Let’s be honest: when you’re organizing the sex toys in your bedside table so your favourites are close at hand, or packing a bag for a date or hookup, you're probably not reaching for the dental dams. In the absence of LGBTQ2S+ inclusive sex education, many of us got our safer sex information from queer organizations, pop culture or friends—either in person or online. (I, for example, only learned that you should use condoms with sex toys you’re using with partners from fanfiction.) But while condoms are readily available in queer, sex positive spaces, dental dams are far more elusive—and often dismissed as unpleasant or unnecessary when they do come up. Here, we’ve unpacked what you need to know about the safer sex supply everyone loves to roll their eyes at. 
 

So what exactly is a dental dam? 

Plainly put, dental dams are a safer sex tool for oral sex. Dr. Emma Chan, a U.K.-based doctor who runs Relationships and Sex Education (RSE) workshops in secondary schools, explains that they are “a thin sheet of plastic or latex you put over the vulva or anus to create a barrier between your genitals and a partner’s mouth.” They were originally designed to be used in dentistry, but in terms of sexual health dental dams work in the same way as condoms, gloves or finger cots do, creating a physical barrier to prevent fluid exchange during non-penetrative sex.
 

Okay, but do I really need to use one?

The risk of STI transmission is lower for oral sex than penetrative sex, but that risk isn’t zero. The CDC explains that few studies look at the rates of STI transmission from cunnilingus or anilingus, in part due to the challenge in recruiting participants who have oral sex but not penetrative sex. Gonorrhea, chlamydia, syphilis, HPV, herpes and, in very rare cases, even HIV can be transmitted via non-penetrative sex. (Aidsmap reports one review of the evidence of the probability of HIV transmission through oral sex “suggested that the figure could be somewhere between zero percent and 0.04 percent per act.”)
 

However, research shows that many people see oral sex as “risk free,” and therefore don’t think they need to take any safer sex precautions. And while dental dams are frequently promoted as a barrier method to prevent STI transmission during cunnilingus or rimming, we don’t actually know how well they get the job done. There’s a distinct lack of any research as to whether dental dams truly work to prevent STI transmission. Dr. Chan acknowledges that they themself don’t know if dental dams are effective—medical misogyny, along with the deprioritization of queer women’s sexual health, means the data just doesn’t exist.

While most of the (albeit limited) research into their use focuses on lesbian and bisexual cis women, dental dams aren’t only for queer women. After all, people of all genders and sexualities enjoy cunnilingus and rimming. Additionally, this research is largely cisnormative, assuming that dental dams will be the primary safer sex method used by queer women—even though some of that same research finds that more queer women use gloves and condoms more often than dental dams. 
 

Despite this, studies still describe dental dams as “an invaluable tool” for safer sex, and Dr. Chan wants more people to know that dental dams are an option they should consider. Additionally, they believe there is even value in just talking about dental dams: “One of the reasons people don't use dental dams is because there isn't much knowledge about them, and that's only going to change if we talk more about using them.” It’s important to Dr Chan to normalize conversations about sexual health that go beyond condom use and challenge the cisheteronormative narrative that oral sex doesn’t require thinking or talking about safer sex practices.
 

The mere existence of dental dams can be an introduction to the idea that our sexual health needs are not one-size-fits-all. A review of recent dental dam research published in 2025 explains that dental dams have “historically provided a level of visibility to LBQ+ women’s sexual health within queer communities.” For example, while LGBTQ+ community organizations handed out dental dams at events in the 1990s, these were often more to symbolize the inclusion of queer women in the response to HIV than for actual use during sex.
 

Do people even use dental dams? 

The limited data on how many people actually use dental dams suggests the number is low. Research from 2023 found that from a sample of 327 women, 4.7 percent of those who practice cunnilingus and 5.2 percent of those who practice anilingus reported “always” using a dental dam. For cunnilingus and anilingus respectively, 79.9 percent and 81 percent of respondents had “never” used a dental dam. 

There are a number of factors that contribute to why so few people use dental dams. Dr. Chan points to a lack of knowledge about dental dams, but also cost and a lack of availability: “You can’t get them in many sexual health services [in the U.K.].” Research in the U.S. also found that the inaccessibility of dental dams is a major barrier to their use. And while dental dams should be single-use, Dr Chan has to reuse them in their RSE classes, carefully folding them away because they’re less available than, say, condoms. “I just wouldn't be able to procure one for every single lesson,” Dr. Chan says.
 

So what else can queer people do to protect their sexual health? 

Some people do use dental dams—and they can be a useful tool for getting people to talk about safer sex practices. The aforementioned 2025 paper, for example, explains that: “When LGBTQA+community organizations handed out dental dams at community events in the 1990s, they were rarely used for sex but played a role demonstrating inclusion of LBQ+ women in the response to HIV.”

Yet dental dams are often the only way in which sex education attempts to include queer women. Dr Chan believes we need to move away from assumptions about what kinds of sex people have based on their gender or sexuality: “It's quite presumptive to say that the only kind of sexual health that queer women need is dental dams.” The idea that queer women are going to be at a lower risk of STI transmission and don’t need to know about HIV, PrEP and PEP is wrong but incredibly pervasive.

Dental dams might be most similar to condoms in how they can be a starting place for conversations about sexual health, but they shouldn’t be the whole conversation.