Female ejaculation is the greatest thing in the entire world. It’s above winning the lottery and getting a seat on a crowded subway. The underground, avant-garde art of squirting can open doors of new sexual pleasure for women, lead to a greater understanding of female genitalia, and completely ruin your sheets (but it’s soooooo worth it!). The topic can’t possibly be done justice in one article – hell, entire books have been written – so I’ll do my best to thoroughly cover it in a multi-part series. This month I’ll review the incredibly fascinating history of female ejaculation, shedding light on the somewhat inconclusive results of thousands of years of formal and informal exploration.
Of course, like most things that give women sexual pleasure, female ejaculation has been the subject of great controversy throughout the years. Squirting’s existed since women have existed, but referencing various cultures and time periods throughout history will yield completely different conclusions about it. Surprisingly, some of the most modern and educated of communities have been the least accepting. Female ejaculation has historically been dismissed or denied by the medical establishment throughout the past three centuries, though it was acknowledged for thousands of years prior in both folk wisdom and anatomical literature.
Artwork by Anastasia Ponyatovskaya
Squirting in the Yesteryears
The earliest Chinese, Arabic, and Indian sex advice manuals (including The Kama Sutra) celebrated female ejaculation, as did ancient Greek and Judaic texts. Anthropological reports from the South Pacific to Africa to Western America describe multiple accounts of the squirting of lady juice. From fifth-century B.C.E. up until the Enlightenment, it was commonly believed in the Western world that the mixed sexual fluids and sexual pleasure of both the woman and the man were necessary for successful conception. What a lovely concept! Wrong, but lovely nonetheless. Before the eighteenth-century, when shit took a decidedly unpleasant turn in terms of sexual egalitarianism, men and women were considered to be similarly passionate about sex, both were expected to ejaculate, and their orgasms were equally respected. I know, I know – blows my mind too.
So what happened? Unfortunately, knowledge happened, and in yet another case of science being used to justify the oppression and othering of women, these flowery ideas of gender equality in the bedroom went buh-bye with the invention of the microscope. Once dudes (yeah, um, back then women were kind of, like, not allowed to do science and stuff) figured out that it was only their sticky icky that made babies, the acknowledgement of squirting and the value of the female orgasm literally disappeared from medical literature. After that, what used to be “ejaculation” became “pissing the bed.” Doctors dismissed all patient reports of squirting as incontinence, and, as a result, untold numbers of women took medication or underwent disfiguring surgery to “fix” a problem they never had in the first place, while millions more suppressed their orgasms and sexual pleasure to avoid the mysterious wet results. Lame.
Urethra Feva’
In the early-mid 1900s, Dr. Ernst Grafenberg, a German obstetrician and gynecologist began to explore the urethra (where ejaculate is expelled from) and the urethral sponge (the erectile tissue surrounding the urethra) as erogenous zones in women. He drew on the findings of previous researchers Regnier de Graaf, Alexander J.C. Skene, and John W. Huffman, who had discovered the urethral sponge tissue, noted that it contained prostatic-like glands, and dubbed it the female prostate. Neener, neener, neener, we’ve got a prostate, too! Unlike those before him, however, Grafenberg‘s main interest, when studying the female prostate and its excretions, were their functions in pleasure and sexuality - a concept that was virtually non-existent in modern medicine. He published papers that documented the occurrence of female ejaculation, attempting to debunk the prevailing medical attitude that women who experienced it were peeing during orgasm.
Unfortunately, Grafenberg’s findings fell on deaf ears, and sex researchers throughout the second half of the 20th century remained completely unconvinced that anything other than piss came out of women’s cooters. Even rockstar sexologists like Kinsey and Masters and Johnson rejected the idea of female ejaculation, despite their own documented research. All had observed women expelling fluid that was not urine, but Kinsey dismissed it as forcefully ejected vaginal lubrication, and other researchers went so far as to hypothesize that women were squirting “leftover bathwater” that had found its way into the urethra. Um, I’m not even a doctor and I know that’s bullshit. In other words, despite their own observations, countless personal anecdotes, and all other historical evidence to the contrary, these old fogey white guys were just not buying it. The idea that women might possibly be capable of something that previously belonged exclusively to men was far too frightening to be legitimized.
What up, G?
Female ejaculation, the female prostate, and the idea of the urethra as an erogenous zone remained an unacknowledged mystery until the late 1970s and early 1980s, when it began to, yet again, reemerge in sex research. Josephine Severly and J.W Bennett continued to study the urethral sponge in women, and, like others before them, claimed it was analogous to prostate tissue in men. Picking up where Severly and Bennett left off, Beverly Whipple (known as the godmother of female ejaculation) became interested in the phenomenon when treating women with Urinary Stress Incontinence. She noticed that some of her patients had very strong pelvic floor (puboccygeus / PC / Kegel / pee stoppin’) muscles and only lost urinary control during sex. Whipple knew that women with strong pelvic floor muscles are very unlikely to experience incontinence, so she teamed up with fellow sex researcher John Perry to further examine the possibility of female ejaculation, hoping to spare concerned women unnecessary medical treatment or surgery.
