If female ejaculation exists, then it's time we knew about it. Bettina Arndt proves the case.
BRITISH feminists attacking the film censorship board for cutting porn videos? Yes, that was a surprise, particularly for the British Board of Film Classification, which didn't expect a controversy last year when it decided to cut six minutes and 12 seconds from a video called British Cum Queens. But up popped a group called Feminists Against Censorship, which wrote to the board demanding a review of their decision.
And what was shown in those vital six minutes? According to the filmmakers, the offending material showed women experiencing ejaculation. Not possible, said the board, which was quoted claiming that according to its "expert medical advice" female ejaculation doesn't exist. What was shown in the video had to be urination - which is banned from videos under the Obscene Publications Act.
The feminists expressed their dismay at a decision they claimed would damage women "by indicating that what they experience as a natural response to sexual stimulation simply does not exist". They presented the board with a dozen scientific references supporting the phenomenon. The board then claimed it hadn't said it didn't exist but rather that it considered female ejaculation to be a "controversial and much debated area". Its view was that the video depicted "nothing other than straightforward scenes of urination masquerading as female ejaculation". Similar videos are regularly sold as "urolognia" in countries such as France and Germany, noted the board.
The board was right about one thing - the phenomenon of female ejaculation is controversial and much debated. An internet search reveals more than 23,000 references to research on the subject, dating to the historic moment at a 1980 conference for the Society for the Scientific Study of Sex (SSSS) when sex researchers Beverly Whipple and John Perry showed a film of a woman ejaculating, claiming the fluid was being released from a female prostate after stimulation of an area on the top wall of the vagina they called the "G spot".
Martin Weisberg, a gynaecologist at Thomas Jefferson Hospital in Philadelphia, was blunt in his response: "Bullshit. I spend half my waking hours examining, cutting apart, putting together, removing or rearranging female reproductive organs. There is no female prostate and women don't ejaculate."
But Weisberg changed his mind after the scientists arranged a personal viewing and observed "several cc's of milky fluid" shooting out of the urethra. When the fluid was analysed and found to have vital similarities to prostatic fluid, Weisberg became a believer.
Since then the hunt has been on, with international sex researchers working to discover what the fluid is and where it comes from. Twenty years later some answers are emerging. There's no longer any question that some women do release liquid through the urethra at orgasm - with scientific observation now providing documented proof of what women have long been telling them. It happens, but we still don't know quite what it is.
The mysterious clear, odourless fluid seems to have shared sources, with some released from the paraurethral glands (or Skene's glands, now officially designated the "female prostate" by the international committee determining anatomical terminology), some appears to be a chemically altered form of urine, plus some contribution from glands which produce vaginal lubrication. Analysis of the fluid shows clear evidence of prostate-specific antigen (PSA) - a substance produced by the prostate that does not appear in urine - and far lower levels of other substances (urea, creatine) normally found in urine.
The prostate component is very small, "limited to a couple of teaspoons at best", Perry says. He concludes that in women who produce larger volumes of ejaculate, the rest is urine. But how then is it colourless, without the characteristic taste or smell of urine? Enter Perry's "beer piss" theory, which stems from the time he was a young man consuming large qualities of beer and observed his urine appeared to have less colour than usual. It is this diluted urine - jokingly known as "beer piss" - which Perry proposes to make up the bulk of the ejaculate.
But Dr Gary Shubach, a Californian sex researcher, examined fluid released by women who had their bladders drained by a catheter before ejaculating. He found some still produced more than half a litre - suggesting sources other than diluted urine.
Meanwhile, out on the coal face, women report that when they eat substances that give their urine a distinct odour or colour, this doesn't show up in the ejaculate - an observation confirmed when a student of one of the sex researchers took a dye which turned her urine bright blue but had no effect on her ejaculate.
continued...
BRITISH feminists attacking the film censorship board for cutting porn videos? Yes, that was a surprise, particularly for the British Board of Film Classification, which didn't expect a controversy last year when it decided to cut six minutes and 12 seconds from a video called British Cum Queens. But up popped a group called Feminists Against Censorship, which wrote to the board demanding a review of their decision.
And what was shown in those vital six minutes? According to the filmmakers, the offending material showed women experiencing ejaculation. Not possible, said the board, which was quoted claiming that according to its "expert medical advice" female ejaculation doesn't exist. What was shown in the video had to be urination - which is banned from videos under the Obscene Publications Act.
The feminists expressed their dismay at a decision they claimed would damage women "by indicating that what they experience as a natural response to sexual stimulation simply does not exist". They presented the board with a dozen scientific references supporting the phenomenon. The board then claimed it hadn't said it didn't exist but rather that it considered female ejaculation to be a "controversial and much debated area". Its view was that the video depicted "nothing other than straightforward scenes of urination masquerading as female ejaculation". Similar videos are regularly sold as "urolognia" in countries such as France and Germany, noted the board.
The board was right about one thing - the phenomenon of female ejaculation is controversial and much debated. An internet search reveals more than 23,000 references to research on the subject, dating to the historic moment at a 1980 conference for the Society for the Scientific Study of Sex (SSSS) when sex researchers Beverly Whipple and John Perry showed a film of a woman ejaculating, claiming the fluid was being released from a female prostate after stimulation of an area on the top wall of the vagina they called the "G spot".
Martin Weisberg, a gynaecologist at Thomas Jefferson Hospital in Philadelphia, was blunt in his response: "Bullshit. I spend half my waking hours examining, cutting apart, putting together, removing or rearranging female reproductive organs. There is no female prostate and women don't ejaculate."
But Weisberg changed his mind after the scientists arranged a personal viewing and observed "several cc's of milky fluid" shooting out of the urethra. When the fluid was analysed and found to have vital similarities to prostatic fluid, Weisberg became a believer.
Since then the hunt has been on, with international sex researchers working to discover what the fluid is and where it comes from. Twenty years later some answers are emerging. There's no longer any question that some women do release liquid through the urethra at orgasm - with scientific observation now providing documented proof of what women have long been telling them. It happens, but we still don't know quite what it is.
The mysterious clear, odourless fluid seems to have shared sources, with some released from the paraurethral glands (or Skene's glands, now officially designated the "female prostate" by the international committee determining anatomical terminology), some appears to be a chemically altered form of urine, plus some contribution from glands which produce vaginal lubrication. Analysis of the fluid shows clear evidence of prostate-specific antigen (PSA) - a substance produced by the prostate that does not appear in urine - and far lower levels of other substances (urea, creatine) normally found in urine.
The prostate component is very small, "limited to a couple of teaspoons at best", Perry says. He concludes that in women who produce larger volumes of ejaculate, the rest is urine. But how then is it colourless, without the characteristic taste or smell of urine? Enter Perry's "beer piss" theory, which stems from the time he was a young man consuming large qualities of beer and observed his urine appeared to have less colour than usual. It is this diluted urine - jokingly known as "beer piss" - which Perry proposes to make up the bulk of the ejaculate.
But Dr Gary Shubach, a Californian sex researcher, examined fluid released by women who had their bladders drained by a catheter before ejaculating. He found some still produced more than half a litre - suggesting sources other than diluted urine.
Meanwhile, out on the coal face, women report that when they eat substances that give their urine a distinct odour or colour, this doesn't show up in the ejaculate - an observation confirmed when a student of one of the sex researchers took a dye which turned her urine bright blue but had no effect on her ejaculate.
continued...