The Pierced Consumer

Do you have a fresh, healing piercing, and are wondering if it’s safe to kiss or lick?  Are you thinking about getting a genital piercing, and want to know when it’s safe to play with it or have sex? I have some info for you.

First, here’s a quote from the APP’s position on genital piercings:

The predominant cause of contamination and infection for genital piercings is most likely unprotected sexual contact. Even in monogamous partners, body fluids, unwashed hands, and oral bacteria can easily lead to infection if introduced in a wound.  Fortunately, this exposure is 100% preventable. . . During healing, all sexual contact must be made fluid safe, either through abstinence, or through the use of barriers such as condoms and dental dams. Furthermore, undue stress, abuse and/or  manipulation of the piercing site and/or jewelry should be avoided during healing.

Here’s the APP’s FAQ page where you can read the entire thing.

The real expert on this stuff is Elayne Angel, (definitely not me!) and here’s what she says in her upcoming book, “The Piercing Bible,” as highlighted in a recent blog post:

There is no set period for abstinence from sexual activities while genital piercings are healing.  There are, however, two nonnegotiable rules:

Be gentle. . . . If your piercing feels sore, you must stop what you’re doing, or at least ease up.  As you begin to heal, and the piercing feels less tender, you must still be vigilent to avoid injuring the fragile new cells.

Be clean and hygienic. Protective barriers must be used to prevent the sharing of bodily fluids.  For oral sexual contact, use a dental dam (sheet of latex) to shield female genitalia, and a flavored or unlubricated condom during fellatio. Thoroughly wash hands and sex toys before contact near a healing piercing, and use condoms for all intercourse and on insertables like dildos and bullet-type vibrators. If other barriers aren’t suitable, apply  a waterproof dressing such as Nexcare or Tegaderm to keep your partner’s body fluids from getting on your piercing.

You can read Angel’s entire blog post, which includes information on a study of clitoral hood piercings which she participated in, here. The quote above is just a tiny part of why I’m so excited about Angel’s upcoming book.  She has such comprehensive knowledge about piercing, and the material in the book is unparalleled and not found anywhere else. So just buy it!  You can pre-order The Piercing Bible from — where else?  Amazon.com, and the link to do so is right here.

And finally, a Happy Valentine’s Day shout out to all my lovers!  I mean, to all the people who read my blog!  That’s you!

The beautiful corset heart necklace is from my beautiful Daughter No. 1′s Wicked Gems Etsy store.  I highly encourage you to buy, buy, buy! all this gorgeous stuff so my grandchildren won’t starve and I can be kept in my old age.

The kissing photo above comes from, I think,  HannahDaisy.

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 14th, 2009 at 11:44 am and is filed under Aftercare, General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.