Where’s My Prostate? Or How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Flood

by Anna

One of the subjects that has been floating in the background of my sexual conciousness is female ejaculation.  I started ejaculating about four years ago, and it’s been puzzling and a little frustrating that I have so little control over when and how much I squirt. Bringing this to the fore was a salon that I attended this weekend. As the little group gathered people told their ejaculation (or non-ejaculation) stories one by one. It wasn’t until it was my turn that I realized what an emotional issue this had become for me and how much I wanted some clarity around it.
While there has been some debate even over the existence of female ejaculation, it has been represented in art and literature since ancient times.   The first ‘scientific’ description of ejaculation was made in the 17th c. by Dutch physician ReinierDeGraaf.  As early as 1960, Time magazine reported the existence of the female prostate, which is homologous to, and has similar functions as the more familiar male prostate. At the same time, some studies seemed to show that some women have neither a prostate, nor the sensitive area in the vagina that is directly under it (i.e. the G-spot). For this reason, some scientists have surmised that the female prostate is a vestigial piece of anatomy, like an appendix. A 2007 study showed that the biochemical properties of female ejaculate are similar to male prostatic fluid and completely different from that of urine.


While female ejaculation has been a standby fetish genre in porn for years, there has been some mainstream (read: available at big-box stores) focus on squirting over the last decade or so. The ‘Female Ejaculation Bible’ (and my guide to squirting) has been Deborah Sundahl’s 2003 Female Ejaculation and the G-Spot. It’s a practical guide with helpful diagrams. Dr. Susan Block also has a DVD called ‘The Squirt Salon’.
What really helped me during last Friday’s discussion was the organizer, Laura Merritt’s emphasis on how similar male and female sexuality and even sexual anatomy is. Faye Flam of Carnal Knowledge fame had it right we she wrote:”Men and women really aren’t such different creatures. We really are just flip sides of the same coin.” But since thinking and education about sex and sexual pleasure has been so oriented towards male bodies and reproduction, information about female anatomy and pleasure has, until recently taken a backseat.  How many diagrams of female sexual anatomy have you seen that include the prostate? One resource that I really like for veiwing female sexual organs is the 3Dvulva. This is a huge improvement over the cross-section view that you see in most anatomical illustrations. From these images, it’s easy to see how vaginal or anal penetration stimulates the female prostate and makes ejaculation possible, and for many women, inevitable, just like anal stimulation for men.
Learning to ejaculate for me was simple: it involved a request from a lover and a weekend in with Sundahl’s book and my hand. My body was made for that sort of thing, but not everyone’s is. A lot of experts tend to have strong opinions about what the body ‘should’ be doing and that can create some tension for people whose bodies aren’t following instructions. Opening up about sexual insecurities and concerns gave me confidence about the kinds of responses that I have and helped me to push the shoulds out of my head.That’s why events like small group discussion are so great. Next month (year!) is a talk on discretion and privacy. In February the topic is polyamory.  What kinds of topics would you like to cover in small group discussions?

5 Comments

  1. Thanks Anna! I’ve often had questions myself about the inconsistency of being able to squirt. I know women who can basically do it on command, and it is frustrating not being able to enjoy it when I want to, just when it “happens”. Very informative and I certainly plan to check out the resources you have cited.

  2. Something that I see propagated time after time is that somehow women are created in the image of men, or that female parts come from male parts. This could not be further from the truth.
    You wrote, “Time magazine reported the existence of the female prostate, which is homologous to, and has similar functions as the more familiar male prostate. At the same time, some studies seemed to show that some women have neither a prostate, nor the sensitive area in the vagina that is directly under it (i.e. the G-spot). For this reason, some scientists have surmised that the female prostate is a vestigial piece of anatomy, like an appendix.”
    Your information is very WRONG. I see this perpetrated all the time even from medical doctors who are male.
    You see, we all start off life as female. That is right, we are the perfect form from which all human life springs from. At about 8 weeks gestation the fetus that is female in form but has the XY chromosomes will begin the process of becoming male. What was the female ovaries will descend down and become testes. What was once the vulva will begin to seam up, hence the seam that holds the balls in their sack. The female prostate pushes back toward the anus and the clitoris begins to grow into a penis. It really pisses me off that medical doctors and even biology teachers are not up front about this. But many males still have not come to terms that it is us females that are the perfect form. This is also why it is easier to turn a male into a female and all males still have the vestiges of a uterus near their prostate. This is also why males have nipples….they were female first. You do a real disservice to teach otherwise. Some women have large defined prostates and others don’t. Just as some women have large clitoris’ and others don’t. The problem with trying to find the female prostrate is the fact that many women and men try to find it when the woman is not aroused. Arousal engorges the genitals thus making it easier to identify all the parts. Women get erections, women ejaculate…because we do men do too. The clitoris is equivalent to the penis, ovaries equivalent to the testes, vagina equivalent to the shaft. Men and women both ejaculate and some do more than others.
    What would happen if we teach our daughters and our sons that we all start off this life as female?? Women might be empowered and the god delusion would be dashed. Because if god is male then why does all life start off as female?….and why don’t we learn this basic stuff in school??

