Last Friday night, I used a dental dam for the very first time. I’m a bit embarrassed that it was journalistic curiosity that finally convinced me to clean up my act after years of unprotected sex, and not a “safer seggs” reel from @wellnessatsmith on Instagram or getting misdiagnosed with an STI (long story).
Although I “knew better” this whole time, I’m not alone in this experience. I couldn’t find statistics to back up the thesis ‘nobody uses dental dams,’ but that in itself proves my point. Even if we were to compare their usage to condoms (which would be extremely generous), the CDC estimates that 41.8% of women aged 20–24 “never” use a condom with their partners.
Based on how sex education portrays dental dams, Smith seems like a community that would embrace them: we generally care about safe sex, many of us are lesbians* or queer people and hopefully we’re having a lot of oral sex. Additionally, the Schacht Center distributes dental dams along with condoms to every single house, so they’re certainly accessible. But they still feel like some kind of strange joke or artifact.
This might be in part because they weren’t designed to facilitate sexual pleasure. According to The Atlantic, dental dams were dentistry tools until the 1990’s, when they were rebranded as a safe-sex tool for lesbians during the heightened anxiety of the AIDS epidemic. The Atlantic argues that the real value of dental dams today is symbolic validation of lesbian sex, but I want to push back against this idea. Lesbians don’t need a product to legitimize our sex—that’s just late-stage capitalism propaganda. I also don’t think anybody wins when we conceptualize oral sex involving a vulva as an exclusively lesbian or queer practice. Straight women deserve head, and safe head at that!
But I digress: on to the review.
To get the full experience, I cut open a condom for a DIY-dam, just like I was taught in middle school. First, you unroll the condom; then, when you’re done blowing it up and sticking your entire forearm into it, you cut it once lengthwise from the base to the tip. You’ll end up with a little rectangular latex sheet, just like the real deal.
I used this one for “performing”. It felt like I was going in blind. I couldn’t see anything after putting it down or feel any indications of anatomy with my tongue, so I didn’t have a good grasp on where I was or how I was doing. Needless to say, my partner was not very impressed, and we removed it about halfway through.
The second time around, we used a bona-fide dental dam. We used the brand in all the free give-away bowls: strawberry flavored, comes in a little baggie in between a folded purple card with a pair of lips on it. It was a very cute pink color, and wasn’t too obscenely flavored, kind of analogous to a LaCroix. This time, I was receiving. I could feel that my partner was putting in work, but it wasn’t quite coming through. The sensations felt numbed and we removed it not long after starting this time, too.
A positive recommendation I can make here is that if you’re squeamish about period sex or vulvas in general but still want to try giving head, this is the product for you! It would take detailed communication and more commitment to the bit than my partner and I were prepared for, but the latex creates an even field visually and removes most of the smell and all of the taste.
Unfortunately, I would have to characterize the entire experience as goofy. The sound of the latex and the coordination of holding it in place took me out of the fantasy, and the sensation was definitely subdued by the barrier.
That said the experience was way better than getting a call from your local department of public health, telling you you tested positive for an STI. (Speaking from experience, not judgment).
So what’s my takeaway? I’m not going to start using dental dams in my monogamous sex life anytime soon. If/when that situation changes, I’ll probably just adapt how I have sex to avoid needing them to be responsible. If this review was helpful and inspired you to see for yourself, I’d be thrilled! This is just my experience, so don’t let me discourage you from trying them out. And if you’re like me and you just don’t get around to it, I’ll never tell.
*I use the word “lesbian” here loosely – interpret it as you will. As I mention later in the article as well, I don’t love pigeonholing lesbian sex or dental dam usage by closely associating them.
Sources
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr105.pdf
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2019/04/dental-dams-are-more-symbolic-practical/587539/
