Posts Tagged ‘ejaculation’
on certain ejected fluids
Some years ago I read Bonk: the curious coupling of sex and science, by the popular science writer Mary Roach, having read one of her previous books (Stiff – and no, it wasn’t because I thought it’d be about sex), and of course I found it compelling, but I recall being disappointed at the lack of information in some areas, one of which has come back to me thanks to a YouTube video recently watched. The colloquial term is ‘squirting’, sometimes also referred to as female ejaculation. What’s that about, and is it just urine, with a few womanly additives? That’s what I want to explore today.
So according to popular YouTuber Rena Malik MD, squirting is ‘the emission of fluid from the urethra, during sexual arousal or orgasm, that occurs in some women’. The urethra (I’m writing as a none too sexually experienced male here) is the tube through which urine from the bladder leaves the body, and it ranges in length from about 3.8cm in women to about 20cm in men, and most of that male length is external, and is sometimes called the penis. Malik also educates me about the Skene’s gland. These glands are located ‘around and beneath the urethra and are homologous to the male prostate gland’, so these different glands start to emerge in embryonic development. Again according to Malik ‘the theory is that during sexual arousal these Skene’s glands fill with fluid, then during orgasm the pelvic floor muscles contract, putting pressure on the spongy tissues of the urethra’, causing fluid to be ejected. The question again is, what precisely does this fluid consist of? And one ‘issue’, if you can call it that, is that if it’s just pee, with a few additives, why don’t men pee when their urethra/penis is aroused or manipulated? And we must thank the universe that they don’t.
There appears to be more mystery around these matters than there should be, given their centrality to a sexually satisfying and mind-expanding life. So what do we know?
This, I’m finding, isn’t an easy topic to research. I mentioned female ejaculation, which Malik describes as something quite separate from squirting, while others seem to disagree. A 2015 paper, ‘Nature and origin of “squirting” in female sexuality’, the abstract of which is posted on PubMed, concludes with this:
The present data based on ultrasonographic bladder monitoring and biochemical analyses indicate that squirting is essentially the involuntary emission of urine during sexual activity, although a marginal contribution of prostatic secretions to the emitted fluid often exists.
This accords with my guess, and it also, perhaps, provides a clue to why it’s an exclusively female experience. And here I have to admit that my research comes from viewing Japanese sex videos, in which women are induced to squirt by manual manipulation, often vigorous, of the upper wall of the vagina, near where both the clitoris and the urethral opening sit. It’s not hard to imagine that such vigorous pressure, on both the urethra and the clitoris, by a male or female sex performer with savour faire, can produce the required result. And clearly, males just aren’t anatomically open to such an experience. And of course it doesn’t always require manual manipulation, as my scientific researches have found. Some women are able to squirt through standard sexual intercourse, or by the use of a vibrator or some such device. And presumably some are not. After all, every set of female and male genitalia is as anatomically unique as is every human face. We’re just not looking closely enough!
Now, in inquiring into this, I’ve found commentators claiming that ‘it’s definitely not urine’. They must surely be going not by the look of the fluid – it certainly looks like pee – but by smell and, dare I say, taste. I’ve never tried the taste test myself, and I must admit to being slightly averse to sniffing pee, but I do know that pee can come in slightly different colours and this is obviously due to variations in its chemical composition due to diet, illness and the like. And it would seem obvious to me that ‘squirt’ varies similarly, but also due to the ‘marginal contribution of prostatic secretions’ above-mentioned.
So, are squirting and female ejaculation the same things? Off the top of my head I would say it’s just semantics. An ejaculate (noun) is, arguably, something you ejaculate (verb). It could be vomit, or blood, or, common amongst dictatorial types, verbal diarrhoea. And so I disagree with Dr Malik when she says that ‘ejaculation and squirting are two different things’, though I think she’s trying to make the distinction between what women sometimes release during sex/masturbation, and the semen released by men. In fact she’s fallen for the patriarchal myth, or just the patriarchal way of putting things, that only males ejaculate. Then again, maybe it’s me that’s trying to preserve the term in its broadest sense. Most dictionaries define ejaculation specifically in terms of semen, and describe its broader use as ‘dated’. So I don’t know if I’m an old fuddy-duddy or a post-modern feminist seeking renovation of a patriarchalised term. Enfin, je m’en fous de tout ça!
One more point. It’s often claimed that squirting is a more or less involuntary occurrence. It’s said to happen unexpectedly, causing a degree of shock and embarrassment. Women just can’t control themselves, as we all know, while men ejaculate by means of freely-willed effort. It almost takes us back to the days of Aristotle – men are the seed-bearers, women the mere receptacle. It’s enough to make me piss myself laughing.
All in all this is a most stimulating topic. I might try to get a handle on the g-spot next, so to speak.
Reference
Mary Roach, Bonk: the curious coupling of sex and science, 2008
Stephen Jay Gould, ‘Male nipples and clitoral ripples’, in Bully for brontosaurus, 1991
21 – dolphins, bonobos, sex and pleasure
bonobos at Jacksonville zoo
I enjoyed a little boat trip off the north-east coast of Kangaroo Island recently. The owner, our guide, bounced us up and down the shoreline east of Christmas Cove to view caves in the limestone cliffs, seabirds such as wedge-tailed eagles on the cliff-tops, and above all to search for a pod of dolphins known to be using the area as a daytime resting-place.
