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Dr. Herbenick: If a girl squirts on my wound, can I get HIV?
The human immunodeficiency virus can be transmitted through the exchange of sexual fluids such as vaginal fluids and semen — ejaculate — and transmission may be more likely if there’s an immediate pathway to a person’s blood stream, as with an open wound. HIV can also be transmitted through blood or breast milk. That said, I know of no research that has tested the presence of HIV in female ejaculate or in the fluids commonly known to comprise “squirting” — basically, very, very, very diluted urine.
If you are concerned about contracting HIV, I recommend that you use condoms when you have sex with a partner whose HIV status you don’t know and that you get tested for HIV from time to time. How often a particular person should get tested for HIV depends on various risk factors, so the best thing to do is to be honest with your doctor or nurse and let them know whether you have sex with men, women, transgender individuals or some combination of the above, whether you have sex with sex workers such as female or male prostitutes or not, what kinds of sex you have, such as oral, vaginal and/or anal sex and how consistently you use condoms. Your health care provider may have additional questions too, and you’ll be more likely to get good health care if you answer such questions honestly, even if it feels embarrassing at first — talking about sex gets easier with practice!
If you have a female partner who squirts, and you have wounds that the fluids might get in, then getting tested together for HIV may ease both of your minds, as might covering up any open wounds. If neither of you has HIV, then you cannot transmit it to the other person anyway. Of course, whenever males and females have sex, sexually transmitted infections aren’t the only concern and, if either of you doesn’t yet want to become pregnant, using birth control such as condoms and/or hormonal birth control is a wise thing to do.
Debby Herbenick, Ph.D., is an associate professor at IU’s School of Public Health and a research fellow and sexual health educator at the Kinsey Institute. She’s the author of six books about sex. Her newest is “The Coregasm Workout.” Follow Kinsey Confidential on Twitter @KinseyCon and visit us online at www.KinseyConfidential.org.
