Female ejaculation – when liquid gushes out of a woman during an orgasm – has been described since ancient times by eastern and western cultures, according to the authors of a scientific review published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine. But in recent years, confusion has surrounded the topic.
The confusion doesn’t have to do with whether or not a woman releases fluids during sex – any woman could tell you so, and besides, there’s scientific proof. Instead, it has to do with what these fluids are, where they come from, and when during the process from arousal through to orgasm they get released.
Squirting v. ejaculation
Besides vaginal lubrication, which happens when a woman gets wet as she gets turned on, two different kinds of fluids are thought to be released during orgasm, research shows.
There’s female ejaculate from a woman’s prostate gland or G-spot, which was named after the German gynecologist Ernest Grafenberg. In a famous article written in 1940, he described the milky white fluid produced during an orgasm and even wrote that sometimes “a large towel has to be spread under the woman to prevent the bed sheets getting soiled”.
Female ejaculation is different from what’s been called ‘squirting’ – which is actually the release of pee that’s been changed and diluted, studies have shown.
Kama Sutra
Long before the debate about what fluids a woman produces during orgasm, ancient civilizations described female ejaculation.
The best known Indian text on sexuality is the Kama Sutra. Written by the scholar Mallanaga Vatsyayana between 200 and 400 AD, it covers everything from love to relationships to sex. Though historians don’t agree on whether it mentions female ejaculation, it does talk about a “woman’s semen” released throughout sex and compares it to a man’s, which of course is only released at the end. It also notes that there’s a fluid produced during a woman’s orgasm, which could mean vaginal lubrication and female ejaculation, respectively, say the authors of the review.
It wasn’t until a 7th century poem with the line that a woman’s “love juice overflowed abundantly” that female ejaculation was definitely first described in ancient India. Thereafter many different ancient Indian texts talked about female ejaculation, including one 16th century work that described it as nothing short of a “flood of passion-water”.
"Jade chamber"
The ancient Chinese were also no strangers to female ejaculation. In the mysteriously-titled 4th century text Secret Instructions Concerning the Jade Chamber, Chinese physicians described the “five signs” of sexual arousal in women, which began with a “reddened face” and ended with “the genitals transmit fluid”, a clear reference to female ejaculation, according to the review’s authors.
Around 600 AD, another text called Secret Methods of the Plain Girl left no room for confusion when it came to just what fluids a woman’s “jade chamber” produced. It’s author wrote, “Her Jade Gate becomes moist and slippery; then the man should plunge into her very deeply. Finally copious emissions from her Inner Heart begin to exude outward”.
Female sperm
In the western world, the ancient Greeks wrote about female semen around 500 BC. But they only thought of it as a vital part of reproduction, and didn’t link it to a woman’s orgasm and pleasure. Just over a hundred years later, it was Aristotle who first talked of the fluid that came out of a woman’s uterus during sexual pleasure.
Then along came Galen who lived from 129 to 200 AD and who said that he’d found proof that women produced sperm. Galen was all about female and male sexual equality and argued that women needed to get off sexually just as much as men did, a belief which lasted over a thousand years, say the review’s authors.
It wasn’t until the mid 1600s that scientific observation by way of Dutch gynecologist de Graaf contributed further to understanding female ejaculation. De Graaf was the first to give detailed descriptions of the female prostate and the ejaculate and the pleasure it produced.
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