New black: Will female ejaculation become the next sexual fashion statement? Photo: Getty Images
While catching up with a few male friends, I mention new laws introduced to the British Parliament. Laws designed to bring the content of online video-on-demand porn in line with your classic plastic-sleeve DVD studio-produced variety. Laws deemed “sexist” and “absurd” and “surreal”. Classification laws that basically ban a range of sex acts that have flourished in the relatively unregulated VoD porn market because they are not permitted in “proper” porn films.
Acts like: spanking, caning, aggressive whipping, penetration by any object “associated with violence”, physical or verbal abuse (regardless of it being consensual), urolagnia (known as “water sports”), strangulation, facesitting, fisting and – you guessed it – female ejaculation.
“Ban female ejaculation?” One bloke-bud piped up, incredulously. “But I would love it if I was with a girl who did that. What’s wrong with it? Does it actually happen?”
Good questions, I thought, as I pondered one of my own: If you’re a woman, and you don’t ejaculate, what does that say about you?
But first, the laws, and what they say about contemporary Western society.
One: We’ve found new ways of expressing how kinky we are. It’s tempting to believe that these laws demonstrate a new level of kinkiness our human world has never before known. But it’s wrong to believe that ye olde people didn’t enjoy a bit of urolagnia. Art dating back to the 16th Century portrays people pissing in a sexy manner. Even Picasso had is own, erotic Woman Pissing (1965). Let’s face it, just because we have the ability to capture these sex acts on mobile phone camera, upload them and share on-demand, does not make them new. It’s a case of same old sexy business, different ways of sharing.
Which brings us to Two: We’re still worried about sex being bad for us. For instance, it seems female ejaculation has been banned on the grounds it’s too much like urolagnia, and therefore – according to those constitution-conscious parliamentarians – it is unhealthy. This is despite stories of stranded hikers and Bear Grylls drinking their own piss for the sake of survival. Sure, it’s not the elixir of life, but it’s not going to kill you either. So is it really so unhealthy? Is it more unhealthy than, say, copping a mouthfull of maleness should you choose to lovingly pleasure the main man in your life?
Oh yes, we’ve arrived at Three: We’re still as nervous about female sexuality as we were when the patriarchy took control of public opinion. There, I said it. I said the “P” word. I believe it’s justified in this situation. One where the symbol of absolute male satisfaction is fine, but the female “equivalent” is not. How is this equitable? Indeed, there are other sex acts on the banned list that appear discriminatory. Things like fisting – a popular lesbian act – are banned, but as far as I’m aware, bukkake – where a large group of men jizz over the same woman – is not. Come again?
Of course, this all brings us to my first-mate’s final question, and my use of quotation marks around “equivalent” in the paragraph above. Female ejaculation: Does it exist?
Well, as a woman, I can’t relate to the porn-popular idea of “squirting”. I feel this is because it may be a term invented by men who make porn and need to masculinise feminine sexual experience in order for it to translate to a male audience (read: she came, like a man!). So I turn to New York Times best-selling sex health expert Ian Kerner, who seems to believe there’s a difference between female ejaculate – understood as squirting, which is actually a controlled act of bladder release – and the involuntary relaxation and flow of whatever we might associate with the female orgasm. That is to say, yes, women can ejaculate, but it’s not necessarily an orgasm. Which is interesting as, technically, male ejaculation and male orgasm are exactly the same thing.
Hence, the root remark of this article: Is female ejaculation the new black? I mean to suggest that female ejaculation – squirting – stands to become the new, fashionable thing. Like swallowing in the ’80s, masturbation in the ’90s and anal in the noughties, “coming like a man” may be the next big thing, because it’s the last thing women have left to conquer for them to be “equal” with men sexually. And that annoys me somewhat, because while I believe it’s good for women to go there – especially women who have always been shackled by that ridiculous, cloistered notion good sex was only for bad girls – I’m also weary of the trade-off that comes with trying to do everything “like a man”. That is to say, not all men jizz, yet jizzing for men has become a definitive aspect of masculinity, so if a woman can’t squirt, might that make her feel like less of a lady?
What do you think: Female ejaculation – myth, must-do, or mountain-out-of-molehill?
Katherine Feeney is a journalist with the Nine Network Australia.