Let’s talk sex! Vulvar and vaginal stimulation for fun, pleasure, and profit.
Originally published on Medium in November, 2021.
Content note: this is a reference guide for the stimulation of the vulva and vagina.
Throughout this piece there is in-depth discussion of sex and sexual practice, there are diagrams, and there are photographs of vulvas to aid our learning and understanding, not to mention a lot of terribly suggestive fruit.
Contents
Preface
The Anatomy of the Vulva and Vagina: the actual anatomy of the vulva, it and the vagina’s attendant parts, and how everything fits together
On Testosterone: the effects of testosterone as a HRT treatment on the vulva and vagina in the context of sexual pleasure
(I don’t have any specific advice in regards to different intersex configurations or further genital and hormonal diversity, but that section might nonetheless be semi-relevant; there’s also some notes on vaginal atrophy that might be relevant if you’re menopausal or similar)
Stimulating the Vulva and Vagina: ringing the Devil’s doorbell, dancing about in his vestibule, and then running into (then out of) (then into) (then out o — ) his house
Additional Reading: more resources and links
Preface
First, just a note that I’m a transgender man who has not undergone any bottom surgery. This guide is intended primarily for trans and nonbinary people who were assigned female at birth and have not undergone bottom surgeries, especially who are on testosterone hormone treatments, and also for cisgender women and other people with vulvas and vaginas.
As a gay man I have no experience with neovaginas or any surgically constructed vulvas post-penectomy and similar, and if you do I would absolutely encourage you to add in your own tips and comments, or write your own guide with more info in that regard!
Much of this stuff will still be applicable as every vulva and vagina is different, and there’s a huge diversity of experiences with surgery, whether that’s post-metoidioplasty or post-vaginoplasty, or after any other surgical experiences.
None of the stuff I’m going to talk about is necessarily going to feel pleasurable, or intensely pleasurable, to all people or all kinds of vulvas, but I’m going to do my best to cover a few bases and a bit of variety. Pick and choose whatever works for you (and/or your partner(s)), and don’t be afraid to experiment — the human genitalia are made-up of marvellously complex organs, sensitive layers of muscle, tissue, and fat, and a great many nerve endings, and everyone’s experience and level of sensitivity is different.
Secondly, just a note that I will be using anatomical language throughout, such as clitoris, vulva, labia, vagina, and mons pubis, relevant shortenings, such as clit and mons, and other relevant ungendered terms — hood, lips, opening, et cetera.
I won’t be using any slang terms, except for the Devil’s Doorbell… How was I supposed to resist?
Note that this whole piece has a relatively fun, casual tone, and it’s intended to make you laugh and have a bit of fun with the whole thing. This is a silly topic and vaginas and vulvas are tremendously silly, but there’s absolutely nothing shameful in them, and I’m always aware that talking about these things with too much gravity can make them harder to digest, but also more like negatively-toned school lectures.
The Anatomy of the Vulva and Vagina
Let’s talk about the parts of the vulva.
Have a look at the diagram above — ignore the sub-diagram of the clitoris for now, and just focus on the face of our soon-to-be dear friend, the vulva. So, vulva comes from the Latin for womb, but it refers to the whole of the external genitals, whereas the vagina refers to the inner canal.
Unfortunately, basically every diagram of a vulva I’ve ever seen depicts the tiniest and flattest vulva imaginable, so here’s some real vulvas:
So firstly, let’s talk about the clitoris — it’s most obvious in the two photographs of vulvas on the right-hand side, and then on the bottom left, with the piercing through the clitoris to give you a clue.
In the bottom middle and the upper left, the clitoris is smaller and hidden under the clitoral hood, so it’s not very obvious — instead, we can mostly just see the join of the labia minora, the inner lips, to the outcrop of the clitoral hood.
Unlike in the diagram, you can see that most of these vulvas don’t clearly show the opening of the vaginal canal, because even with the legs spread apart, the vulva doesn’t normally open up as in the diagram, but you can see something like it in the bottom right!
When the vulva becomes aroused, with more blood flowing to the area and causing the organs and surrounding tissue to swell, it does tend to open up a bit — there’s a reason blooming flowers are such a constant poetic metaphor — but different vulvas will open up to different extents.
There’s a huge diversity in different people’s labia minora — some are broader and wider and open out as on the right hand side, and others are much thinner and smaller, and remain sandwiched by the labia majora as on the left and upper middle.
The lower middle shows larger labia minora — you see how the flesh is wrinkled on the outer parts of the lips’ flaps? When someone becomes aroused and more blood flows to the vulva, some of those wrinkles can become less obvious as the flesh is made more plump by the blood and swelling, but not necessarily!
When you touch longer labia minora like these at their wrinkled edges, you’ll often find that they’re less sensitive than the root of the labia — pressing them gently between your thumb and forefinger, you might see that the very edge feels almost hollow, compared to further up against the root of the labia, where there’s more thickness and substance under your fingers. This is because the very edge of the labia minora is more skin and less sensitive flesh — and therefore, fewer nerve endings!
You’ll notice something similar in some of the flesh around a looser scrotum on someone with a penis, depending on how much skin there is around the testicles; alternatively, you’ll likely notice it in loose skin on your (or a partner’s) body with age, especially around the lobes of your ears and underneath your jaw on each side, where the skin becomes less elastic and more wrinkled.
Big labia minora are completely normal, part of the natural diversity of one person’s vulva to another — they’re no different to or more unusual than a loose sac on a scrotum — but what I will say is that because they’re longer and further away from the vulva proper, they don’t get wet as easily at the outer edges! Make sure to use plenty of lube and be careful about friction, especially where the skin is most wrinkled, and especially on the inner edge.
So, onto the labia majora, the outer lips!
They’re at their plumpest and most obvious in the upper middle and right hand example photos — they can be flatter, as in the left examples, but you’ll pretty much always find at least some plushness and fat in the labia majora, because we need it there! That plush, fatty flesh serves to protect the labia minora, and especially the clitoris, urethra, and vaginal opening, as someone walks around, keeping them neat and protected and comfortably moist, and just as importantly, they offer cushioning against impact, such as during penetrative sex when someone else is thrusting against it, hips against hips.
