A Complete Beginner's Guide to Scissoring

There's a scene in Orange Is the New Black where Poussey and her cool German girlfriend are trying to scissor and it's not really working and she says, "I told you scissoring wasn't a thing," and then every single queer woman I knew in the whole world laughed in unison, either because they agreed it's not a thing or because they knew it was. 

If you Google scissoring, you mostly just get porn and a study from 2003 that surveyed over 1,200 lesbian and bisexual women, and found that only 50 percent of them participated in genital-to-genital touching (which you could mostly assume means scissoring). In general, scissoring is usually defined as two women rubbing their vulvas together (typically in a position resembling two pairs of scissors caught in each other). 

The six women I spoke with mostly said they loved scissoring, but G., 18, said she's never scissored because "it's generally viewed as a joke in the lesbian community" and has mostly heard that it's not enjoyable. Emily, 19, says when she tried scissoring, she and her partner found it to be "complicated," with their clitorises touching "about 0 percent of the time." She says, "The best we could do was basically rubbing our vaginas on the other person's inner thigh. It took more coordination and concentration to the point that we were just laughing and trying too hard to make it feel good, so for me scissoring will always remain a joke."

One of my friends who's gay, Dee, 35, says she loves scissoring and isn't sure why it gets such a bad rap from lesbians. "Maybe because it became this sort of social joke and also became so prevalent in porn," she said. "Queer women are so often made to feel that their sexual activity is not as valid as heterosexual sex, so criticism of scissoring might be their way of distancing themselves from that ridicule and from the way sex is depicted in porn." She says that once she got the hang of it though, it felt "amazing. You are connecting with another woman in a deeply intimate way. You are sharing fluids, you are looking each other in the eye. You are sharing the softest, most sensitive part of your body with someone else. It's a little messy and makes funny noises sometimes, but it's super pleasurable."

Scissoring can be a thing you enjoy! I crowdsourced tips from queer lady friends on the matter, as well as queer porn performer Andre Shakti, about how to get from "I told you scissoring wasn't a thing" to "we should scissor again tonight because it always makes us have all of the orgasms and feel really great." Here's what you need to know.

1. Scissoring doesn't refer to just one position. "There are other ways to enjoy a mutual vulva rub and they seem to be lumped under the umbrella of 'scissoring,' which I wish they weren't," Victoria, 33, told me. We need words for yet-unnamed vulva-rubbing positions! 

Anyway, another good way to scissor is having your partner lie down on her back and tilt her pelvis up while you straddle her and grind against her vulva. Dee gave me a walkthrough of some other options, saying, "Straddle your partner's thigh and slide one leg between theirs. Then place your clitoral region on top of your partner's. It takes some maneuvering and it helps to be flexible, but once you have that down, you can both move together in a rhythm that works for you. You can also have one partner completely straddle the other and hold each other close, which can be done lying down or sitting up. When you are sitting up, one person usually has to use their upper body strength to initiate the action, like by holding on to your partner's ass or hips until you both find the same spot where you're both touching each other's clitoral regions." While overall, scissoring can be pretty DIY/try a few different things until one or both of you is like, "Whoa, yep, that," it's good to have those few pointers in your back pocket as well. 

2. Scissoring just won't work with some partners. Victoria says that scissoring (and yet-unnamed mutual-vulva-rubbing that isn't necessarily in a scissor formation) often "requires some sort of body compatibility that doesn't always exist, though it's hard to know why that is exactly." Sometimes your body types just don't line up for clitoral grinding. ​If it's really just not working, don't stress about it, just try something else. Fucking is supposed to be fun. 

3. Don't expect it to be like the scissoring scenes you've seen in the movies. Or, you know, the one scissoring scene you saw in the movies since there aren't a lot of them. When Victoria pointed out how much scissoring there was in Blue Is the Warmest Color and remarked, "But what was up with all the crying?" her friend joked, "There's no crying in scissoring!" So when you finally do try scissoring, maybe you'll both sob on each other's abs, maybe you won't. It doesn't have to be crazy-emotional.

4. But it might feel a lot more intimate than other sex acts you've done before. Vee, 25, says, "I can't scissor with a random hookup or someone I am not emotionally connected to for a couple different reasons." Scissoring, she says, exposes your whole body to the other person, and if you are not comfortable with your body in front of them, this can get pretty awkward. Also, Vee says, "I know it's cheesy but the thing that turns me on the most about scissoring is feeling the person I love connected with me while looking into their eyes." Dee seconded this, saying, "It involves trust and a comfort level." So mutual vulva rubs may not not the best thing to do with a woman you just met and aren't even sure if you like yet, outside of how sweet her boobs are.

5. Yes, you can totally spice it up. Like any sex position, just because the position is usually the same doesn't mean you can't switch things up to make it hotter. Vee says scissoring is even sexier "when you grab the back of her neck while you're underneath her so you can pull her closer and maybe even kiss." Scissoring really allows you to switch up positions and try out different forms of control and stimulation until you find the "hell yes" sweet spot for both of you. To get more passionate, Vee recommends doing it the same way you'd usually see in porn, which is "really fast and rough."

6. And you can add a vibrator or dildo to the mix to intensify things even more. Andre Shakti​ says if you want to mix things up, "you can take a large vibrator and sandwich it between both of your [clits] while you're in a missionary-type position, so you're both not only grinding against each other but also against the vibration." To work penetration into scissoring, she recommends "having the person on the bottom strap on a thigh harness with a dildo attached, then have the person on top lower onto it and ride it while grinding against their partner, so you get scissoring plus penetration," aka most women's idea of off-the-charts awesome sex. 

7. You might want to do some low-key Pilates on the regular before you do it. OK, so you don't have to be an Olympic gymnast, but at the very least, Dee says it's really important to stretch before you scissor because it can be really hard on your hips if you don't. You can do this separately in secret in the bathroom or just make it like a sexy workout-themed porn where you both casually stretch just before shit gets ~*wild*~.  

8. You can use lube, but you actually might prefer to not use lube. Shakti says that while you can totally use lube on your vulva to experiment with sensation, "some women enjoy the friction" of a lube-free scissoring experience, and "others want to scissor a little more smoothly" by adding lube. Best bet? Keep some lube by your bedside just in case friction turns into "oh hell no." 

9. Like sex in general, it will probably be intensely awkward the first time you try it, followed by it being really, really phenomenal. Dee says the first time she scissored, she and her partner at the time just got really sweaty and it didn't seem to be doing anything, but then she realized they'd actually found the perfect spot in the process and ended up coming at the same time. So all of that kind of feeling around even though you have no clue if you're doing it right can actually lead to you doing it right and becoming one of those women who is like, "Oh, trust me, scissoring is definitely a thing." And then maybe we can end the myth that it isn't once and for all.  

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