Customer Reviews

Damaged Goods?: Women Living With Incurable Sexually Transmitted Diseases

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4 star:		(1)
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2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

As a mother of a young woman living with HPV, this book helped me understand her feelings and fears. Whether your daughter is 13 or 30, this is a must read for parents. After sharing this book ,we were able to sit down and begin a dialogue. Her mood swings and anger that had been directed at me were really symptoms of her trying to cope with her diagnosis. I didn't realize how alone and "damaged" my daughter felt. Our relationship is so much stronger now.

If you or a loved one has been diagnosed with one of these STDs, then this is the first book to read! It's detailed, without being too academic. The women's stories are compelling, and the author really makes you think about how harmful those stereotypes about STDs can be, especially those about the types of women who get STDs. I also appreciated the author's honesty in revealing her own struggles with HPV.

Damaged Goods? easily brings to life the reality of STDs in a way that so many other educational books fall short. Even if you are not yourself suffering from an STD, Damaged Goods?, gives you a glimpse into the life of someone living with HPV or HSV and how their life is no more different from mine or anyone else's. The book was a quick and interesting read that presented information in an easy and tangible way for anyone, you don't need a strong academic background to understand that these are the real lives of women everywhere and they need their voices to be heard. I would recommend this to any woman: mother, daughter, or friend.

I have just finished reading Damaged Goods? and I highly recommend it. This well researched book provides a fascinating and informative read into the lives of women with chronic sexually transmitted diseases. Adina Nack, through her sophisticated analysis, gives voice to a population that largely remains silent in today's society. While herpes and HPV affect millions of Americans, they are topics that are rarely discussed. The impact of this book should not be limited to people who share the condition, as this book can also provide valuable insight for both clinicians in the field and the general public. One can only hope that exploring the concerns and challenges faced by women with these conditions will help not only others with herpes and HPV, but also assist in decreasing the stigma surrounding the conditions.

I found this book to be very good for normalizing chronic STDs for women and displaying a wide range of coping strategies and reactions to infection. As a doctoral student, I found it helpful to review the data in a much more readable way!

After reading this book for a class, I was amazed at how insightful and helpful this book is to not only someone living with HPV or HSV, but also to all of those people who they encounter and are possibly affected by it (significant others, doctors, parents, friends, etc.). Adina Nack nails every single feeling and account of women going through this painful experience, and brings it into the light of sympathy, not judgement. The stigma that goes along with this situation is wrong, hurtful and unfair. Nack's efforts to de-stigmatize this problem are impressive and encouraging and her words really have something for everyone to benefit from. The jokes need to stop. The ignorant comments need to stop. The stigma needs to stop. This book is definitely amazing and should be experienced by everyone because everyone is affected in one way or another.

Reading a book that balances logos and pathos in such a compelling way is a rare pleasure indeed. Dr. Nack's study on STD's integrates scholarship and heart so seamlessly that the research presents itself with a sense of emotional and social urgency: Help women to empower themselves in the face of personal and medical challenges, and remove the stigma associated with STD's by challenging the public's perspectives. Dr. Nack's auto-ethnography regarding her experience with an STD further evidences her deep personal investment in the subject and connects her with the dozens of women who share their stories in interviews. Possessing little knowledge on the subject of STD's, I expected Damaged Goods to be somewhat "over my head." It is indeed expertly-researched and scientifically sound, but without pretense. It is a fresh and revealing read, compelling enough to keep you awake at night turning pages and challenging personal perspectives.

In Damaged Goods ?, Dr. Nack combines the tools of a rigorous social scientist with the voice of an empathetic advocate to convey the experiences of women living with chronic STD's.
She provides readers with a medical, historical and political background to understand HPV and the way in which HPV vaccination campaigns have been constructed. Nack argues that STD's are strongly stigmatizing to women and that the focus of HPV campaigns has been on presenting the vaccine as a way of preventing cervical cancer instead of portraying the vaccine as an immunization against sexually transmitted disease. She critically questions the consequences of this portrayal and gives policy and research suggestions to improve national public health treatments of this disease.

What makes Damaged Goods ? unique is that it seamlessly accomplishes a multitude of tasks: While providing statistical data, historical, political and medical facts, it focuses on the personal experiences of women living with chronic STD's. In this way, Nack bridges a gap that is often found between an empirical, academic undertaking and the accessibility of empirical research to women who seek to understand their diagnosis and their daily experiences with their disease.
A further strength of this book is that Nack uses her empirical findings and criticism in a constructive way: She gives specific policy and research recommendations for improvements to sexual health education, doctor-patient communication and interaction style. Finally, she questions the HPV-vaccine campaign for presenting itself as a cervical cancer vaccine and disassociating itself with STD stigma. Although some families might be more willing to encourage their daughters to get vaccinated when the term 'sexually transmitted disease' is not mentioned, are national health campaigns avoiding the realities of STD's and the sexual behavior of young women? Are they leading Americans to believe that HPV causes all cervical cancers? These are questions that Nack discusses, thereby initiating an important dialogue about the national understanding of HPV and personal encounters of this prevalent, stigmatizing and all-too-little-talked about disease.

This book is no doubt an open account of attitudes held socially and internally by the women who live with incurable STD's. Nack has created an outlet for frustration, fear, anxiety, and a floodgate of emotions held by these women and also serves as support to others that may seek solace from shared experiences. Not only is this book helpful to those women and men who need allies in the struggle to regain their sexuality, but also to those loved ones who may need help to understand what social stigma is, and how to support appropriately. I encourage women and men who live with these conditions to read all the material they can both research and honest accounts that Nack has brought here. This is ethnography at its best.

Damaged Goods by Dr. Nack does well with not being a tedious or monotonous research book. Her book comes alive with the interview process that she used, and the book presents hope and morale to those with a STD as well as educating those who do not have one. This book pertains to everyone, male/female STD infected or not. Everyone who reads Damaged Goods will absolutely learn about the stigmatization that women experience as well as the healing process of having a STD as well. After reading it the shame that is incorporated with STDs is lessened, and it embellishes the study on sexual health and sexuality in general. It is a definite read for anyone and everyone.