While I appreciate the time you put into this, you haven’t really addressed my criticism - that podcast spends ~30 seconds on the topic, and even as explained in the article from whatever pride.com is, do not make a concrete statement beyond their own impressions. They even explicitly say that they feel like they are in the minority and that the prevailing attitude of lesbians is that we/they as a group don’t scissor. Also, there is a single comment on that page in support of their presentation of scissoring. That’s… not a plurality of support, nor is the podcast’s comment at odds with their own characterization of the culture surrounding the act presented in the podcast itself.

I’m not sure what your goal is with presenting the history of the term, but it is interesting to see the wikipedia article rewritten so succinctly, thank you!

Ngram viewer - it’s a representation of the data contained within it yes, as their initial paper says, but the way you’re using it here is at perfect odds with your own characterization of the service:

it’s true the corpora don’t reflect general language & culture

Which is what you’re claiming it does. If you’re shifting it to mean that tribbing hasn’t appeared in print much, I already agreed and my hypothetical addresses exactly this issue, as does the excerpt on the criticism of Google Ngram. Also wikipedia directly addresses this:

Scissoring is commonly used as an umbrella term for all forms of tribadism, and many lesbian and bisexual women are unaware that some of the sexual acts they include in their lovemaking are aspects of and are formally labeled tribadism, as tribadism is commonly omitted from mainstream sex research.

So there’s really not much to be said about it’s frequency of use in print media, just about the driving reasons behind it.

Thank you.

Polyqueue is a deeply entertaining term for the more promiscuous ways to approach poly relationships which I’m absolutely using in the future so there’s that lmao.

Also, thank you. It’s unfortunate that your characterization of what I was doing seems to have colored the rest of the interactions in this thread, since correcting a common misconception really isn’t a “well ackchually” but… that’s just me whining into the void.

I’m not 100% sure what the argument has become. Their source even lists the reason “scissoring” as it’s commonly shown in porn (the barbie thing) isn’t the real act. I think the issue is that I am using the term “scissoring” to refer to the barbie thing, as that is how the term is used among every lesbian I have interacted with as well as in all the writing about this topic from lesbians that I have engaged with, and their source is using the term “scissoring” as an umbrella term for “tribbing” (which they have clarified they’re doing).

I don’t think that we disagree on concept, just that they are arguing from a position of slight semantic difference. “Scissoring” the position seen in porn isn’t “real” tribbing. It’s a bit like the sex tips in cosmo - are there men that might enjoy having a doughnut eaten off their shaft, or who enjoy being jabbed in the balls with a fork while getting head? Yeah, probably, but I’m pretty sure we can agree that those specific examples shouldn’t be used as the common representation of what a “blowjob” consists of. Nor do I suspect anyone is going to argue that the insane and grotesque sex acts on urban dictionary are “real”, even if someone might have tried one of them once.

Anyone can do anything, and people are weird about sex - but as they’re intimated, the common depiction of the sex act in porn is a bad representation, and that is all I have been saying. If the argument truly is just that they think scissoring refers to all tribbing, their own sources show that’s a contested claim.

Are there nonabrasive dishwasher detergents?

No, it’s not going to look like when you made your Barbies scissor (and we know you did) because humans have joints, and fat, and can get tired in strenuous positions.

I don’t know what pride.com is, nor have I heard of the podcast they’re linking to, however! nothing you’re saying here actually disagrees with what I’ve said elsewhere in this thread. Yes, tribbing is a thing. No, the common depiction of “scissoring” is not representative of tribbing on the whole. Wikipedia even makes the argument that the use of the term “scissoring” is because the term “tribadism” (tribbing) is no longer used and use the term “scissoring” to describe the same sex acts (something I very much disagree with, and isn’t exactly supported by how the term is used extensively in the remainder of that section)

tribadism is commonly omitted from mainstream sex research. Scholar Judith Halberstam stated, “If we trace the use of the term forward into present, we find that tribadism is one of those rarely discussed but often practiced sexual activities, and the silence that surrounds it now is as puzzling as the discourse it produced in earlier centuries.” Halberstam added that Sigmund Freud “had nothing to say” with regard to the topic, “and few contemporary lesbian sex books even discuss it”.

Google Ngram Viewer isn’t a good source, btw. It’s neat, but it’s bad quality data that doesn’t control for biases and it really shouldn’t be used to indicate social trends.