After a few bouts of bouncing eastward and westward we were becoming skeptical, though by no means annoyed. A year before, the island, Australia’s third largest after Tasmania and Melville Island, had been ravaged by bushfires, devastating vegetation and wildlife, and seriously damaging the island’s fragile economy, not to say ecology, and we were happy to make our tiny contribution without great expectations of sighting fabulous beasties.
So we were delighted, on heading eastward again, to spot a few fins bobbing and dipping in the water ahead. Slowing toward them, we were told there were about 25 dolphins in this pod (the term was first used by whalers in the early nineteenth century, for reasons unknown). I soon gave up trying to count them as identical-looking fins appeared and disappeared and vaguely discerned bodies twisted and turned just below the surface. They seemed to form pairs now and then, breaking the surface sleekly and synchronously in elegant arcs. Dolphins, I learned, spend their days lolling about near the shore in these pods after a night of hunting out at sea. They seemed aware but unconcerned about our presence, and at one time the whole group disappeared then reappeared on the other side of our boat, bobbing and slow-twirling as before.
I was struck by a remark by our guide that dolphins are one of the few mammals that mate for fun or pleasure. Of course I made an immediate connection with bonobos, but then I wondered, what does the verb, to mate, exactly mean? We humans never describe ourselves as mating, that’s for the birds, etc. We fuck, screw, bonk, shag, hump and bone, we more coyly sleep together, and more romantically make love (not allowed for other species), but we’re way above mating.
‘Mating’ brings up two internet definitions, the action of animals coming together to breed, and copulation. So dolphins, and bonobos and humans, often come together to breed – but actually not to breed. As for copulation, that’s rarely used for humans, just as fornication is rarely used for non-humans. The latter is, of course, a term of mostly religious disapproval, and non-humans are too lowly to be worthy of moral judgment.
Of course we do apply mating to humans with a pinch of irony, as in the mating game, and this blurs the line between humans and others, but not enough for me. The point is that dolphins and bonobos use sex, which may not be the full rumpy-pumpy (dolphins don’t even have rumps to speak of), to bond with each other, to ease tension, to have fun, as our guide said. But then, don’t all species have sex purely for pleasure, or at least because driven to do so, by sensation? Do cats, dogs, birds and flies have sex with the intention of reproducing? I don’t think so.
Human sex is pleasurable, so I’ve heard, and I expect bonobo sex is too. Fly sex probably not, or so I thought, but I’m probably wrong. Researchers have found that male fruit flies enjoy ejaculating, and tend to consume alcohol when denied sex. I know exactly how they feel. Anyway, fruit flies have long been favourites for biological research, and more recently they’ve found that ‘a protein present in the ejaculate of male fruit flies activates long-term memory formation in the brains of their female partners’. It rather makes me wonder what effect this kind of research has on the researchers themselves, but I’m sure it’s all for the best.
One thing is certain, cats and dogs, and I’ve had a few, feel pleasure. Cats are appallingly sensual, and I’ve probably had more sexual advances from dogs than from humans, though whether they involved pleasure I can’t be sure. Generally our understanding of non-human sex has expanded in recent decades, as our sense of our specialness in everything has receded. It’s also true that we’ve tended to look at other species with a scientific instrumentalism, that’s to say from the viewpoint of evolution, breeding, genetics and other forms of categorisation, rather from an emotional or sensory viewpoint.
When I was very young I read a book by Ernest Thompson Seton called The biography of a grizzly. This story of Wahb, a male grizzly whose family was wiped out by hunters, and who survived to become the most powerful bear in the region, before inevitable decline and death, had an unforgettable emotional impact. I’m glad I read it though, as, sentimentalised though it might’ve been, it inoculated me against the scientific tendency, now changing, to see any animal as an it, rather than he or she or dad or mum or brother or sister. So this idea of putting oneself in the paws of a grizzly or the feet of a bonobo has long been perfectly legitimate to me.
In 2014 Jason Goldman wrote an article entitled Do animals have sex for pleasure?, in which he cited many instances of other species – bonobos of course heading the list – engaging in oral and penetrative sex ‘out of season’, when pregnancy is precluded. They include capuchin monkeys, macaques, spotted hyenas, bears, lions and fruit bats. It stands to reason that the physiological, whole-of body pleasure we derive from sex is shared by other species, and is indulged by them, and this includes what we call homosex, and masturbation. Australia’s premier science magazine, Cosmos, claimed a few years ago that some 6000 species (or was it 600?) have been observed engaging in homosexual activity, which does sound funny when talking about what we would habitually call lower life forms.
All of these findings have had the effect, and perhaps the intention, of loosening our uptight attitudes toward sex, as well as upending our notions of human specialness. But the behaviour of bonobos, who at times look strikingly like us, is more immediately impactful than anything fruit flies or fruit bats might do. Just the other day I watched a video of bonobos in Jacksonville zoo, Florida. Two of them were lying on the ground close together, and kissing each other, on the lips, again and again. Were they male? female? one of each? Who knows, it was so beautiful to watch.
References
Ernest Thompson Seton, The biography of a grizzly, 1900.
https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/male-fruit-flies-take-pleasure-in-having-sex-30867
https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/sex-promotes-lasting-memories-in-female-flies-66763
Bonobos at Jacksonville Zoo (video)