Penises have something similar — a lot of the time there’ll be some loose fatty tissue around the scrotum, because in someone with a penis, the base of the penis and the sac are going to be where impact is felt most upon grinds and thrusts.
Likewise, there’s similar plushness and fat for cushioning in the mons pubis, over both the vulva and the penis — where the fatty tissue in the vulva protects the urethra and the more sensitive inner spread of the clitoral organ (I’ll get to that in a second), and where the fatty tissue around the scrotum protects the testicles and the prostate, the cushioning around the mons broadly protects the pubic bone.
Let’s zoom in!
So firstly, you can see from the diagram on the left hand side the separation between the urethra and the vagina. Depending on the person, you might find that the urethra is further up, and more protected by the clitoral hood and the upper seam together of the inner lips — in a lot of people, the urethra is not very visible, especially given that it’s such a tight and compact area with a lot of complicated bits and pieces all in one place, which is part of why so many people mistakenly assume that the urethral opening is inside the vagina.
The flesh that we’re looking at here is the pink flesh around the inside of the vaginal opening, called the vulval vestibule (vestibule meaning the antechamber or entrance hall to a building or, in this case, the vaginal canal)— these diagrams are both drawn of white people, so that the flesh is broadly white and pink.
In someone with darker skin and more skin pigmentation, you’ll often see a very stark colour contrast between the clitoris and the outer and inner lips, and the vulval vestibule. In someone with much more pigmented skin, the colour contrast can seem very dramatic, but this sensitive, membranous flesh lacks pigment for the same reason there’s no pigmentation on the inside of our mouths — it’s not going to be exposed directly to sunlight (or, it shouldn’t be, unless you’re very flexible and prone to creative gymnastics), and even more crucially, it’s more like the flesh further inside our bodies than the skin on the outside.
If you open your mouth and trace your finger along the inside of your lip, you’ll see how wet and thin the flesh is to the touch.
This inner lining is a mucous membrane, with wetness always ready to come to the surface — it lacks the thicker outer layer of skin that the rest of our epidermis has to protect itself, and its best protection is its lubrication, which keep it from being damaged by friction. A similarly fine and membranous skin can be found on the inside of the vulva, the inside of the base of the labia minora, and depending on the person, you might find that the flesh on the outside of the labia minora, where it adjoins the labia majora, is also thinner than skin further out from the vulva, although it’s not part of the mucous membrane proper.
This mucosal tissue always needs to be slightly wet (and always should be, because as the name implies it’s always secreting its own lubricating mucous), but it especially needs to be wet when it’s being touched or manipulated, whether that’s by a toy, fingers, or anything else. This flesh is sensitive to abrasions and roughness and can tear easily, but the positive flip side to this is that it’s typically tremendously, gloriously sensitive.
If you push back on someone’s outer lips and tug their inner lips in so that you can see, you’ll see where the flesh is thinner where the two lips meet and where it has a glisten — and being closer to the epidermis than the mucosal tissue further in, if you or your partner(s) have darker skin, you might be able to see a colour transition between the fully pigmented flesh of your labia majora, the semi-pigmentation of this outer membranous flesh, and the inner membranous flesh completely lacking in pigmentation.
The clitoris is not, as shown in the diagrams above, a mere bundle of nerves disconnected from the rest — what we think of as the clitoris is actually just the clitoral head, either hooded or entirely covered by its clitoral hood, comparable to the glans hooded by the foreskin on a penis. When some people’s clitorises become erect, the hood can even draw back slightly and bare more of the glans clitoris, too.
(I’m not going to get into it in-depth here, but it’s worth understanding that the clitoris and the penis develop from the same base tissues, and that many of the mythologies around people with vulvas being less capable of experiencing pleasure or orgasm, or that people with vulvas should by default be having uncomfortable or painful sex, are just that — mythologies, fictions, and outright bald-faced lies, with many being propagated by bad scientists, right-wing religious fundamentalists, and other anti-sex campaigners, particularly those that oppose “female pleasure” and benefit materially from the oppression of anybody assigned female and/or anybody with a vulva.)
Let’s look at the hidden parts of the clitoris — first, the corpus cavernosum. It’s made up of spongey tissue that come away from the head on each side, lending structure to the labia majora and forming the outer rounded shape of the vulva that leads to the two “legs” of the clitoris (the crura) on each far side.
When we become aroused, the corpus cavernosum and the clitoral crura swell with blood, becoming more sensitive and effecting nearby tissues to enlargen and become more erect — it’s exactly the same process that occurs in a penis, where erection also happens with the swelling of the corpus cavernosum!
Instead, however, of being confined along one shaft, the corpus cavernosum in the vulva is instead spread across a wider, more open area — because of it being spread out like this, we don’t stimulate it directly, let alone the whole thing at once, but it also means we’re not as susceptible to overstimulation.
Next, the bulbs of the vestibule, the two fatter masses around the vaginal opening. Where the corpus cavernosum stretches more around/behind the labia majora, the two bulbs of the vestibule are either side of the vaginal opening, and when we become aroused, they fatten up and become erect, made up as they are of that crucial erectile tissue.
The whole clitoral organ becomes erect, but while this erection can be more prominent in the clitoral shaft and head, this can be subtler in the rest of the vulva. So, what do we look for?
Well, as I’ve said above, we can expect the labia majora to become fatter and more plump — depending on the shape and make-up of the vulva, you might see the vulva spread outwards with this plumpening, or if your vulva is more like the upper left and upper middle examples of the vulvas further up the space, you might find that this swelling means that they squeeze the labia minora and clitoris between them more tightly!
In the labia minora, we might see the lips open up as they swell with blood, revealing more of the vestibule — they might appear to lengthen or shorten significantly, and they might show as less wrinkled as their flesh is plumped up with blood. Wetness should begin to gather on the inside of the labia minora — with arousal, the vulva will start to lubricate itself a bit more, and that means secretions from the Bartholin’s glands on each side of the vulvar vestibule, plus more secretions on the surface of any of the vulva mucosa. If there are thicker outer lips, as I mentioned in the paragraph above, the labia minora might be sandwiched between them — because they can appear to enlarge with arousal, you might find that they stick out from inside that squeeze of flesh more than usual.
