You’ve got questions about oral sex, and you deserve some straight answers. Find them here – and if you’ve still got questions, ask them in the Teen Advice forum or email nearmegirls.com.
What’s Oral Sex?
Oral sex is any type of sex that involves stimulating someone’s genitals with your mouth.
OK, Then What’s a Blow Job?
“Blow job” (sometimes spelled “blowjob”) is slang for fellatio, or oral sex performed on a man. Lord knows why it’s called that. There’s no blowing involved (usually just licking or sucking). In fact, blowing into a penis can cause some major damage, so it’s probably best to forget that phrase altogether. You might also hear the phrase “giving head,” which is also a slang term for oral sex on a man.
Can Women Get Blow Jobs, Too?
The technical term for oral sex performed on a woman is “cunnilingus.” Some slang terms you might also hear are “going down” or “eating out.” They all mean the same thing.
How Do You Give Oral Sex to Someone?
Oral sex comes down to a matter of personal taste (no pun intended). Your partner will have his or her own likes and dislikes that can’t be learned anywhere except communicating with him or her directly. If you want to learn some basics, though, you can read this (for tips on giving oral sex on a man) and this (for tips on giving oral sex to a woman).
Is Oral Sex Safe?
Not exactly. If your partner has an STD and you have a cold sore or tiny cut on your mouth or gums, the disease can be passed to you. It works in the other direction, too: if you’re receiving oral sex and your partner has an STD, he or she might be hooking you up with a nasty, lifelong disease like genital herpes, syphilis or even HIV.
How Can I Have Oral Sex in a Safe Way?
If there’s a barrier between your mouth and your partner’s genitals (or vice versa), then any infections that either of you has are stopped in their tracks. So if you want to have safe oral sex, put on a condom (if you’re performing a blow job) or use a dental dam (if you’re performing cunnilingus).
If you’ve got a longterm partner, you can get tested for STDs and, if you’re both negative, safely have oral sex without the protection…assuming that neither of you fools around with anyone else.
Can You Get Pregnant from Oral Sex?
Nope. As you learned from the What is Sex? article, Penis + Vagina = Pregnancy, and unless those two folks meet up and get personal, you can’t make a baby. There’s no doubt that blowjobs are incredibly intimate and expose you to the risk of STDs, but unless you were born with a uterus in your throat, you can’t get pregnant from giving one.
If You Have Oral Sex, Are You Still a Virgin?
That totally depends on how you define the word “virgin.” For some people, virginity ends when you’re sexually intimate with someone else, and oral sex is about as intimate as you can get. But whether or not you want to consider yourself a virgin after going down on someone (or having someone go down on you) is entirely up to you.