I Love Female Orgasm: An Extraordinary Orgasm Guide (26 page)

female ejaculation on tv:
The L Word

IN THIS LESBIAN television drama, a woman is horrified that she ejaculated while having sex with her girlfriend, but the girlfriend tells her, “It’s perfectly natural.” The next day when the still-mortified woman confides in her friends about what happened, a friend tells her she should be proud of her newfound ability. “Women strive for this!” she says. “You should be totally and utterly ecstatic!”

Perhaps the most compelling proof that ejaculate is not pee was done by a woman curious to figure out the source of her orgasmic expulsions. She took a medication that turns urine blue, and then proceeded to masturbate, repeating the experiment several times. She would ejaculate on her sheet, and then pee on the same sheet. The
pee spots were always deep blue, as expected from the medication. The ejaculation spots either had no color or a faint bluish tinge. A human sexuality professor wrote up the woman’s experiments in the
Journal of Sex Research.
Who knew that masturbation could play an important role in advancing science?

What’s the difference between “getting wet” (lubricating) and ejaculating?

When a woman becomes aroused, the vaginal walls sweat, so to speak, much in the same way that your skin sweats in hot weather. The liquid, or transudate, is a colorless component of blood that’s secreted through the walls of the vagina. The liquid from female ejaculation, on the other hand, is produced inside the paraurethral glands inside the urethral sponge, and secreted from the urethra. Despite these differences, in some cases it can be hard for a woman to know if she ejaculated—it’s common for small quantities of ejaculate to go unnoticed. As a result, no one knows what percentage of women ejaculate, because many who do may not be aware that they’re doing so. If you find yourself puzzling over whether you ejaculated or just got really wet, a few key differences are that lubrication happens gradually, is produced inside the vagina, and can start quite early in the arousal process. Ejaculation, on the other hand, happens all at once, comes from the urethra, and usually (though not always) takes place around the time of an orgasm.

learn more about female ejaculation

IF YOU WANT more detail, including step-by-step instructions to learn how to ejaculate, get a copy of
Female Ejaculation
and the G-spot by Deborah Sundahl. It’s the most comprehensive, user-friendly book on the subject. The vast majority of the book is relevant to straight, lesbian, or bi readers, through it primarily assumes that “partners” are male.

If a woman’s urethral sponge fills up with fluid but she doesn’t ejaculate, what happens to the fluid?

Ejaculate that isn’t ejaculated outflows into the bladder and is peed out the next time the woman urinates.

Do women like ejaculating? Is it better than just having an orgasm?

Some women love the feeling of release with ejaculation, and say it’s fun to be able to see physical evidence of their orgasm coming out of their body (similar to
the way many guys seem to think ejaculating is pretty cool to do). Other women say the experience is just different, neither better nor worse, than having a non-ejaculatory orgasm. There’s no research evidence to suggest that women who ejaculate have better orgasms, or are more sexually satisfied, than women who don’t.

Having an orgasm without ejaculating is less pleasurable for me than having one while ejaculating. It also makes for a more intense orgasm.

The feeling of ejaculating is good but not as good as a clitoral orgasm.

I like having an orgasm without ejaculating. I can concentrate on how it feels and not the mess I’m making or that I’m lying in a puddle.

Sometimes I have stronger orgasms when I’m not ejaculating and sometimes it’s the opposite. I don’t see a huge difference, but usually an orgasm that makes me ejaculate feels better than when I’m not ejaculating.

If you don’t already ejaculate, learning to do so should definitely
not
be something you feel like you should add to your already overwhelming to-do list. Women can have fabulous, fulfilling sex lives without ever ejaculating. While we think it’s important to teach about this so women who “naturally” ejaculate know what’s happening, we would be depressed if “Learn to female ejaculate” started showing up on magazine lists of “Things Every Woman Should Do Before She’s 30 (or 50).” Women shouldn’t feel they’re inadequate if they don’t ejaculate.

Can all women ejaculate?

Sex experts disagree on this question. Some say that yes, all women are capable of learning to ejaculate if they don’t do it already. Others say it might be more like rolling your tongue: Some people can do it; others can’t. Research findings range widely, reporting anywhere from 10 to 68 percent of women saying they’ve ejaculated. (In our survey, 30 percent of women said they’ve ejaculated, 41 percent said they haven’t, and 28 percent weren’t sure.)

I want to ejaculate! How can I make it happen?

The best route to that goal is lots of G-spot stimulation. For most women, the most effective kind of stimulation is a “come hither” finger motion, with one or two fingers pulling against the vaginal wall where the G-spot is located. A partner or a G-spot stimulating sex toy can help, too. When you feel the urge to pee, and/or while you’re having an orgasm, take the fingers, sex toy, or penis out of your vagina so the ejaculate can come out, and practice letting go and pushing out the ejaculate. As with so many other aspects of orgasms, having strong PC muscles can make a big difference, too. Be sure to do your Kegels, as described on page 26.

female ejaculation: something old or something new?