You’ll probably see more wetness gather in and around the vulvar vestibule, possibly even get a little bit of a drip down your thighs and/or into your buttcrack.
There’s another set of glands in the vulvar vestibule called the Skene’s gland, which are further up, around your urethra — they also make secretions, and might be the source of ejaculation, but… we don’t know. The Skene’s gland can also be referred to as the prostate, which is cool.
(A lot of the physiology of the human vulva and vagina is understudied because… You Know Why.)
And finally, if we go further in, we’ll go in from the vulvar vestibule to the vaginal canal itself, and what a wonderful canal it is.
Contrary to what a lot of people assume, the vast majority of sensation experienced with vaginal penetration is not from the inside of the canal itself, but from resulting stimulation of the clitoris and surrounding tissues — part of the reason they swell up so much and become aroused is so that they more tightly enfold the vagina and give you more of that sensation! They also give you more control of the vaginal muscle, because with more blood in the surrounding tissue, there’s more flesh to manipulate when you clench and relax, and most importantly of all, the erection leads to lubrication, which leads to a smooth ride.
Most of the sensation in the vagina itself is concentrated around the opening — inside the vulvar vestible, if you crook your fingers and reach in (or if you’re fancy, get a toy designed for G-spot stimulation), you’ll press on a spongey bit of tissue on the roof of the vaginal canal, behind the urethra and underneath the base of the clitoral shaft, and that’s the G-spot… unless it isn’t.
Many people still dispute that it even exists; some people insist that it doesn’t actually exist, but that when you’re pressing on that spongey tissue you’re manipulating the Skene’s glands I mentioned otherwise, thus the importance of the G-spot in vaginal ejaculation, which, again, some people dispute is even a thing. I’ll get into that a bit more further into this piece.
As you go further into the vaginal canal, there’ll be less sensation — now, this doesn’t mean you should be experiencing vaginal numbness, or that you can’t feel anything! It’s just that the further in you go, the less you’re around all this much more sensitive, erect flesh, and penetration will have less direct pressure on and friction against the flesh that’s stimulating nerve endings.
Some people have really sensitive vaginas, and apart from experiencing more pleasure from ribbed toys or condoms, or being able to feel the twitches and pulses of a partner’s penis (or being able to do party tricks to tell what’s been hidden in there), it might be that they can orgasm from vaginal stimulation alone! Some people have far less sensitive vaginas, and apart from sadly being unable to identify a rubber duck from our boyfriend’s iPhone to the dismay of those judging us at the orgy, we’re likely to be far more reliant on more direct clitoral stimulation to orgasm.
Both are pretty much normal — as I said in our intro, everybody’s genital make-up is different, and that doesn’t just mean aesthetic differences, it can mean differences in depth of or preference for stimulation, too.
I know I was complaining earlier up about the white-centric tendencies of vulva diagrams but I probably do prefer all the white and pink to this… visceral use of yellow for fatty tissues (?).
Anyway, the average depth of the vagina — before you start getting uncomfortably intimate with the cervix — is about 3 to 6 inches. This average might be far off from yourself, though, and I’m fairly certain the studies have primarily been done on cisgender dyadic women — just like in trans and intersex people we might have more diversity in our clitoral and vulvar make-up, the same can be said of the depth and width of our vaginal canals; differences might also be made by surgery, by having given birth, or other factors.
You might also find that your preferences and ability to take certain things change over time, as you get older, as you strengthen the muscles of your pelvic floor and do more exercise in this area, as you undergo different hormonal changes, and so on.
The average vagina is self-lubricating, but some people produce more vaginal moisture from others, and especially when you’re looking at penetration, especially deep penetration, it’s really important to make sure you’re sufficiently lubricated.
Think slip’n’slides and water parks — more lube, less friction; less friction, fewer abrasions and tears of the vaginal lining, which apart from being uncomfortable if not painful, can heighten one’s risk of infection.
According to anecdotal study, the average erect penis is between 9 and 12 inches — according to scientific study, it’s typically between 5 and 7. But of course, the vagina is incredibly flexible, many penises and vaginas alike exist outside the averages, and more importantly, when we become aroused and the surrounding tissues become erect, the cervix and uterus are pushed up, that they not interfere with ongoing proceedings.
Nonetheless, it’s your vagina, not a TARDIS, and most of us do have an upper limit when it comes to deep penetration — contrary to what a lot of hentai would have us believe, it can genuinely be quite uncomfortable and cause irritation when we’re penetrated by something that hits or rubs against our cervix, so it’s important to be aware of our limits and not get too ambitious. Cervical bruising is very uncomfortable, and not on many people’s bucket lists.
With that said, some people really enjoy that pleasure-pain that comes with impact against and around the cervix, so don’t be afraid if you do enjoy it! Just take experimentation bit by bit, and see what works for you.
A thicker penis or other penetrative object (as opposed to a longer one) is going to stimulate and rub more against the erect tissues around your vagina, and fill the vaginal canal so that you get enough friction for sensation. Some people really enjoy the stretch of wider object(s), especially where they stretch the tighter muscle around the vulvar vestibule, some people don’t care for vaginal penetration at all, and of course, some people do appreciate deep penetration.
You do of course get deeper vaginas than the average, but there’s a reason that even then, penetration with larger penises or other objects is often a bit easier when done anally — to be perfectly blunt, there’s more space back there without those pesky reproductive organs in the way.
Speaking of, before we finish up, I just want to mention some of the other organs in the above diagram.
I mentioned that anal allows more for deeper penetration, but I would be remiss if I didn’t address the false idea that anal penetration doesn’t evoke pleasure in people with vaginas, because our prostates are not located in the anal canal as they are for people with penises.
It can absolutely pleasure us!