The data sets of the Ngram Viewer have been criticized for their reliance upon inaccurate optical character recognition (OCR) and for including large numbers of incorrectly dated and categorized texts. Because of these errors, and because they are uncontrolled for bias (such as the increasing amount of scientific literature, which causes other terms to appear to decline in popularity), care must be taken in using the corpora to study language or test theories. Furthermore, the data sets may not reflect general linguistic or cultural change and can only hint at such an effect because they do not involve any metadata like date published, author, length, or genre, to avoid any potential copyright infringements.

As an example, a random alternative explanation for the trend seen (assuming the data is accurate which we cannot do with ngram viewer) that I’ve just made up is that papers about the details of lesbian sex were unpopular, and the body of scientific and recreational literature is catching up with the terminology used in their subject matter as the topic becomes less anathema in grant applications. This would very much line up with the dates, and explain the growing usage of the more technical terms as the broadly accepted terminology catches up with the usage of the terms in literature.

Edit:

The podcast, at least in pride’s reporting, doesn’t seem to corroborate that it’s a real thing? Or at least it doesn’t concretely do so, as they explain the podcast’s interaction as:

The back-and-forth left viewers amused as they desperately tried to parse out whether the conversation was for real or just messing around, which actually proves quite thoroughly how confused society as a whole remains about the mythology of scissoring.

Which really doesn’t seem like they’re making the definite claim that it’s real, and I’m not sure why it’s being used as a source here in light of that ambiguity?

Seriously, what is pride.com? I’ve never heard of them before, are they a known entity?

It’s a square/rectangle thing, really. Tribbing is absolutely a thing, scissoring as a specific type of tribbing (as it is represented in porn) really isn’t.

I suppose I came off a bit much in my first comment.

I’ll be real, it’s pretty disheartening to get from a queer person the same kind of casual dismissal I get from (ex) my conservative-leaning relatives when correcting exhaustively common stereotypes about queer women. I’m sincerely glad you’re okay with the common stereotypes of you though.

(also totally unrelated, but it’s usually spelled polycule)

IDK what genitals you have so you may not be able to relate to the sexual aspect specifically as shown here, but do you never get tired of seeing the wild misrepresentation of what poly relationships are like in media?

Subarus are a very practical vehicle for people who like city living but also go out to festivals or go on hiking trips, they’re pretty reliable, they’re fairly popular on the pretty gay west coast so they can be found used pretty commonly and they’re one of the few common vehicles in the US that are comfortably sized for women to drive (Volvo is also popular for similar reasons, and it has a silly name)

No I… actually have, the lack of representation for sapphic-oriented pornography is sorta a passion subject with me.

… So, are you queer? Because in my experience bad representations of queer sex/relationships are a huge portion of the experience.

It’s “real” in that yes you can just rub your junk on stuff, including someone else’s junk - it’s not real in that it’s not, like, something people actually do, or that feels particularly stimulating for both partners just because of the geometry (it’s borderline impossible to get your bits to mutually line up). Basically as it’s commonly depicted, it’s not real. There’s stuff you can do with mutual thighs that can be quite nice if it works anatomically for you and your partner, but I’ve never seen that done in porn (and believe me I’ve looked)

Well at least we know this wasn’t made by a lesbian since Scissoring isn’t real uuuugh

Some types of antidepressants have a very common side effect where they massively reduce (sometimes to the point of completely eliminating) your sex drive. It’s a really shitty tradeoff.

Generally the reason not to put knives in the dishwasher is because the mild abrasives used in some detergents, and more importantly the agitation which bonks them around, can dull the edge (and damage the coating on the racks that prevents your dishwasher from rusting, if you have one that isn’t full plastic) (also not promptly drying the knife will lead to rusting if you have carbon steel instead of cres knives).

Does the splash screen not still explicitly explain that it doesn’t make you invisible, it just means your browsing history is clear??

I hate to point this out, but it’s 2026.

Everything else is great though.

This was at CES, it’s basically one massive advertisement for trendy bs. Most of the american firms represented were there for AI and wearable tech, since the push for consumer robotics is mostly a dying fad in the US and AI is the hot new thing.

It super does though the specific characteristics vary depending on where it was extracted (iirc crude from the canadian oil sands is borderline explosive)

Okay the sentiment is fine but what in the fuck is this template??