Scarleteen

Hello!

Recently my boyriend and I have expressed interest in having oral sex preformed on myself (I am female). If I'm up to it, I may even consider trying oral sex on him -with a condom of course-. However, I'm not quite sure how to make it safer sex on myself. I've heard of dental dams and how they can prevent the passing of STIs yet I don't really know what they are. Where can you get them and how do you put one on? Is it just a sheet you cover yourself with? Also, if you do have unprotected oral sex, around how high are the chances of getting an STI in both partners? Will having a shower right before and after oral sex reduce your chances of catching infections? If we do perhaps have unprotected oral sex, are there steps we can take in advance to reduce the chance of passing on infections? Please note that I do want to have safe sex, I'm just asking these questions to inform myself more.

Sorry for the boatload of questions, thanks for the advice and have a lovely day!

You can find most of this information comprehensively in two different pieces here:
• All the Barriers! All the Time!
• Safe, Sound & Sexy: A Safer Sex How-To

Showering won't make a difference with STIs, but it can help with the prevention of UTIs and bacterial infections, for those who find they're inclined to pick up either of those.

We can't ever say how big or small someone's risks of STIs are with a given partner without knowing their STI status. If you don't know, they don't know, or we don't, it's a wild card. If we do know, we can know that if someone tested negative for an STI, they don't have it to transmit to partners. If we know they have one, we can talk about how much safer sex practices can reduce the risk of that specific STI.

But overall, what we know based on a lot of study is that what best reduces the risk of STIs is a combination of using barriers consistently and correctly and regular STI testing, with treatment if and when anyone is found to have an infection. There aren't really other things to do to reduce the risks besides those (setting aside things like PrEP for HIV prevention, and good general healthcare): those are the things we can do.