Not for everybody, and not always in the same way, but anal sex can stimulate someone with a vagina, especially if it’s anal penetration in concert with other stimulation, because penetrating the rectum puts pressure on the back/underside of the aroused clitoral tissue. The stimulation isn’t necessarily as direct as through vaginal penetration, but for some people that’s part of the appeal, although depending on position you can get closer to direct stim.
Similarly, on the other side, a full bladder can put pleasant stimulation and weight over/on the aroused clitoral tissue. Pressing on the abdomen with a full or half-full bladder while aroused, you might notice a difference in sensation versus when you’ve recently relieved yourself, and ditto, you might notice a difference in sensation when exploring clitoral stimulation or vaginal penetration.
(Because of the way that sexual arousal creates erect tissue, you don’t necessarily have to worry about losing control of your continence, as your erection will normally cut off your ability to comfortably urinate, but that’s not a guarantee! I am not responsible for the results of any bladder-related sexual experimentation! Always be prepared and put down a towel!)
And similarly, of course, if you’re pregnant, you’ll likely notice differences in sensation throughout the stages of pregnancy as your body rearranges itself and depending on where and how much pressure is being placed on your sexual organs by your uterus and cervix.
On The Effects of Testosterone
If you scroll down to the bottom, most of the resources I have for additional reading are tailored to trans men and other trans people with vaginas and vulvas who might use T, so please check those out for more info about bottom growth and the effects of HRT.
One of the things many of us go in the most braced for, or the most excited about, when we start testosterone, is bottom growth. As I mentioned in the first section, the constituent parts of the clitoris and the penis are the same, and when our levels of testosterone are raised, the clitoris grows!
It depends hugely from person to person — there’s obviously a wide range of sizes in the average clitoris anyway, but for many of us we do see a significant growth of the clitoral glans, hood, and our labia.
The clitoris when exposed to testosterone, depending on how much it grows, can more resemble a micropenis, especially when aroused and the clitoral hood draws back like a foreskin, where you can see both the glans and clitoral head, but also a wider length of the shaft, with the labia minora also growing a bit.
With the above said, not everyone sees significant visible growth as depicted in the diagrams, especially if you’ve got a smaller clitoris and flatter vulva to begin with.
You might just notice a budding of the glans, maybe a slight roll back of the head; you might not particularly notice any visible growth at all, but that doesn’t mean there’s no growth on the inside! The corpus cavernosum and the vulvar vestibules grow too, after all, no matter that that growth isn’t as visible from the outside.
For a lot of people, this means that starting testosterone — apart from raising baseline arousal and libido — can mean increased sensation in and around the vulva and vagina and greater ease in reaching orgasm.
For me personally, starting testosterone significantly eased the symptoms of vaginismus, so I no longer experience as much muscular tightness and discomfort, and I know other people have mentioned similar results anecdotally, but it depends on the person!
Likewise, some people find that their dysphoria around certain stimulation, e.g. penetrative stimulation, is lessened after starting testosterone when their hormones feel right, so approaching masturbation and sex after HRT can be a whole new rediscovery of the area, even without taking bottom growth into account.
It’s worth noting that for some people, the growth of tissue in and around the vulva and clitoris can lead to significantly more lubrication because the glands responsible for this lubrication are obviously affected by this new growth; anecdotally — based on my own experience and those of others I know — the lubrication produced after starting T can also be thicker and slicker than what came before, with a different consistency than what came before.
Some people on testosterone also experience pelvic pain, and starting testosterone can worsen abdominal cramping in some people, although it’s not necessarily caused by testosterone (this is another of those under-studied areas).
Another potential side-effect of testosterone HRT, especially over time, is vaginal atrophy — vaginal atrophy occurs when a lack of estrogen in the body triggers a thinning of the vaginal walls, and this thinning results in less vaginal lubrication, which itself results in more tendency to abrasion and vaginal tearing. Vaginal atrophy can also result in less lubricant being produced not only by the vaginal walls and other mucous membranes, but also by other glands.
Not everyone experiences vaginal atrophy, and not everyone experiences it the same — in regards to experiencing more lubrication versus dryness from vaginal atrophy, some people experience one or the other, some people experience one then the other, and some people go between the two, my educated guess would be as a result of hormonal cycles.
As you can probably tell from the way I keep talking in theoreticals, citing anecdotal evidence, and making estimates, the average vagina deprived of estrogen, either as a result of taking testosterone or reaching menopause or some other reason, is even less studied than the already scientifically neglected average vagina.
Even outside friction during sex or masturbation, vaginal atrophy can lead to a greater tendency to urinary and topical infections, yeast infections, et cetera, and even adding more lubricant manually or using a vaginal moisturizer doesn’t necessarily prevent abrasions from fiction just because the vaginal walls can become so thin, but there are treatments for it.
Some people balance their testosterone prescription out with estrogen supplements (some people’s bodies seem to naturally balance things out, depending on dosage and their natural hormone levels), and you can get vaginal estrogen creams, suppositories, and even insertable rings that release estrogen into the area.
It can be embarrassing to talk about, but it’s honestly very common, and not necessarily complex or complicated to treat.
With that said, a lot of the info I have anecdotally is for dyadic guys and other people who were assigned female at birth and have not been diagnosed with a specific hormonal or physical manifestation of an intersex condition — if you’re intersex and/or if you’ve had a vaginoplasty or any other surgeries, you might have the same or similar issues, but the solutions might be slightly different or need more specific fine-tuning, especially if you’re already on a mixed cocktail of hormones and/or if you’re microdosing anything to get the results you need.
If you’re in community with people with similar experiences to yourself, especially in the same local area, it might be worth asking if anyone’s experienced the same issues and if they have any tips or what worked for them, and see about applying similar solutions to yourself.
If you don’t feel comfortable DIYing your way through these issues via over the counter treatments but are uncertain about being alone with your medical provider in case they talk over you or ignore your concerns, always remember that you’re entitled to a chaperone at your appointments, whether that’s a family member or a friend.
