Orgasms for Two

by Betty Dodson

  The four basic ideas presented in The G-Spot was information that had been published before and then forgotten. The first was the Grafenberg spot, the second was female ejaculation, the third was the importance of pelvic muscle tone, and the fourth was the continuum of orgasmic response. I was all for pelvic muscle tone and the various orgasmic responses, but erotic spots inside the vagina didn’t make sense to me. There was a reason the clitoris with its eight thousand nerve endings was above the birth canal, and the idea of women ejaculating like men was weird.

  Next I read that every woman had a G-spot, but not all of us would respond to its being stimulated. Well, if I had one, why couldn’t I respond? The authors said it might be because my PC muscle was weak or chronically tense. Or wearing a diaphragm all those years had covered “my spot.” Maybe I had retrograde ejaculations and peed them out later, or I had repressed my ejaculations, thinking it was urine. Finally, it could also be the result of menopause; “my spot” had dried up from lack of hormones. Reading all those glowing accounts from women and men who carried on and on about these ecstatic gushing rushing orgasms from vaginal stimulation made me and a lot of other women feel like inadequate clit nerds.

  On one of my trips to San Francisco to run a workshop, I asked my friend Carol Queen what she thought about G-spots and female ejaculation. At the time she was working at the sex store Good Vibrations. She said she was learning how to do it along with several other women. When I asked exactly what she was doing, she said she was using vaginal stimulation with a dildo while holding a vibrator on her clit. Right before she came, she’d pull the dildo out and bear down with her PC muscle to squirt. Since these women were much younger, I made an effort to withhold judgment. After all, I was a postmenopausal woman in my fifties, and might be getting a bit set in my ways.

  During that same trip, I went to an evening presentation of several erotic videos produced by lesbians. One of the videos, Clips, showed a bored housewife who couldn’t interest her husband in having sex, so she started fucking herself with a dildo. It took me several minutes before I realized the guy sitting in the corner of the room reading a newspaper was a woman in male drag. After some very “vigorous thrusting,” the wife removed the dildo and shot a stream from her pussy with the force of a fire hose. I absolutely adored the video and roared with laughter, but I didn’t for one minute believe she was having an authentic orgasm. For me, the whole video was a fabulous spoof on butch/femme roles and heterosexuality.

  The woman turned out to be Fannie Fatale, who would later make the video How to Female Ejaculate. Fannie obviously has a strong PC muscle, which I could relate to. I used to have a douching technique where I’d fill up my vagina with water and then force it out. The stream of water went the length of my big bathtub, hitting the faucet three feet away. I figured she either filled up her vagina with water and then they cut to her orgasm sequence, or she drank a lot of water beforehand and peed. When my friends insisted she was ejaculating, I concluded that whatever rocks a gal’s fantasy boat is fine with me. As far as I was concerned, female ejaculation was just a new twist on the old “golden showers” routine of urinating for fun. I was clearly out of step with most of the lesbian and bisexual San Francisco women on this one.

  Back in the fifties, before lesbian feminists classified butch/ femme roles as politically incorrect, my best girlfriend was a lipstick lesbian. We both loved drawing nudes, so we shared the cost of a model once a week in my art studio. One day Lois told me she’d learned to pee right after she had an orgasm so her butch lover, Fran, would know for sure when she came. I thought it was very considerate of her and asked how she did it. Lois liked having sex with a full bladder because it gave her more sensation during oral sex and finger fucking. Immediately after her orgasm, she’d bear down and force urine out. Today I’d call that fantasy role-playing rather than female ejaculation.

  On each of my West Coast trips, I kept posing questions about female ejaculation to my women friends who were sexually knowledgeable. At one point Carol Queen and her partner, Robert Lawrence, asked if I wanted to dissect the female genitals on a cadaver at a school in Oakland? Without any hesitation I said yes. After making the arrangements, the three of us took off on a sunny afternoon for our adventure. Standing in a large room with cadavers lying around in black bags wasn’t upsetting to me. After all, I’d been an art student who had drawn the nude as well as studied anatomy books. I felt right at home.

