A Gay Man Speaks Out: Is Oral Sex Safe Sex?

Cass Mann is one of the world's longest-term HIV-positive diagnosed gay men, now in his third decade of living with HIV, and the founder of UK’s only gay men’s HIV/AIDS charity Positively Healthy, which provides HIV services including education, support, and peer counselling. Here he talks about the risks of oral sex. Oral sex can transmit HIV, syphilis, and other STIs. If you have unprotected sex, you're risking syphilis, HIV, gonorrhoea, and whatever other diseases your partner has in their system. However, it's difficult to get gay men to use condoms for oral sex because people consider the risk much lower than anal sex. The risk isn't zero, and the risk isn't only of HIV transmission. Remember that your partner might have had sex with other partners immediately before you have oral sex. Oral sex is not safer sex. Use a condom if you choose to have oral sex. For more information, visit http://www.posh-uk.org.uk/ and http://www.AIDSvideos.org/.