sex that all curious readers have been looking for.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Humor and serious talk mingle in this candid report on sex and sexually transmitted disease by physician and first-time author Park. Citing "epidemic increases" in transmission in the United States and elsewhere, she explores how modern dating apps like Tinder, with its 10 million daily active users, and Grindr, with its three million, may be contributing. Stressing a need for better sex ed and for public health specialists able to act as "scrappy sex detectives" in tracking down disease transmitters, Park draws awareness to the stigmas still surrounding STDs other than AIDs, such as genital herpes (for which "there are no colored ribbons, quilts, walk-a-thons, or celebrity benefit galas") and to the "phallocentric" prejudices faced by doctors like Jeanne Marrazzo, who conducted important research into disease transmission among women at a time when the consensus was "no penis, no problem." In a lighter vein, Park declares herself "the Lorax of pubic hair" after undergoing a painful bikini wax in Rio de Janeiro, and describes volunteering, while at UC Berkeley, as a live cervix model for premeds learning to do pelvic exams. Informative and frank, Park's account of sex and STDs is ideal both for the curious and for those too embarrassed to ask.