  Here we see a frontal view showing the erectile tissue of the female genitals. The glands of the clitoris have approximately eight thousand nerve endings. The shaft and legs (or crus) are long, thin bands of firm tissue that fill with blood during sexual arousal. The legs of the clitoris flare outward along the pubic bone. The bulb of the clitoris is a spongy body made up of a more elastic tissue that also becomes erect and lies underneath the outer lips. Another spongy body surrounds the urinary tract. Since this structure was not named in textbooks, feminists named it the urethral sponge.The vulvovaginal, or Bartholin, glands on either side of the vaginal opening secrete a few drops of fluid during sexual arousal.

  As we all watched intently, Helen, our anatomist with twenty years’ experience, slowly removed thin layers of tissue from the female cadaver’s genitals. Finally, she uncovered a gland that she said looked just like a male prostate, only much smaller. What I saw was a green pickled lump that could have been anything. She said this was the first time she’d ever dissected the female genitals—the most fascinating information of the entire experiment. Otherwise our dissection only raised more questions.

  Along with the authors of The G-Spot, I agree that men and women have more in common than is usually acknowledged. After going through several anatomy books, I saw for myself that the male prostate originated in the undifferentiated female embryo. The prostate gland in men secretes an alkaline fluid that is discharged with the sperm to keep them healthy. I could see how a small amount of the same alkaline fluid could be discharged by a woman’s paraurethral gland.

  The first person to describe the female prostate in detail was seventeenth-century Dutch anatomist Reinier de Graaf, who also considered its erotic aspects. In the late 1800s, Dr. Alexander Skene was only concerned with draining the various glands surrounding the female urethra when it became infected. To this day the female urethral glands are known as Skene’s glands. In 1950, Dr. Ernst Grafenberg (the “G” in the G-spot) noted that some women emitted fluid during orgasm, and he believed it came from the urethral glands. The authors of The G-Spot didn’t mention the Bartholin’s glands, which are the size of two lima beans on either side of the vaginal opening.

  The feminist self-helpers who wrote A New View of a Woman’s Body, which came out in 1981, called the Bartholin’s glands the vulvovaginal glands. They said they didn’t seem to have any function other than to secrete a few drops of fluid during sexual arousal. They also called the spongy tissue surrounding the female urinary tract the urethral sponge; it had a network of tiny ducts inside called the paraurethral gland. The plot thickens and gets more confusing as different researchers give different names to the same parts of the internal female genitals.

  By the nineties, G-spot orgasms were all the rage in San Francisco. One young lesbian, who identified herself as a “sex educator,” wrote an article in the Good Vibrations newsletter announcing, “Now that we’ve rediscovered the G-spot, vaginal orgasms are back in style!” She also proudly claimed that many dykes had been at the forefront in the movement to reclaim the G-spot. She even went so far as to describe female ejaculation as “spewing forth buckets of liquid”—mindlessly creating another sexual myth and making nonejaculating women feel less than sexual.

  Female ejaculation should more accurately be called female fluid emission. Yes, I believe there are some women who naturally have this response. With each contraction of the pelvic floor muscles, a fine spray comes out of the urethral opening without any effort or consciously bearing down. Female fluid emission has been written about t
hroughout history. However, as in most erotic literature or personal testimony, sex gets described in exaggerated and glowing terms. It’s called poetic license. Added to that is the idea that during the last two decades, goddess forbid any person, especially a woman, ever doubted another woman’s anecdotal testimony. If you did, you were considered antifeminist or antiwoman.

  The pendulum always swings too far in both directions. For example, as a result of finally dealing with the sexual abuse of women, we went completely overboard. An abuse industry grew up around women’s accusations of being raped, encouraged by therapists who were later discovered to be creating false memories in their clients. I believe this is similar to the creation of a G-spot industry. We now have G-spot toys as well as other books and videos on the subject. So what’s in a name? Everything, when we turn it into the latest sexual fashion, confusing people even further about female orgasm.

