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The thing about the clitoris is, it has no function beyond sexual pleasure. Yep, the entire organ—including both the ultra-sensitive button at the top of the labia (a.k.a. the glans clitoris) and the internal “legs” (or the crura) branching in a wishbone shape around the vaginal canal—exists purely for orgasmic purposes. In fact, more than 70% of women in a 2015 survey reported that they required clitoral stimulation to climax during sex or that it made coming feel better.
And yet this small but mighty body part is often neglected, presumably because p-in-v sex doesn’t necessarily involve the clit. (Sad, we know.) It’s a major reason for the orgasm gap, or the fact that just 65% of heterosexual women report “usually” orgasming during sex compared to 95% of heterosexual men, Taylor Nolan, PhD, LMHC, Seattle-based licensed psychotherapist, sex educator, and member of the PlusOne wellness collective, tells SELF. (Bisexual and lesbian women are slightly ahead at 66% and 86%, respectively.)
Narrowing that chasm means reprioritizing your clit in bed. Below, you’ll find different techniques to help you level up from your basic nub-rub.
But first, some advice for any kind of clitoral stimulation
Whether you’re touching your own clit or your partner’s, it’s important to know that no two are the same. “Once you’ve met a clitoris, you’ve only met one clitoris,” Casey Tanner, LCPC, New York–based psychotherapist, AASECT-certified sex therapist, and author of Feel It All: A Therapist’s Guide to Reimagining Your Relationship with Sex, tells SELF. Meaning, there’s no single type of stimulation that will feel best across the board.
All the experts SELF spoke with suggest starting slow and gentle. After all, a 2023 study found that the clitoris is very sensitive because it has around 10,200 (!!) nerve endings. (For reference, your entire palm has about 17,000.) So you don’t want to do too much too quickly.
Using a light, soft touch also helps get the blood flowing to the vulva, which makes the tissue swell and increases sensitivity, so that anything you do down there feels better, Tanner says. It takes time for the clitoris to become engorged, “just like a penis becomes erect,” she says. “The same way that touching a soft penis might not do much for somebody, stimulating a soft clit may not either.” As it becomes harder, warmer, and wetter, though, you’ll want to build pressure gradually, Jessica O’Reilly, PhD, sex and relationships expert at Womanizer and founder of the Sex With Dr. Jess podcast, tells SELF.
If you’re touching (or being touched by) your partner, it’s also essential to make room for in-the-moment feedback, Tanner stresses. “The more that the person with a vulva [being touched] can say, ‘up, down, a little to the right, harder, soft,’ etc., the more likely that person is to experience pleasure and orgasm,” she says.
How to stimulate the clitoris during masturbation or with a partner
1. Start with some indirect touch. You don’t need to treat the glans clitoris as a “doorbell that you need to ring,” Dr. O’Reilly says. Instead, Tanner suggests layering the natural folds of your labia over the nub to massage it indirectly. This way, you’re reducing any friction that might otherwise cause your clit to feel overstimulated.
2. Pocket it. Dr. O’Reilly suggests cupping your hand over the full length of your labia, or forming a little pocket around it, to create diffused, indirect pressure against the nub as well as the vestibular bulbs, a part of the clitoris beneath the labia that’s responsible for orgasmic contractions. “You can just hold your hand there, pulse gently or rub and grind, or undulate your hand in a wavelike motion,” she suggests, “adding pressure as you get riled up.”
3. Massage either side of the nub. In the realm of diffused pressure, it can be hot to tease yourself a little by not going right for the button and instead rubbing on both sides with either two or four fingers in the shape of a V, Dr. O’Reilly says.
4. Make a figure eight. Tanner suggests imagining the shape of an eight with the center being the nub, and then running a finger along this path. “What this does is not just stimulate the clitoris, but the surrounding tissue, which is also quite sensitive. And similar to layering, you’re avoiding sustained direct [touch] that can overstimulate,” she says.
5. Experiment with squeezing your thighs. Whether you’re crossing your legs or just pulling them together, this can put feel-good pressure on the clitoris and, if you pair it with any of the external touch techniques here, enhance your route to orgasm, Dr. Nolan says.
6. Gently tap, rub, and massage the nub. This is a tried-and-true clit stimulation move—and if it ain’t broke, then, by all means, do not fix it. You can start with light tapping and move to rubbing in a back-and-forth or circular motion as things get warm and wet, Dr. Nolan suggests. Another variation to consider: Use a few fingers together to increase the surface area you’re covering, or play around with using a fingertip versus the pad of a finger, says Tanner.
7. Involve a thumb. This might be tricky if you’re touching yourself, but if you’re fingering a partner, try massaging their clit with your thumb (or ask them to do the same for you). “With a partner especially, fingers can feel intimidating or like you’re being probed, but a thumb is usually less dexterous and therefore less pokey-feeling,” Dr. O’Reilly says.
