It is true enough that you can’t get pregnant performing oral sex; and many a young teenage girl has been lured into ‘going down on’ a pestering, pressuring and persistent guy, possessing not much more than just that pathetic promise and proposal. However, there are still major risks that she will be exposed to the moment he convinces her that the condom can be dispensed with.

Usually and understandably, she will only too willingly agree to ditch the rubber. Why – because let’s not lie or play the usual game of pretend – who in their ‘right mind’ or isn’t in a position of having to ‘sell a piece of themselves’ just to survive, delights in submitting to the literally distasteful practice of sucking on a plastic bag?

Let’s be honest: there is no fun in that for anyone; is there?

So let us not recycle the usual useless advice that suggests that the guy don a condom and the female a dental dam, which is a thin piece of latex that is placed between the labia and the performers face in an effort to prevent an STI. The fact is, in the real world of ‘casual sex’ – ‘hit and runs,’ or else ‘one-night stands – call it what you will, no uses the damn things; do they?

Why? Because these bits of plastic touted to protect us, afford such a minuscule degree of sensation that it is hardly worth the effort. In truth and most everyone’s experience – rubberizing our genitals is absolutely not worth the bother. And so this well-intentioned advice to ‘use protection’ is largely, historically and currently, completely ignored. Hence throughout the world, despite the huge advertising campaigns designed to scare us within an inch of our lives, epidemics of Gonorrhea, Chlamydia and Genital Herpes have become as common as the common cold, effecting even the loftiest of the upper class and scaling down to the lowest of the lower class.

Chlamydia and syphilis are in the second tier of risk through oral sex. A Chicago study found that 13.7 percent of syphilis cases were attributed to oral sex. Generally, though, it’s believed to be uncommon. As for syphilis, that seemingly antiquated infection, it has proved to be ‘easily transmitted’ via oral sex. According to AVERT ‘if a person’s mouth comes into contact with an open sore or a skin rash caused by the infection, according to AVERT.

Further down the list of risk are Hepatitis A, gastrointestinal infections, and parasites, among others.

One takeaway for all the gals out there who are unlucky enough to be regularly coerced into providing blow jobs for fellas, is that performing Fellatio tends to be far riskier than performing cunnilingus. Across all STIs, formally known as STD’s and all sex acts, generally the partner receiving the other’s genitalia into their mouth area is the one at greater risk for STI and HIV acquisition; the idea being that wherever ejaculate winds up, that’s also where the greatest burden of infectious material will also wind up.

However that hardly means that those who perform Cunnilingus are in the clear. It seems the risk of contracting syphilis, herpes or HPV by performing oral sex on a female is ‘arguably just as high’ as with fellatio ‘since these infections can occur both inside the vagina and on the skin surface.’