  3. @Teresa: There were a few bits of info in the quote that you summarily pronounced ‘WRONG.’ I’ll try to address what I can.
    First, let me say that it was my intent to state different perspectives, a short history, if you will, of things people have said about the female prostate and then move on to my own experiences. Based on studies done in 1999 and 2007, some women definitely have prostates that squirt ejaculatory fluid and they may even aid in conception, in that they make the vaginal environment more alkaline for sperm(1). So it’s questionable (and I agree with you, probably flat-out wrong)to say that the female prostate is vestigial, but some scientists have.
    As for your claim that “. . . we all start off life as female”- I’m curious about what your sources are for that information. I’m not a scientist, so I depend on what looks like reliable information created by scientists when it comes to things like fetal development. Patricia Labronsky, a developmental biologist at U Penn, describes the human embryo as a little male-female creature, stating that “You actually have the plumbing for both genders in the early embryos,” and that all embryos have proto penises and proto prostates (2). This jibes with standard descriptions of embryo genitalia in which both XY (male) and XX (female)have Muellerian and Wolffian ducts, then in XX individuals, the Muellerian ducts become female sex organs and in XY individuals, the Wolffian ducts become male sex organs. Unused ducts atrophy in both cases(3). It should be noted that though this differentiation starts at the 6th week, the embryos still look the same, and have the same kinds of structures developing until the 8th week when the urethral fold fuses in XY embryos and the penis starts developing (4). All embryos have gonads which are about the same, in XX embryos, they become ovaries, in XY embryos they become testes.(5) Yes, the SRY gene on the Y chromosome results in male sexual differentiation, and without it, even XY embryos will develop ovaries – but they won’t develop female sexual organs, and XX embryos have thier own, specific process that they go through to become ‘female'(6).
    This is why I think it’s kind of problematic to say that all embryos start out as female. They all start out about the same they go in roughly two different (though parallel, in many regards) directions (I say ‘roughly’ two, because a few embryos take other courses of sexual development altogether). Phenotypically (how are physical structures are, not how our genes are), we start out somewhere in the middle – as neither male nor female, really. Genotypically, most (though certainly not all!) embryos are one or the other.
    Anne Fausto-Sterling in ‘Myths of Gender’ and other feminist biologists criticize the idea of the female embryo that just never becomes a male, because in their view it plays into ideas of female non-specificity and passivity in sex and reproduction (think about how people talk about the passive, waiting egg or more sinisterly, of women as ‘vessels’ for fetuses). Plus Fausto-Sterling shows how that just isn’t true.
    You say that “. . . we [women]are the perfect form from which all human life springs from” and that “. . . it is us females that are the perfect form.” I’m not sure how well it serves equality and dismantling the kinds of patriarchal ideas that I can tell you are against (as am I!)to suggest that some bodies are more ‘perfect’ than others.
    I heartily agree with you about learning all this stuff in school. These are our very own bodies, but they remain a mystery to us — thus making it harder for us to take care of ourselves and give ourselves pleasure!

    1)http://www.springerlink.com/content/m717637k82k7h508/ -Beverly Whipple wrote this book review and she’s the female prostate goddess! Check out her film on the G-Spot : http://bigthink.com/ideas/17171

    http://www.cbra.org.br/pages/publicacoes/animalreproduction/issues/download/v3n1/AR102%20Santos%20pag3-18.pdf

    2)http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/health/2002865111_carnalknowledge15.html

    3)http://www.gender.org.uk/about/04embryo/44_cncp.htm

    4) awesome images and explanation fetal genital develoment: http://www.med.unc.edu/embryo_images/unit-genital/genital_htms/genital025.htm

    5) undifferentiated gonads:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonads

    6)http://www.gender.org.uk/about/04embryo/44_cncp.htm

  4. I have seen & read lots of information on this subject. One source Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy states: “Geneticists have discovered that all human embryos start life as females, as do all embryos of mammals. About the 2nd month the fetal tests elaborate enough androgens to offset the maternal estrogens and maleness develops.” Basically what happens is the “y” chromosone (from the male) starts responding & doing the job it’s there for, changing the gender of the fetus to male.

    So while the first 2 weeks of gestation are very neutral it is a fact that females can only beget females as in parthenogenesis and in cloning. This is the same reason why males have nipples and a vestige of the female uterus is located near the prostate.

    And for the record, medical science has and is still very male dominated and their information is skewed by this fact. This is the reason that the clitoris wasn’t ‘discovered’ until 1972 and medical texts prior to this leave this very important part omitted. I have seen many medical texts from the 1950’s and prior that correlate what I have stated.

    I only brought this to your attention because you started the conversation of female ejaculation and of the female prostate. Women ejaculate as do men, some more than others. Women have a prostate whether they can locate it or not, whether their doctors can locate it or not. And most importantly on that point, it is easier to find when aroused since yes, women get ‘erect’ too.

    If anything the embryo follows a ‘female template’.

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