As a trans guy with other chronic health conditions I always advocate for bringing a chaperone if you can, and I regularly volunteer to chaperone friends and community members’ medical appointments — just having someone there with you can make more aggressive medical providers back down from dismissive or bullying attitudes, and if you get flustered in these appointments, they can help remind you what you’re there for and keep you on track. Similarly, it can be worth writing down a list of everything you need to discuss in the appointment — including what has worked or hasn’t worked for you — to go through with your practitioner.
Stimulating the Vulva and Vagina
Just a note before we begin: I’m going to be referencing a variety of options for stimulation, especially because not all kinds of stimulation are comfortable or accessible for all people, whether that’s due to gender dysphoria, vaginismus, injury or scarring, different genital configuration, or just plain personal preference, but I don’t know everyone’s vulva personally (if I only had the time!) and I don’t know what’s best for you.
Only you (or your partner(s), if you’re reading this guide for non-personal application) know what’s best for you (for them), and “what’s best” might well change over time. Don’t be afraid to experiment, to go light with stuff you’re not sure of.
If anything in here immediately makes you scrunch up your nose and go “nah” at the very thought, then please don’t feel obligated to give it a try nonetheless, and if something makes you curious but doesn’t hit quite right, don’t be afraid to play around with it and see what works for you.
This is an extremely casual guide, and is far more a list of potential suggestions than it is a checklist that someone’s going to test you on. Have fun, play around, take it easy — there’s no pressure here, there’s no exams, there’s no obligation to get it right or get it perfect, Hell, there’s not even an obligation to orgasm.
We’re just experimenting here and seeing what works!
External Clitoral Stimulation
Just a note before we go on, in my experience, a lot of people’s clitorises are apparently more sensitive on one side than the other. Lilly Delvaux on her blog did a few Twitter polls about this, which is by no means scientific, but might be an interesting look!
A lot of people have a specific sensitive spot on their clitoris or penis, which might be more to the left or right side, and this preference for right- or left-side stimulation (especially in line with your dominant hand) may be something you want to take into account while you try different bits and pieces from this guide.
Rubbing the Head
Most of us stimulate the clitoris in a simple, direct way: placing the tip of our middle or ring finger on top of the button of the clitoris, we rub it. Perhaps we rub it in circles or from side to side, perhaps up and down — ordinarily we do this while the clitoral hood covers the glans of the clitoris, as directly touching the the glans with dry or semi-dry fingers can be quite uncomfortable, but the hood provides a level of protection to work with.
Many people rub quite lightly, moving the soft tissue of the clitoral head around itself, but if we press down a bit harder, we can strum the clitoris against the hard cartilage underneath, almost like strumming a taut guitar string, and as we press down, the clitoris is pressed between our fingertips and this bone, rolled between the two points of pressure.
Thrusting and Grinding
Another really common method of direct stimulation of the clitoris is this — grinding yourself against stuff!
There’s lots of sex toys that are designed specifically with vaginal penetration in conjunction with with this in mind, but most people go more simply and grind themselves against a pillow or stuffed toy. It’s plain, simple friction, and it works.
Depending on the positioning, this might be less accessible for stimulation if you’ve got issues with your hips or thighs, but not necessarily — a pillow between your thighs while you lie on your side as opposed to lying back and grinding up or straddling something can let you move your clit against fabric or a surface without moving your waist and hips too much.
You can also place a vibrator underneath the fabric or inside a pillow, especially if you use a vibrator that has a changing pattern of vibration, so you can work to find a rhythm as you frot against it.
Strumming the Clitoris against the Pubic Bone (Symphysis)
If you’ve got issues with your hips or any of the other muscles and joints around this area, it can often become swiftly exhausting to thrust or grind against something, but sometimes we want something other than direct manual stimulation — you can try “strumming” for this, which is all about getting your pelvic floor muscles and your clitoris to do the work, rather than your hips and the rest of your pelvis.
If you tend to have a lot more difficulties with cramping and muscle pain, especially vaginal muscle pain, this might provide relief, or it might just make things worse because you find the focus on your pelvic floor muscles exhausting in the same way someone else might struggle with using their hips, so your mileage may vary.
You see where the diagram labels the pubis as the bones that form almost a butterfly shape at the base of the pelvis?
Casually, we might refer to what makes up the “abdomen” of that butterfly as the pubic bone, but it’s actually a piece of cartilage, and it moves about a bit: it’s called the pubic symphysis, and as well as helping absorb shock while we’re walking and helping the area change position to accommodate childbirth, in people with penises it provides support and suspension for the penis when erect.
For people with vulvas, it and the joined arches of the pelvis can provide a harder structure for us to press against — if you lie back and press from the soft flesh of your abdomen down over your mons pubis, and then press on and either side of your clitoris, you’ll be able to feel where these bones and joints are, the better to make use of them.
Apart from strumming our clitoris directly against it by putting pressure on it from the outside, though, we can strum it more literally. If you gather up some of the elastic flesh of your mons pubis under your fingers — with two hands you can tug on the fatty tissue of your mons pubis on outside, or with just one finger you can just hook onto the top of the “curtain” where your outer lips adjoin the base of your mons pubis, above the upper part of your clitoral hood — pull up.
If you pull that flesh up and against your abdomen — don’t worry, you’re not pulling your trousers up, it’ll only move a tiny bit — you’ll feel the clitoris move. The base of your clit might press more against that pubic bone, or you might just feel a sense of further tightness or pressure on the organ. You might even want to try pulling slightly to the left or the right, to put pressure on the side of your clit you find it more sensitive.
Then? Clench.
If you’ve never exercised your pelvic floor muscles or done pelvic floor exercises/Kegel exercises before, don’t worry! The next time you go to use the bathroom, sit down, start to pee, and stop yourself midflow.
The muscles that you’re clenching to stop urinating, that you’re clenching closed to stop the movement down your urinary tract to your urethra? Those muscles are your pelvic floor muscles.
Clenching and unclenching them can let you play a happy little rhythm as you pee, but more usefully in this situation, clenching and unclenching those muscles will affect how open or closed the entrance to your vagina is within the vulvar vestible (we’ll use that later), and will also move your clitoris around a tiny bit, in the same way that when you curl your bicep, you can see the muscles move under the skin. When we clench, our vaginas wink, and our clitorises do a little hop!
