Okay I’ve actually spent a half-day reading literature on this and squirting is fucking fascinating because we literally have no scientific consensus on what it is or why it happens.
We know the mechanics of how it works, mind you. There are actually two distinct phenomenon that lead to what we think of as “squirting” and “gushing.” One of them is simply an expression of the Skene’s gland, which is what produces vaginal fluid for lubrication during sex.
It’s commonly thought to occur during orgasm, and it does, but not exclusively. We’ve conceptually tied it to the male orgasm, but that’s really an erroneous idea. Squirting maybe has to do with intense arousal, but it also might just have to do with contraction of the right muscles at the right time. And we still don’t know what makes some people’s Skene’s gland more prone to it while others are not.
The other, what we sometimes call “gushing,” is more biomechanically complex. It’s when a buildup of some kind of fluid in the urinary bladder is expelled through the urethra during sex. I say “some kind of fluid” because the science is super unclear on what it actually is.
There are only a small handful of studies with wildly conflicting results, and none of them have been replicated. A couple say it’s largely urine. One says its a mix of urine and vaginal fluid. A couple say it’s vaginal fluid only, or vaginal fluid with trace amounts of urine that only come from flushing the bladder and urinary tract.
But between small sample sizes, sampling biases toward white women, and biased interpretation (read as: patriarchal medicine), they all have major internal issues that make drawing broad conclusions totally impossible. And while we do know for sure the biomechanics of how it works–that is, where the fluid comes from a where it goes–we don’t actually know how it gets there in the first place.
And, like squirting from the Skene’s gland, we’ve conceptually tied it to the male orgasm in a way that isn’t actually correct. Some surveys suggest that people who gush only do so during orgasm, but a lot of people report doing it after orgasm or even just during a state of high arousal or vigorous activity. And again, the surveys themselves are fairly biased in a way that many academic surveys are: they skew white, wealthy and western.
I say all of this in part because especially in the kink community there are a lot of misconceptions about it, and a lot of people–especially men–who are absolutely certain of their opinion about vaginas they do not have. I’ve put this kind of thing elsewhere on the internet and been barraged with comments about how so-called “female ejaculate” is 100% piss and people who don’t like watersports but do like squirting/gushing are hypocrites.
And don’t get it twisted: if piss play and/or squirting is your thing, go nuts. This isn’t about kinkshaming. It’s about pointing out one of the particularly misogynistic and pervasive ways kinky men use their kinks to spread misinformation and police the bodies of others.
It’s also just another example of how medical science is biased against people with vaginas, especially non-white people with vaginas. Anyone who tells you they know what squirting and gushing are is wrong, because medical science doesn’t entirely know. Also, anyone who makes fun of you for being a squirter or a gusher is a fucking loser.’
