Here she comes again

Spouting the truth about female ejaculation

When Dorrie Lane was 18, she was fooling around with a guy in the back seat of a '68 Dodge Charger. When she reached orgasm, a clear, copious stream of liquid squirted from her urethra. It soaked the seat and infuriated her date, who accused her of peeing on him. The truth is, Dorrie Lane ejaculated.

A woman ejaculate? Yes. Contrary to what we learned (or didn't learn) in sex ed, men aren't the only ones who can cause a wet spot. With proper stimulation of the G spot, the spongy area located two inches in on the front wall of the vagina, women can ejaculate a thin, sweet-smelling fluid from ducts located around the urethra.

"It definitely does occur," says Mitchell Levine, a gynecologist/obstetrician at the Women Care clinic, in Arlington, Massachusetts. "Many women get concerned that they're urinating, but this is actually a normal thing."

In fact, female ejaculation was documented in ancient China and India, and G-spot massage is a common tantric-sex technique. Tantric texts call the liquid produced amrita, or "sweet nectar." Like semen, it is a protein-based fluid, found to be chemically different from urine.

Dr. Levine reports that the experience of female ejaculation varies from woman to woman. Some dribble a small amount of fluid; others soak the sheets. Lane, who describes the experience as an intensely pleasurable feeling of release, often ejaculates three to six times during one session of sex.

It's estimated that about 10 percent of women ejaculate. But that number is iffy, considering most women are ashamed to admit they do it or don't even know the phenomenon exists.

"I was embarrassed," Lane recalls of her first time. "I didn't know what happened." She scoured medical and sexuality encyclopedias for an explanation but found nothing. Three decades later, one can scan The Complete Guide to Women's Health for information and the findings are, well, not so complete.

The hush-hush aura around the subject is enough to make a girl paranoid. And for good reason. Levine explains that sexuality in general, especially women's sexuality, does not receive much attention in medical school. In fact, one female gynecologist approached for this story declined comment, admitting, "I'd have to look up a bunch of stuff."

The G-spot itself has been a subject of controversy since its "discovery" in 1944 by gynecologist Ernst Grafenberg. In the '60s, sexologists Masters and Johnson announced that female orgasms occurred primarily through stimulation of the clitoris, not the vagina, where the G spot is found. The G Spot (Holt, Rinehart, and Winston), a 1982 book by Beverly Whipple, Alice Ladas, and John Perry, refuted this claim, providing ample evidence of the sensitive area's existence.

The debates rage on. Some feminists and doctors fear that widespread knowledge about female ejaculation will burden women with one more "trick" they must master in bed. "There is a danger that some women will learn about female ejaculation and feel that if they don't do it, then they're not fully orgasmic," Levine says.

But Lane, who now runs House o' Chicks, a San Francisco-based sex-education company, believes it's more important that women gain full awareness of their "birthright." She says, "When the medical community acknowledges women ejaculate, and put it into the books, more women are going to ejaculate."

-- AP

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