  Most people assume the word “ejaculation” equals or accompanies sexual arousal and orgasm, which is not true for all women who have this response. Many of my women friends who are performance artists admit their ability to “shoot liquid” has nothing to do with being sexually turned on, nor is it the result of having an orgasm. They are doing it because it feels great, it’s fun, and it has a lot of entertainment value.

  At one of Annie Sprinkle’s photo shoots I watched Shannon Bell kneel, put her finger inside her vagina, and rapidly move it in and out for a few moments. Then she pushed down to squirt. She did this several times while Annie clicked away. During a break, while Shannon was drinking a beer, I asked if she was having sexual sensations during her multiple ejaculations? She very candidly said no, she was just doing it for the camera. Shannon is an adorable little androgynous dyke who is a very intelligent writer. She was in the video How to Female Ejaculate that starred Fannie Fatale, along with Carol Queen and Baja, a woman I never met.

  FIGURE A shows the clitoris, the urethral sponge, and the vagina, which is a collapsed space until it is penetrated. The urethral sponge fills with blood during sexual excitement and protects the urinary tract from friction caused by the penis moving back and forth inside the vagina during intercourse.

  In FIGURE B we see a finger entering the vagina and pressing up into the urethral sponge, or what has been called the “G-spot.” This spongy area is more like a crest than a specific spot. Some women find this kind of pressure on the vaginal ceiling to be sexually arousing but many others do not.

  In FIGURE C we see the paraurethral gland inside the urethra without the surrounding sponge. These glands in the female remain the size of those of a five-month-old male fetus but they go on to develop into the much larger prostate gland in the male. Some believe these the paraurethral glands in women are the source of female fluid emission. We also see the position of the tiny openings of Skene's glands.

  Carol is a performance artist who has since become a noted author and a Ph.D. sex educator. During another one of our many ongoing sex conversations, I again asked how she thought all of that liquid could come out of the little bit of spongy tissue or female prostate gland that we had uncovered. She speculated that after a couple of spurts, she was probably borrowing urine from her bladder. She said, “So what? It still feels great.” At last, I’d heard a statement from a woman ejaculator that I believed. Due to our puritan heritage and religious disgust over all bodily fluids, peeing for fun is not acceptable, but “ejaculation” sounds sexy, so it’s okay.

  At one of her stage performances, my friend and former neighbor Annie Sprinkle sailed by a group of us waiting in line to see her show. Smiling, she held up a large bottle of water and said, “Guess what I’m doing tonight?” When Annie was a porn star I believe she picked the stage name Sprinkle for golden showers, which is still a favorite sexual image of many men. Annie has become a sexual icon who has expanded people’s ideas about porn stars and whores as victims by becoming a successful photographer, writer, and performance artist. She now has her Ph.D. in sexology from the Institute for the Advanced Study of Human Sexuality in San Francisco.

  Kim Airs, another friend, owns a sex store in Boston called Grand Opening! She’s very intelligent as well as a good businesswoman. Similar to Annie, her brilliance is putting people at ease by getting them to laugh about sex. Kim runs ongoing events and workshops. My favorite workshop is “How to Strip,” but I complain about her teaching female ejaculation. Kim has a marvelous sense of humor. She can squirt anywhere, anytime, and loves doing it. While I badger her about peeing on my rug, she laughs and tells me I’m jealous. She says her ejaculate doesn’t taste or smell like urine. That’s when I ask who’s her expert on how urine tastes and why does it matter? If I’m proved wrong, I promised her she can drench me with her love juice from head to clit.

  These ongoing dialogues with my women friends, who are mostly bisexual and enjoying active sex lives, are always informative. They are in the sex business because they like sex. They all know I question the feasibility of teaching a woman to squirt while she has a sexual climax. Sometimes we end up agreeing to disagree.

  My current understanding is that the orgasm reflex is part of the autonomic nervous system that cannot be controlled by the mind. Consciously bearing down to emit fluid would require the mind to dominate the body. Theoretically, one could have an orgasm and then make an effort to emit fluid. But bearing down right before orgasm would be like blowing your nose in front of a sneeze—it would short-circuit the autonomic reflex. Another possibility is that strong vaginal finger or dildo friction acts like a catheter and causes the bladder to empty right before orgasm. While that might feel great, I don’t believe wet orgasms are more desirable than old-fashioned dry ones.