(If you’ve got a penis, a little clench will make your penis bob very cutely, but I can’t say what you’ll feel as to sensation.)
Now, when you clench while aroused, you might find that you already feel some increased sensation, depending on how erect your clitoris gets and how much sensation you have in the first place — for some people, they can orgasm completely untouched, just by clenching like so!
When you pull on the flesh and fatty tissue above your mons and pull it taut, though, the clitoris is pulled taut too, and that slight stretch and tug will mean much more considerable sensation in the clit as you clench and unclench.
When you pull that flesh up and close to your abdomen, you’re gonna draw it tight against that pubic bone — what you can also do is take hold of it and pull outward and away from your body. That’ll put pressure on the clitoris against the pubic bone in a similar way, but from a different angle.
You can also clench and unclench these muscles to move your clitoris while touching yourself directly — especially if you’ve got a larger clitoris, you can take your clit between your thumb and forefinger(s), and you can tug and pull on it directly or squeeze it, but if this is too direct or produces too much friction even with lube, and/or it’s too overstimulating, you can settle your clit between your fingers and then clench and unclench so that your clit twitches and jerks in your grip.
If you find you like this, remember that you don’t necessarily have to use your fingers to accomplish it — if you have a piercing in your mons, you can use this to tug upward on a chain, or you can use something as simple as a clothes peg on the flesh of your mons to gather it up.
This can also result in a wonderful sudden flow of blood when you release the clothes peg and it floods back to the area — although as for clothes pegs, I would recommend varnished wood over plastic ones, that you check for splinters just in case, and also would note that because of the way they can pull and drag at pubic hair, this might be best-practised on a shaved mons, or one with short-cropped hair.
Before you put one directly between your legs, it might be worth trying just a few on the inside of your forearm — if you string them together with a piece of twine or thread, you can even pull them all free suddenly and create a line of flushing blood along everywhere they were pinching, a bit like pulling free suction cups.
The “Sandwich”
If your clit is too small for this or too difficult to do directly — gripping your clit can be hard to do without either too much friction and/or so much lube that it’s too slippery and you can’t get a good grip — you can instead grab your clit by using your labia majora to “sandwich” it between them.
If you make your thumb and forefingers into a C shape and put your hand flush against the sides of your vulva, on the outside of your labia majora, you can squeeze your upper lips between your thumb and your fingers. Feel for your clit, and slowly squeeze it between your outer lips, until the head of your clit is directly between your thumb and fingers but sandwiched between your outer lips — or, if you’ve got a larger clit and it comes out from between your lips, the base or middle of it — and then you can squeeze and move it around.
Using this fatty flesh of your outer lips, you can grab and pull and squeeze your clit a lot harder or more roughly than you might be able to do directly — you can roll your clit between your fingers and thumb, you can pull up and down or pull around, and you can also use your pelvic floor muscles again, especially if you squeeze hard and put a lot of pressure on your clit from each side, buried between your outer lips. Then, as you clench and unclench, your clit will jerk and twitch, and you’ll feel both the pressure on it and also the rub and drag of your clit against the flesh on all sides.
Between the Inner and Outer Lips
We did talk about how the clitoris settles under the outer parts of the vulva, so I just wanted to specifically mention not to neglect the sensitive flesh in between the inside of your outer lips and the outside of your inner lips.
If you have thin vibrators, especially finger and lipstick vibes, you might find that you can settle one of these right into that fold of flesh and hold it in place — when you turn it on, you’ll then feel the stimulation against your lips and the side of your clit, but also feel it against/around your vagina from the outside.
I would mostly mention this area though in reference to different textures — because the skin here is so thin and so sensitive but also has a broader space to play with, you might find you’re far more aware of and sensitive to different textures on sex toys or other implements.
That can be textured vibrators with nobbles or bobbles et cetera, but it can also mean being really sensitive to the use of feather toys (please don’t use the same feathers you use for sex as you do for your cats, always sterilise your toys) and different fabrics, like silks, leathers, latexes, vinyls, etc.
Clitoral Vibrators
There are, of course, vibrators intended for direct clitoral stimulation!
I’m assuming that most people clicking on a guide will know about the basic varieties of vibrator such as bullet and lipstick vibes, vibrating wands, and the general array of vibrating sex toys.
A vibrator to the clitoris feels good, often especially to one side, or directly against the tip of the head over the top of the hood, et cetera, so I just want to note down a few lesser known types of vibrators that can be great for direct stimulation of the clit head and around the mons.
- Fingertip vibrators let you attach bullet vibes to your fingers, and you can use these in conjunction with direct stimulation of your clitoral head with manual stimulation.
- Rabbit ears and other form of gripping vibrators that clutch or clip either side of your clit can give you stimulation either side of your clit, or give you something to jerk or thrust your clit between, rather than simply grind against.
- Bondage clips and clamps attached to vibrators can give a direct squeeze and/or pull in combination with vibration, similar to pumps, which I’ll get onto below.
It’s worth noting too that it’s not just vibrations themselves that can be pleasant against the clitoral head, but also different textures — you can get a lot of toys that don’t just vibrate, but rotate or turn or roll, and many of these might feel differently against your clit and around that area, but will also have attachments to change the texture of the toys themselves, such as adding bigger or smaller dots to nobbled surfaces, etc.
Clitoral Pumps
A way that you can boost the sensation to your clit is by using a pump — there are pumps that directly work on the clitoris’ head itself (below is pictured one that can be used on the clitoris in conjunction with the nipples), and there also pumps that are designed to gather the whole of the vulva under their cup, which includes the clitoral head.
Pumps are really simple to use — you place them against the area you want to pump with a line of lubrication around the rim, make sure that there’s a vacuum seal, and then you pump out air. In the two examples below, it’s via a manual pump that you squeeze to remove more and more air from the vacuum seal created by the pump.