8. Go for internal access. Remember how the clitoral anatomy extends inside the body? Research suggests that what you might know as your G-spot—that sensitive belly-side part of the vaginal wall often cited as the source of vaginal orgasms—may actually just be an area where you can stimulate the internal parts of the clit, Tanner says. The best way to reach that interior erogenous zone is with angled vaginal penetration, she says, whether via a partner’s finger (have them use a “come hither” motion) or a curved sex toy with the tip pointed upward (more on that below).
Given basic anatomy, we’ll assume you’re using your tongue on a partner—and remind you that before you do anything (or alternatively, have them go down on you), it’s essential to talk it through, Dr. Nolan says. The way you enjoy giving oral to someone with a vagina or have given it with positive feedback in the past may not be how your current partner prefers it—which is obviously key to know beforehand. Here are some potential stimulation techniques to discuss:
9. Kiss gently…and then harder. Remember that note about starting slow? You can really tease your partner by giving them breathy little fairy kisses around their vulva and glans clitoris or even just breathing warm air over their clit, Dr. O’Reilly says. From there, build things up by essentially making out with their nub, Dr. Nolan says.
10. Explore using different parts of your tongue. Not all licking is created equally. “Just pressing the firm tip of your tongue will feel different than using the wide padded surface,” Tanner says. You can alternate which part you’re using, “and experiment with pressing and releasing around the [clitoris] area,” Dr. O’Reilly says.
11. Suck away. There wouldn’t be a whole category of sex toys imitating a sucking feeling (again, more on that below) if it wasn’t something people loved during oral sex. If your partner is open to it, explore gentle sucking around their nub and even directly on it, Dr. O’Reilly says. (Just keep teeth out of the picture…unless they specifically ask for that.)
12. Place a toy over the entire labia. There’s a wide variety of clitoral vibrators specifically designed to flood the clitoris with the kind of rumbly, consistent stimulation that a tongue or finger could never. But a great place to start is with a flat, ovular toy you can hold in your palm, particularly if you’re someone who gets overstimulated, Tanner says. Center it over your glans clitoris so that it’s covering a swath of your labia, and “the wider surface area will spread out the sensation,” she says. With these kinds of toys and the others below, it’s also a good idea to choose one with a large range of vibration intensities, Dr. Nolan suggests, “and give yourself about 30 seconds on each setting to test it out.”
13. Apply a wand vibrator to the nub. The direct stimulation of a wand vibrator on your clit can feel amazing. But if it seems like overkill to you, Tanner also suggests zhuzhing one of your labia over your clit and trying the vibrator there, or just using it over your underwear. (Remember layering?) This way, you’re diffusing the pressure a bit.
14. Use an air-suction toy. The idea of suction in such a sensitive area might sound scary but it’s a bit of a misnomer in this case; Dr. O’Reilly says that air-suction sex toys are really designed to mimic the feeling of lips sucking on your clit and actually involve waves of changing air pressure “that create a sensation somewhere between pulsing, sucking, and massaging.” So you’re getting indirect pressure on that highly innervated area, she says.
15. Insert a dildo and angle it upward. Again, the clitoris goes beyond that little nub; it extends internally in a way that experts suspect accounts for the G-spot or that sensitive part of the vaginal wall you can access with a dildo. Tanner suggests looking for a curved one and sliding it into the vagina with the tip pointing toward the belly button in order to access that feel-good zone of the internal clit. (Using a little lube can go a long way here.)
You can also achieve this kind of G-spot stimulation with a penis during p-in-v sex, but that requires “a degree of pelvic tilt [for the person with a vulva] that moves the penetration closer to that area of the vaginal wall,” Tanner says, noting that sex positions with entry from behind (like doggy-style, for instance) can make it easier to nail that angle.
16. Go for double the fun with a rabbit vibrator. This kind of vibe has both internal and external portions (two “ears”) for a best-of-both-worlds situation, Tanner says. Typically, the part that goes inside is also curved to hit the G-spot, while the external portion is nubbier and designed to offer rumbly vibrations to the glans clitoris at the same time.
17. Put your hips into it. No matter what kind of toy you’re using, Dr. Nolan recommends pairing it with Betty Dodson’s “Rock and Roll” method, which involves clenching and releasing the pelvic floor muscles quickly in succession—essentially, fucking your toy and not just letting the toy fuck you, she says. When you thrust your hips into the toy and activate those muscles, you’re bringing blood flow to the region, she explains, which is, again, key to making any kind of clit stimulation (or sexual activity, for that matter) feel as good as possible and land in a blissful orgasm.
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