Planned Parenthood

Someone asked us:

Can skin to skin contact get you pregnant?

When talking about sex, we define “skin-to-skin” contact as touching your vulva, vagina, penis, testicles, buttcheeks, or anus to another person’s, without a barrier like clothing, condoms, or dental dams. Some people call this “dry humping.” Sexual skin-to-skin contact also includes touching another person’s genitals with bare hands (mutual masturbation).

Skin-to-skin contact itself does not cause pregnancy, but things get a bit, um…stickier if semen (the fluid that comes out of the penis containing sperm) comes into the equation. Pregnancy IS possible if semen gets on your vulva or in your vagina.  There are a number of ways this can happen:

-A penis ejaculates on your vulva or in your vagina (duh).

-A penis ejaculates somewhere else on your body, and the semen drips or is wiped onto your vulva.

-There is fresh semen on your fingers, your partner’s fingers, and/or sex toys, which then touch your vulva or vagina.

-Any of these things happen with pre-ejaculate (AKA pre-cum), which can have a small amount of sperm in it. 

Basically, if you’re trying to avoid pregnancy, it’s important to not only keep sperm out of the vagina, but also away from the vulva. It may seem a teensy bit paranoid, but sperm can use moisture on the vulva (which tends to increase during sexytimes) to help them swim up into the vagina.  

Also, I’d be a very bad sex educator if I didn’t remind you that genital (and oral) skin-to-skin contact CAN transmit some sexually transmitted infections, like herpes and HPV, even if you don’t have actual “intercourse” or swap fluids. 

-Kendall at Planned Parenthood