feature art: Autostraddle

Thank you for visiting
The Gay B C’s of Gender
! Monthly I’m determining a new sex-related term that is used within the queer community. I’m crafting these definitions with help from queer archives, pop music culture, interviews, and more. Remember language — especially when you are considering sex — varies extensively across communities, no unmarried description or article can encapsulate every person’s experience with these terms. Utilize this line as a jumping down point for your own reflection and conversation from inside the reviews.

If you’ve ever pushed your own nether regions against a partner’s genitals, leg, butt, pubic bone, or other body part, congratulations — you have tribbed! Rubbing your pieces against another hot bod is both literally and aesthetically pleasant, whether you determine to refer to it as “tribbing,” “tribadism,” “humping,” “grinding,” “scissoring,” or something like that otherwise. Within thirty days’s line, I’m specifically investigating “tribbing” because of its long (and fraught) record. Hop into the fancy queer time devices — we’re heading to old Greece! But first, here is all of our meaning:

tribbing (letter.) – the act of massaging genitals against someone’s human anatomy

“thus I’ll state some thing random that no body’s ever mentioned, like ‘peanut butter tribadism!'”

— Bo Burnham,
“out from the Abyss”

“Tribbing” or “tribadism” is inspired by the Greek verb τρίβω, this means “rub.” In old Greece, this word at first outlined the work of
a lady or intersex individual
penetrating somebody using their clit or a vibrator (yep, dildos happened to be anything well before the creation of silicone polymer).

Later, the text “tribas” (Latin) and “tribade” (French) were used to explain any woman which engages in penetrative or non-penetrative sex together with other females, or, to estimate the 1843 book

A Greek-English Lexicon

, “a female whom practices
an abnormal vice
with by herself or together with other women.” Hot.

If perhaps you were implicated to be a tribade — really, that could be not so great news for the reputation. Discover one example: Queen of France Marie Antoinette had been portrayed as a tribade in many pamphlets (aka 18th 100 years political cartoons) criticizing the Queen’s association with Austria. One satirical publication known as “The Royal Dildo” coated Marie Antoinette as
an orgy-loving, deviant pervert
exactly who on a regular basis banged English baroness woman Sophie Farrell of Bournemouth. A few years later, Marie Antoinette was apply demo for treason among some other different criminal activities, such as
false accusations incest

. She was actually
located bad
and beheaded.

Regardless of the word’s sordid background, queer females, intersex individuals, and trans folks have reclaimed “tribadism” and “tribbing” in current decades to spell it out sex functions that include genital scrubbing, but meanings differ across sources. The Meriam-Webster dictionary
defines tribadism
as “a kind of intercourse between feamales in that outside genitalia are rubbed with each other,” in the 1988 guide

Sapphistry: The Book of Lesbian Sex

, Patrick Califia consists of a broader variety of gender serves underneath the “tribadism” umbrella: “Tribadism is carried out by rubbing your vulva against your lover’s mons veneris, hip, or leg. Some lesbians additionally love to rub against their unique lovers’ buttocks and other parts of the body.”

If you’re thinking, “wait a second…this all appears like scissoring,” i am there along with you. Just what exactly just will be the distinction between tribbing and scissoring? As always, views vary, but based on
this 2018 Autostraddle article
, scissoring and tribbing are exactly the same thing: “…scissoring is actually a colloquial umbrella term for every sorts of functions of tribadism, aka: rubbing vulva against a number of body pieces!”

In
this Healthline post
, intercourse teacher Lisa Finn sets it in this manner: “Scissoring is a colloquial phrase, generally there’s wiggle space in definition…Officially, tribbing could be the intimate act, while scissoring is the one particular situation.” To phrase it differently, in accordance with Finn, “tribbing” entails massaging your genitals everywhere on someone’s body, while “scissoring” talks of the sex position your own Barbie dolls probably loved. You know, the one which kinda appears to be this:

But if Barbies could fold their unique knees, perhaps it might seem like this:

These two pictures come from A.E. Osworth’s
scissoring guide
.

Here is your note that YES, the classic scissoring intercourse place is, actually, a proper thing that some queer individuals enjoy, no, that does not mean it really is comfy, enjoyable, or possible for every pair of naughty individuals (especially if you should be opting for clit-on-clit activity, since that requires one to strive for

extremely

small objectives). If you’ve attempted this place and disliked it, whether or not it’s just not your own thing, or if perhaps your own parts and your lover’s parts simply would never link like Lincoln Logs, 1. It’s not just you, and 2. That does not mean this sex position just takes place in pornography or in lesbian flicks guided by guys. The scissoring positions/techniques portrayed above

do

occur in real life sometimes, in the event they’re not taking place inside bed room.

Ultimately, the difference between “tribbing” and “scissoring” isn’t essential. As long as you like what you are doing, refer to it as what you need, carry on humpin’, and feel free to experiment! Grind against someone’s face, calf, boob, leather-based footwear — whatever feels fun and pleasurable for all included.

Should you want to discover more about tribbing/ scissoring, check A.E. Osworth’s
scissoring guide
, A. Andrews’
gender position manual
, all of our readers’
feelings about scissoring
, and Archie’s
scissoring present manual
(and, obviously, browse all of our scissoring
merch
).