As more air is removed from the sealed area, harder and harder suction is applied to the captured flesh, and more blood flows to the sealed area but can’t leave again due to the suction. When you use a pump, it’s a bit like you’re applying a hickey to whatever area you’re working with, whether that’s just your clitoral head and shaft, or the whole of your vulva.
(I’m not an affiliate of LoveHoney’s and there are a great many sex toy brands and companies, it’s just that their basic range are very simplistic and don’t have too many moving parts to explain.)
As you can see on both the thinner suction cups for clitoral and nipple suction, and on the cup for the vulva, there’s a little spring release, and as you can see on the right-hand side, there’s also one that you can easily press with your thumb while holding the pump. These quick releases break the vacuum seal and allow blood to rush back to the affected area, and let you pull the cups away.
Pumps like these aren’t for everyone — I will say that they’re not nearly as easy to use if you’ve got pubic hair because the little hairs can get in the way of forming a tight vacuum seal against the skin; moreover, not everyone has a vulva that’s small enough for the average cup, or enjoys the sensation of the suction.
If you do, though, you’ve got different options — firstly, you can just use the pump as a sort of foreplay, encouraging blood to flow to the area, which will make your clitoris and vulva more erect and also encourage more wetness. Afterwards, the flesh will be a lot more tender and sensitive to the touch, much like skin is sensitive to the touch after you’ve been bitten or given a hickey.
Alternatively, you can pump yourself up and then leave the vacuum seal in place, and clench and unclench at the same time, especially pairing a clitoral pump with vaginal penetration or other toys and vibrators.
Some pumps also have vibrators and other attachments to them, so you can be encapsulated by a cup and then feel it start to vibrate or similar!
Penetrative Stimulation
Before we get onto vaginal stimulation, let’s talk about the vulvar vestibule!
I mentioned up in the anatomy sensation that most people’s vaginas become less sensitive the further in you go — the vulvar vestibule is very sensitive on the skin surface.
Firstly, this means it’s important to avoid friction as I mentioned above, but it also means that it can be a really great area to concentrate on for foreplay, especially when it comes to focusing on the surrounding muscle, pulling and pressing on them with fingers and toys from different angles.
When we push down on the pelvic floor like this, especially in conjunction with clenching or relaxing our pelvic floor muscles, we can pull at and apply tension to everything else.
We can also try delicate touches against the mucosal flesh of the inside of the vestibule, although a note of caution that for most people, even really light touches against the urethra can be uncomfortable if not outright painful, so take care with that area.
The G-Spot
Does the G-Spot exist? No. If it does exist, is it actually the G-Spot? Also, no, because it’s not actually a spot or some sort of magic button so much as an area that can stimulate the Skene’s glands and — You know what?
Who cares? The arguments between underfunded scientists who aren’t actually invested in vaginal pleasure are broadly irrelevant to this conversation: practically, an area that we call the G-Spot can for many people be very sensitive and pleasurable for some people.
The general guide to finding “the spot” is to press your fingertips inside your vaginal canal and feel against the roof of the canal. You’ll find when pressing on the walls of your vagina that they’re quite spongey and flexible (they stretch, after all!) and up underneath your urethra and the base of your clitoris, you might find a slightly ribbed bit of flesh inside.
Press on it. Drag over it. You might find a great deal of pleasure from it, and you might be one of the people who finds G-Spot stimulation really pleasurable — for some people, it isn’t, and might even feel a bit uncomfortably numb or just odd rather than pleasurable.
Everybody’s different!
If you don’t much like pressing up on the top, definitely experiment with pressing around the rest of the immediate inside of your vaginal canal and feeling for any spots that are particularly sensitive, because they’ll come in useful for:
Digital Penetration
How does a man finger himself?
Not everyone enjoys penetration, and for those that do, some people find that penetration with the fingers isn’t enough or that they get tired too quickly, which is okay. If you don’t like it, this section might not be so useful — or, if you didn’t like it before but have now started testosterone, you might feel a bit differently if you’re more sensitive now.
Some people, when they approach penetration with fingers, assume that just sliding their fingers in and out will be enough to be pleasurable, but that’s a bit overly simplistic.
If you’re wet, which you should be as much as possible, just thrusting your fingers in and out won’t actually accomplish any real sensation — if you’re in the middle of the vaginal canal, you’re not doing anything to create sensation.
Try sticking two fingers into your mouth — you feel them on your tongue, yes, you feel them against your cheeks or the inside of your lips if you push against those edges, but if you hold your mouth slightly open and just shove your fingers in and out, you don’t feel anything but wet fingers.
It’s up for debate as to whether a vagina is magic or not, but what I can say for certain is that the vagina does not have a Jedi Force-esque field where it can feel everything that happens to cross inside it (or, at least, mine doesn’t).
If you want vaginal sensation, you need to be pressing against the vaginal walls, muscle, or other flesh, because there’s where the nerve endings are, not hovering in the space in the middle.
You can start with one or two fingers — the middle finger and ring finger or the middle finger and index finger are often the easiest for people to work with — and just start by playing around the outside of the vaginal entrance. Playing and pressing on the muscle there, tugging outward gently with your finger tips against it, can be a nice way to feel where you’re wet, and also where you’re more sensitive.
If you are most sensitive on the roof of your vagina, angling your fingers so that you can bend/crook them inside yourself can work really well if you rest the heel (base) of your palm against your clit. That way, as you drag and press at the roof of your vagina with the thrusting of your fingers, you can also grind up against your hand in the same motion.
Alternatively, you might prefer digital stimulation that feels more like penetration with a penis or a toy, in which case it might be better to thrust with your fingers while pressing down on the floor of your vagina, especially as you tilt or thrust your hips up into the motions.
If your hips can’t really take that, remember that you don’t necessarily need to lie back and stare enticingly at the ceiling — you might find it preferable to sit up on your knees and sit yourself down on your fingers, especially if you put a pillow or cushion between your legs so that you can bear down on your hand without having to bear down all the way.
You can do much more conservative rocking motions this way, and not have to rely on more direct thrusting.
Using Toys
So, a lot of toys will be useful in the ways your fingers are, but the benefits of toys is that they can be bigger and longer than your fingers, which certainly means you can thrust them deeper if you prefer that sort of thing.