In 1981, Beverly Whipple and John Perry extrapolated previous research on the female urethral sponge, focusing primarily on the part of the sponge that can be felt through the vaginal wall and its role in orgasm and ejaculation. They christened this little chunk o’ heaven the “G-spot” or “Grafenberg spot,” after our ol’ buddy Ernst Grafenberg, and noted that stimulation of the G-spot often resulted in ejaculation and/or orgasm. Whipple, Perry, and their co-writer Alice Kahn Lades, published their findings, including documentation of women’s ability to ejaculate, in The G-spot: And Other Recent Discoveries About Human Sexuality. The popular book brought the G-spot and squirting into the mainstream discourse in a way that no sex research journal ever could, and Whipple continued to publish articles, videos, and lecture at conferences on the subject. Unfortunately, sexologists and the general public alike were still skeptical, even contemptuous, of squirting. Since the tiny bit of research that was done in the 1980s, few medical studies have bothered to reexamine female ejaculation. It remains confined to the few informal videos, studies, and discussions of personal experiences that feminists and human sexuality enthusiasts have made in the vacuum of scientific disinterest. Some studies have been done regarding the chemical composition of female ejaculate (more on that in later articles), and though the most recent research has noted that the sexual function of the urethra should be investigated, well, um…nobody’s doing it. What?! The privileged, established scientific community isn’t all that interested in the sexual pleasure of women? Color me surprised!
An Inconclusive Truth
So what have we learned? Well, we know that the female prostate/G-spot does, in fact, exist. We know that female ejaculation is a legitimate fact, and that many women produce a clear alkaline fluid, that is not urine, upon sexual stimulation (I’ll discuss the chemical composition of female ejaculate in later articles). It is unknown if female ejaculation can be “learned,” and we do not know conclusively if all women have the ability to ejaculate. Why some women squirt more than others is unclear, but we do know that the amount of fluid varies greatly, vaginal stimulation isn’t always necessary, and that it can happen prior to, during, or after orgasm. Despite all categorical evidence, many are still skeptical of squirting (usually the folks who haven’t done or witnessed it), and many misconceptions still exist in popular opinion. Female ejaculation remains controversial and, compared to other sexual functions, relatively unexplored.
Whew. I hope that wasn’t too boring. While history lessons are typically pretty unsexy, I feel it’s imperative to understand how scientific and cultural attitudes regarding female ejaculation have changed and evolved (or, in some cases, devolved) over the years. It’s fascinating how social opinion can affect sexual research, and, on the flip side, it’s fascinating how sexual research can affect social opinion. It’s pretty obvious that folks, unfortunately, don’t consider female sexuality to be much of a priority. There’s obviously a genuine lack of interest and substantial investigation, and when women’s sexual function is explored, the results are often used to justify prevailing misogynist opinion or create another facet of it. I, myself am fascinated to the point of obsession with female ejaculation – partially because I can do it and IT IS FUCKING AMAZING, and partially because I possess a knee-jerk desire to explore and defend anything having to do with women’s sexual pleasure that people consider to be unimportant or controversial. I’m not nearly done waxing poetic on the majestic display that I like to call “pussy fireworks,” so stay tuned for future articles on female ejaculation, including the coveted “how-to” installment.
Kendall is a freelance writer and sexuality expert residing in Brooklyn after managing to escape her hometown of Orange County, CA. She works for a women’s health and reproductive rights advocacy organization, and spends her days trying to figure out how to best irritate anti-choice nutbags and fundies. Kendall is a certified family planning and sexual health educator, sex shop ex-employee, former co-host of the best damn sex talk show ever to hit college radio, and an all-around fucking enthusiast. She’s also a big believer in the theory that if everybody led empowering, non-exploitive, guilt-free sex lives, bad things on this planet would cease to exist.
I'm sure you've heard this, but SexisFun did a great podcast on this that includes some interesting history on female ejaculation: http://cdn2.libsyn.com/sexisfu..._Gland.mp3
Today's Class Topic: Rape It takes a lot of courage for you, Jess, and other women and men to speak out about what happen to them. I believe that ...
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About Sheilagh O'Leary
Sheilagh Ethne O’Leary is an established award-winning art photographer born and living in St. John’s, Newfoundland. Her work has been exhibited/collected internationally and appears in numerous art journals and publications. Sheilagh received her art education through mentorship with Manfred Buchheit, Concordia University’s Faculty of Fine Art, Banff Centre for the Arts, and the Rockport Maine Workshops. Read More...
Kendall is a freelance writer and sexuality expert residing in Brooklyn after managing to escape her hometown of Orange County, CA. She works for a women’s health and reproductive rights advocacy organization, and spends her days trying to figure out how to best irritate anti-choice nutbags and fundies. Kendall is a certified family planning and sexual health educator, sex shop ex-employee, former co-host of the best damn sex talk show ever to hit college radio, and an all-around fucking enthusiast. She’s also a big believer in the theory that if everybody led empowering, non-exploitive, guilt-free sex lives, bad things on this planet would cease to exist.
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