ALTHOUGH FEMALE EJACULATION is a new concept to many people alive today, it’s long been known that women had the potential to ejaculate–some cultures even saw female ejaculation as healing, sacred, or essential for a woman to conceive. Ancient Chinese and Indian sexuality texts wrote about female ejaculation over 2,000 years ago. Aristotle, Galen, and other ancient Greek philosophers and scientists examined the subject in detail. Renaissance anatomists documented the existence of female glands that produced ejaculate. In sixteenth-century Japan, women used special bowls to catch their own ejaculate, which was believed to have healthy, aphrodisiacal properties. Batoro women in Uganda reportedly teach their young women how to ejaculate before they’re considered eligible for marriage—their word for the custom is
kachapati,
which translates to “spray the wall.”

Despite all this, the very concept of female ejaculation managed to be forgotten for most of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and now is being “discovered” all over again.

Recently I got divorced, went back to college, and got a new boyfriend. In college I was taking this human sexuality class, and the textbook included some information about female ejaculation. One night during the semester I was taking the class, my boyfriend and I were trying some new things, and I had an orgasm, and I squirted! I’d never done this before, but I was so excited! I was jumping up and down naked in the bedroom, telling him, “It’s just like in the textbook! It’s just like in the textbook!”

how about the a-spot?

AH, YES, THE fabled “A-spot.” When an audience member first asked us about the “A-spot,” we admitted our unfamiliarity with the spot and promised a thorough investigation. We soon discovered that entering the word “A-spot” into a search engine doesn’t produce meaningful results, because of the many other uses of the phrase “a spot,” as in “Adopt a Spot Dalmatian Rescue” or “Removing Stains: Getting a Spot Out of Your Dress.” Nowadays, even an eBay advertisement on Google promises, “A Spot: Whatever you’re looking for you can get it on eBay.” (If only it were so easy!) As the question came up repeatedly from audience members, we even asked other sex experts, but no one we asked had heard of the fabled spot.

A few years later, we heard Canadian sex educator Sue Johanson (of
Talk sex with Sue Johanson
fame) call a man’s prostate his “A-spot,” because it’s inside his anus (hence the “a” in “A-spot”). Essentially a male version of the G-spot, the male prostate is located about three to four inches inside the rectum, toward the man’s belly, and can be stimulated using many of the same techniques as G-spot stimulation. We started sharing this fact when audience members asked about the A-spot, but many seemed unconvinced that this was what they’d heard of before—they thought it was an area of a woman’s body.

Then, while conducting research for this book, one clue led to another, and
bingo
! We found it. A-spot stands for anterior fornix spot, also known as the AFE-zone (anterior fornix erogenous zone). It’s a smooth area just below the cervix, on the front of a woman’s vagina (the same side as her G-spot) but farther up, deeper inside her vagina. Some women find the area quite erotically sensitive, others don’t.

Personally, when we follow the directions about where to find the A-spot (did you think we could write a book about female orgasm without doing any—
ahem
—hands-on research?), we think it’s just another location for the G-spot. Some women’s G-spots are closer to their cervix, others closer to the entrance to the vagina. But one thing is certain: the discovery of new spots and sex positions sells books and magazines. Which
Cosmo
headline would make you more likely to buy the magazine: “Don’t Miss Out: Find Your A-Spot Today!” or “The G-Spot: Old Spot, Possible New Location”?

We say, if you discover a new area that feels good to touch, great, enjoy! If not, there’s no need to lose sleep over it—there are plenty of good spots already.

7

Vibrators, Toys, and Piercings, Oh My!

why over a million vibrators are sold each year

Vibrators, which are
essentially vibrating toys for grown-ups, come in every shape, size, and style you can imagine. They range from a little vibrating “bullet” a woman can wear in her undies to a device the size of a rolling pin that plugs into the wall. Some vibrators are cleverly disguised as a tube of lipstick, so a woman can keep one in her purse in case she has an emergency in the afternoon. Others look like bunny rabbits, rubber duckies suited for the tub, tongues, or undulating abstract sculptures. Some are designed to be worn over a penis or dildo for additional stimulation during penetration; others fit on a fingertip or over a tongue.

Why do vibrators make women so happy? It so happens that many clitorises
love
the sensation of vibration. No hand or tongue can maintain the fast, intense, consistent stimulation that a vibe provides—and a vibrator never gets a cramped neck or an aching wrist. For many women a vibrator is the fastest route to orgasm; for others it’s the only
way they can get there. Since it takes many women longer to come than they’d like, anything that speeds the process is a welcome enhancement. There’s no stereotypical vibrator user, either. Women enjoy vibrators to make a great partnered sex life even better, and to keep them whistling when they’re single. A tour of the bedside drawers of America would uncover vibrators in the bedrooms of women who are on their own, dating, partnered, and married; young, old, and in between; heterosexual, lesbian, and bi.

I had my vibrator for almost a month before I finally had the time to experiment with it. The first time, I stopped before I orgasmed; I think the pleasure kind of shocked me into stillness. It took me a few nights to figure out what I liked and what just didn’t work for me. When I finally did orgasm, it was just like, whoa. My entire body was shaking and I continued to tremble for a few minutes after. This discovery was quite possibly the best thing to happen to me that year. All I could think was, Why haven’t I done this before?