There’s a lot of toys that have textures on them, but a lot of toys intended for penetration, whether that’s vaginal or anal, will have different shapes — anal beads are a great example, but there’s plenty of vibrators and dildos that have curves, ribbing, and other different shapes to them that you most feel as they thrust in and out past your vaginal entrance, especially if you’re feeling the different drag and pull of those shapes against the outer sphincter of the muscle there.
If you do find you have a sensitive G-Spot or another specific area on that wall that’s pleasurable, you might want to concentrate on angling toward it with penetration.
For a lot of people, a penetrative implement that’s wide evokes more stimulation than a penetrative implement that’s long — if this is you, you might prefer something less traditional than a dildo or other shaft-shaped vibrator.
Firstly, there’s plugs and dildos that will inflate in you (if you want to go for the alien and monstrous route, you can find dragon penis-inspired dildos with knots or what have you), there’s dildos that are shaped after tentacles or glass dildos that have more artsy and complex designs, but there’s also wide plugs and eggs that you can bear down on and are designed to stretch the muscles at the opening of your vagina rather than press inside you.
Not a toy precisely, but some people do use them as such — Ben-Wa or kegel balls might be to your pleasure!
Especially for plugs and dildos, you can often settle a toy in place and then focus on external stimulation while tilting into it or clenching around it.
Some Final Ephemera
People talk about the glory of the humble shower head all the time — I am one of them, and will greatly espouse the benefits thereof. Stimulation from a shower head is mostly external, and can do some all around stimulation at once, especially once you get adjustable shower heads that will let you put firmer streams against some parts of your vulva and the rest of the area, just as against or over your clit, in toward your lips, or against your perineum!
It’s not for everyone, and it depends on good water pressure and a reliable temperature (there’s nothing worse than enjoying yourself and then suddenly the water becomes untenably hot or cold), but they do make adjustable shower heads specifically for managing good water pressure even if your pipes aren’t great.
Shower heads aside, I just wanted to talk a little bit more about chronic pain around the vagina and the rest of the area — I know I’ve mentioned throughout specific advice around managing weakness in the hips and not talked as much about vaginismus, muscle weakness or pain, or other cramping pains around the vulva and vagina.
Unfortunately, because all these different kinds of pain can have so many different sources, whether that’s from endo, vaginismus, scar tissue from pregnancy or trauma, strained muscles, other forms of illness or injury, or just the way that your undercarriage is built and put together, it can be really hard to offer tailored advice for them.
I’m sorry I haven’t been able to offer more in that regard beyond a lot of options and people being able to just experiment with what works best for them in a way that allows for the best avoidance of pain, or for those of us with chronic pain, just as much pain management in the pursuit of orgasm as possible.
Everyone says use plenty of lube, and lube is wonderful, but it’s not your only option for pain management, especially if you have trouble with cramping or other pain and sensitivity that’s not caused by vaginal dryness or too much friction, but by muscle weakness or scarring.
Depending on where that pain and injury is, what you might benefit from is using certain numbing creams and lubes, especially internally — they’re generally marketed for endurance sex, especially for people with penises who have difficulty with premature ejaculation, but the numbing element can be really useful for soothing pain in one area or another, just make sure that what you’re using is okay for internal use, and also that you pay close attention to the area during and afterwards. What you don’t want is to use a numbing cream and then realise after that you’ve done yourself damage.
I might also recommend tingling gels and creams — they’re not necessarily directly numbing in the way that specific endurance products are (it depends on the substance: some of them make the skin feel hot like chili, some of them make it tingle/feel pleasantly cool like peppermint, some of them create more skin sensitivity or prickling sensations, etc), but they can offer distraction and and a unique or uncommon sensation that might offer relief, especially if you’re dealing with something that’s triggered or exacerbated by performance anxiety, like vaginismus.
As with all new lubricants, you should always test gels, creams, and other stuff like this somewhere other than your genitals before you play!
The same as testing new make-up, just daub a little on the inside of your rest and make sure that a) you like how it feels if it’s a tingling or numbing gel, that it’s pleasant rather than overwhelming, etc, and b) that you’re not allergic to it.
Another tip I have for new vibrators is, if you’re worried about the vibration strength and you’re finding it hard to judge how sensitive it will be on your clit or the rest of your vulva using your hands, try holding it to the tip of your nose!
Your nose isn’t an erogenous zone like your clit is, but it’s very sensitive, and you’ll be able to much more accurately judge a vibrator’s strength in terms of comfort level than you can with your hands, which are much more inured to stuff like vibration because you need to be able to use them to pick stuff up.
Your nose, much like your clitoris, doesn’t tend to do much heavy lifting, depending on how much you like piercings.
Additional Reading:
I’m not going to link it because I’ve no official source for it, but Nina Hartley has a great guide to oral sex called Pussy-Eating 101, where she shows a big variety of vulva and vaginal stimulation while giving oral to another woman.
They are porn actresses, and I think it was originally produced as a companion to another piece of pornography, so just note that it does have a different and more titillating tone than any of the resources below, but it’s nonetheless extremely educational.
- How To Enjoy Masturbation More, from VICE
- An Illustrated Guide to Giving Pleasure Without Penetration, from VICE
- Testosterone HRT & Bottom Growth, from FOLXHealth
- MAN-MADE: Testosterone Changed My Body in Ways I Didn’t Know Were Possible, from them.us
- A Guide to Clit Pumping, from MindBodyGreen
- Let’s Talk About Sex (for Trans Men), from Advocate
- Q&A: Gynecological and Vaginal Care for Trans Men, from the San Francisco AIDs Foundation
- Learning Resources, from the Vagina Museum
- Is your Clitoris a Lefty or a Righty?, From Lilly Delvaux
- (uses gendered language and assumes cisgender women’s experiences) Vaginismus, from The Conversation
- (uses gendered language and assumes cisgender women’s experiences) Sex with PCOS, from Refinery29
Aaaand that’s all, folks!
I hope that this guide was elucidatory and educational, and failing that, that it was fun.
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