When you think of surgical gloves, you probably think of hospitals and health centers. But surgical gloves can also protect you from STDs in your very own bedroom.
Gloves, made from latex or non-latex materials like nitrile can cover your fingers during manual sex — sex in which your fingers or hands stimulate a vulva, penis, or anus. Think: handjobs, fingering, etc.
Gloves cover any broken skin you may have on your hands. Cuticle biters, I’m talking to you! And some STDs can be passed from genital fluids into broken skin — gloves totally prevent this. Nails, callouses, and rough skin can lead to cuts and scrapes in the very sensitive skin around your genitals. But not if you cover those pesky nails, callouses, and skin with gloves! You know what else gloves do? Help you avoid infections from open sores. Crucial! Using a new glove with a new person’s genitals (including your own) also lowers your chances of passing STDs. So if you’re touching your partner’s genitals make sure you put on a new glove before touching yourself.
Just like the doctors on your favorite TV hospital drama, throw your gloves out after each use by stripping the glove off from the bottom of your hand so that the glove comes off inside out, with the fluids staying inside the glove.
Finger cots look like miniature condoms, and are normally used to protect bandages on your fingers. But finger cots can be used like gloves for safer sex.
Don’t have a glove, but do have a condom? You can totally use condoms as gloves for safer sex.
But the reverse ALSO works for some people — using a glove as a condom! People with penises on the smaller side, some trans men, or some people who are intersex, may find that most condoms are too loose and don’t stay on during vaginal or anal sex. According to Trans Bodies, Trans Selves: A Resource for the Transgender Community, edited by Laura Erickson-Schroth, gloves provide a good alternative.
Cut open the glove from the base to the bottom of the pinky. Then crop the fingers of the glove off, leaving only the thumb and the fist. Open it up, and you’ve created a wide barrier with a pouch in the middle to place over your penis and genitals.
You can buy surgical gloves and finger cots at your nearest drugstore or online. Don’t buy the kind with powder on the inside — that may irritate your genitals. Like condoms, gloves work and feel much better if you use them with lube, so stock up on water or silicone-based lube while you’re at it.
-Emily at Planned Parenthood