  Teachers of female ejaculation completely contradict the description of how to do Kegel exercises to strengthen the pelvic floor muscle. They are telling their students to bear down or push out during masturbation or intercourse. This is not the best use of the pelvic floor muscles. Women who consciously bear down as they would during childbirth when they want to have an orgasm appear to be losing the lining of their vaginas, with the uterus about to follow. Those bulging vaginal vestibules do not indicate strong pelvic floor muscles, rather the reverse. How do I know this? I’ve sat alongside thousands of women looking into the same mirror while we view their genitals together. Maybe I’ll end up in the Guinness Book of Records for having seen the largest number of women’s genitals up close and personal.

  One of my clients, a postmenopausal woman, said she and her boyfriend had learned about the G-spot in a Tantra workshop. They called it the sacred spot. Although Louise wasn’t sure if she’d ever had an orgasm, she did learn to “ejaculate.” To get her lover to stop rubbing inside her vagina when it became painful, she arched her back and shot out a stream of pee, accompanied by a bloodcurdling scream. Although he was thrilled, she kept feeling there must be more to orgasm and came to see me. We discovered her PC muscle was very weak. It will take a few months of practice to retrain her pelvic floor muscles to lift up during sexual arousal. She left with an electric vibrator, Betty’s Barbell, and my directions on doing clitoral stimulation while practicing her Kegels so it will be pleasurable and motivate her to do it more frequently.

  The idea of coming from vaginal stimulation is still one of America’s number one fetishes, and now we can add drenching the sheets as number two. Women’s magazines continue to publish articles about female ejaculation, and the same information is automatically included in every new book about sex. The Internet is full of home and adult videos showing women shooting out big streams of fluid, claiming it is female ejaculation. Many women insist these new wet vaginal orgasms are the cat’s meow. Questions from women and men visiting my website continue to ask how to find the G-spot, but occasionally a woman wants to stop lying in a wet puddle.

  One twenty-year-old woman said that when she is using a vibrator on her clitoris, still warming up and feeling pretty good, she loses control of her bladder and pees. A few minutes later she’ll have
an orgasm. She doesn’t mind this too much, since her orgasms are well worth it, but what happens when she’s with a lover? How does she go about alleviating this problem? My answer is for her to observe how she is using her pelvic floor muscles. She needs to start using my Barbell and doing her Kegel exercises to strengthen her PC muscle or learn to relax the muscle if it’s chronically contracted.

  Several other friends contradict the idea of stimulating the G-spot to squirt. One younger woman learned how to ejaculate by watching the video, but she only does clitoral stimulation manually. She says ejaculating feels similar to having a good cry. One older friend has spewed only three times in her life, with a vibrator on her clitoris, but she remains enamored of an eleven-inch wet spot left on her bed years ago. She steadfastly insists it was not urine. I tease her, asking if women will end up measuring their degree of pleasure relative to the size of the wet spot left on the bed?

  In the mid-nineties, Gary Schubach was at my house one night and we got into discussing whether the fluid was prostatic in nature or urine. He was dedicated to the idea of the new erotic possibilities for manual stimulation and offered to demonstrate G-spot stimulation with his girlfriend. As I observed, he used a rapid finger friction inside her vagina while she appeared to be giving birth by bearing down. My objection was that it seemed to me to be more performance-oriented than pleasure-based.

  A couple of years later, in 1997, Gary did an experiment as part of his Ph.D. thesis to determine whether female ejaculation came from the urethral sponge or the bladder. He tested seven subjects, who were all female ejaculators. Urine specimens were collected from each woman before she was sexually aroused. They used self-stimulation of the vagina with their fingers or a curved dildo or finger penetration by a partner. The clitoris was never mentioned. After an hour, when the subjects felt ready to ejaculate, a catheter was inserted. Their bladders were drained and the collection bag changed. Then they all had what each woman and the medical team considered to be an ejaculatory orgasm.