Sexology of the Vaginal Orgasm (13 page)

1. 1. The Inadequacy of the Female Sexual Response
      

      According to Baron Richard von Krafft-Ebing (1840– 1902), one of the leading representatives of the Vienna School of Medicine, it is above all the “
      sensation of ejacula- tion
      ” which is essential to achieving sexual satisfaction. Many authors after him consequently chose this term as the
      

      appellation for orgasm. He, himself, used the word “
      Woll- lustgefühl
      ” or sensation of ecstasy (cf. Krafft-Ebing, 1888;
      

      p. 466), and later, “
      a condition similar to male priapism (persis- tent erection
      )” (p. 469).
      

      This provides vivid documentation of the next phase in the fateful development of the aforementioned phantom. All that is left over from ejaculation is the “sensation” and as if by sleight of hand, the female orgasmic reflex disappears completely by only comparing it solely to the stiffening of a penis. The only thing left over is sheer excitability.
      

      Fifteen years later the esteemed Berlin sexologist Otto Adler stripped down the orgasmic potency of the woman even further. He was so convinced of the “
      inadequacy of the female sexual response
      ” that he made it the title of his book. Accord- ing to Adler, a man had to employ all of his persuasive talents to elicit any erotic sensations: “…The art of awaken- ing the female sex drive, which is seldom hereditary, weak- er than the male’s and hence harder to arouse, is a prize competition of male individuality. This art, like any other, can be learned to a certain degree” (Adler, 1904; p. 130).
      

      Oh sure, you say, this disavowal of female sexuality could only be the brain child of uptight men. Reading their mud- dled theories engenders the fervent desire to finally read the professional opinion of women.
      

      And so I read Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell (1821–1910), the first American physician who fought for a woman’s right to study medicine. Consequently, one assumes that this woman has enough civil courage to come right out and say what she thinks. And she did – and denied the female gen- der had any sex drive at all. Whereas in the male an ejacu-
      

      lation normally led to sexual satisfaction, she argued, a woman experienced her fulfillment through
      menstruation
      (cf. Ellis, 1900; p. 192). Since that which must not be, can not be, Blackwell simply chalked the female sex drive up to the compulsion to reproduce. Period. And she was not the only one. Laura Maholm corroborated her view. She claimed that young German women simply, “…See in the unfamiliar man who might want to approach her nothing more than possibly the father of her future child, but the longing of the young girl’s heart comes solely from her desire to be- come a mother at any price” (cf. Ellis, 1900; p. 192). A col- league got indignant at a gynecological congress held in Vienna in 1902, bringing it all to a head when she ex- claimed, “
      It is an insult to women to accuse them of having sexual needs!
      ”
      

      One can easily imagine how traumatic it must have been for young women in this climate of
      Anaesthesia sexualis feminarum
      to contemplate the sinfulness of their sexual impulses – impulses they had been told they did not even have. The
      Mémoires Particulières
      , written by a certain Madame Roland, who lived in that period, provide some insight into this. What makes this document all the more remarkable is that it was extraordinarily rare for people of that day to make such avowals. The author recalls how she often awoke panic-stricken in the middle of the night from sexual dreams which left her with extremely pleasurable feelings:
      

      “The first sensation I had, and I do not know why, was one of fear.” After that, she was constantly plagued by guilt and would summon all of her strength to keep herself from repeating these dreams. “I became so restless that I finally succeeded in waking up before the catastrophe occurred.
      

      When I did not awake in time, I jumped out of bed onto the polished floors in my bare feet and prayed to our savior with my arms crossed over my chest, entreating him to liberate me from the devil’s noose” (quoted from Ellis, 1900; p. 189).
      

   2. The Theologia Moralis
      

      In our culture, Catholic moral theology has a great influ- ence on whether or not something is considered sinful. With the help of the Papal University in Rome, I managed to find literary references directly relating to this topic.
      

      The standard work
      Theologia moralis
      was written in the 18th century by Alfonso Maria Liguori with astonishing meti- culousness. The revised edition published in 1939 has had a social impact, even today, that is not to be underestima- ted. It also contains some surprising concepts. At one point, for example the author wonders, “
      Is a woman allowed, once the man has ejaculated and withdrawn, to stimulate herself with her own touch to bring about her own semination?
      ” His answer must be baffling to many, because, no matter which way you look at it, this Doctor of the Church values female eja- culation so highly that he even permits women to mastur- bate in order to achieve it. He justifies this special permis- sion to masturbate as follows: “Because the woman’s ejacu- lation is part of completing the conjugal act, which consists of the ejaculation of both man and wife; and just as the woman can prepare herself for the conjugal act by touching herself, so can she also complete the conjugal act. Another reason is that if a woman were called upon to go against her nature and restrain herself after being aroused in this way, she would be placed in great danger of committing mortal sin, as men, because they have a hotter nature, very often
      

      ejaculate earlier … And finally because, as most contend, the woman’s ejaculation is necessary or at least contributes greatly to conception: For no act of nature is without pur- pose” (trans. from Liguori, 1912 ed., p. 101).
      

      Remarkably enough, the first sentence of the above quote can be found in the original Latin (“…
      tum quia seminatio mulieris pertinet ad compiendum actum conjugalem
      …”) almost verbatim back in the 2nd century in the writings of Galenus (cf. Brunn et al., 1937; p. 192). Thus, antiquity’s theories on the female orgasm were dragged all the way into the 20th century, thereby influencing both attitudes and behavior.
      

   3. The Last Ignoramuses
      

In contrast to the praying Madame Roland, who could not sleep for fear of her erotic dreams, the scientific discourse on female ejaculation fell, not unlike Sleeping Beauty, into an even deeper, undisturbed sleep.

The phenomenon sank into oblivion for more than half a century. Ernst Gräfenberg did describe it in 1950, but it was not until publication of the international bestseller “
The G spot
” in 1982 that it was awakened by the scientific kiss of the team of John Perry and Beverly Whipple.

In the essay in which Gräfenberg stressed the significance of the G spot named after him, he also describes his obser- vations about the orgasmic emission:

“Occasionally the production of fluids is so profuse that a large towel has to be spread under the woman to prevent the bed

sheets getting soiled. This convulsory expulsion of fluids occurs always at the acme of the orgasm and simultaneously with it. If there is the opportunity to observe the orgasm of such women, one can see that large quantities of a clear transparent fluid are expelled not from the vulva, but out of the urethra in gushes. At first I thought that the bladder sphincter had become de- fective by the intensity of the orgasm. Involuntary expulsion of urine is reported in sex literature. In the cases observed by us, the fluid was examined and it had no urinary character” (Gräfenberg, 1950; p. 146). Hardly anyone read this article, which was published in a small inaccessible medical journal, and those who did merely shook their heads …

In 1953 the Kinsey Report on “
Sexual Behavior in the Human Female
” was published. Although his work consti- tuted a milestone in sociological research, it was still not tied into any research of the physiological or psychological response to sexual stimuli.

This epoch achievement was accomplished in the 1960s by my first teachers, William Masters and his wife, Virginia Johnson, in St. Louis, Missouri. They perforce breached an unwritten law, which dictated that for ethical reasons scien- tists may not directly observe or record sexual behavior, something which was indispensable for their project. And they did so extensively. Over 7,500 complete response cycles of female subjects were recorded in the laboratory. State of the art technology was used: Radio physicists developed an artificial penis made of clear plastic for simulating inter- course. Equipping the device with cold light allowed for undistorted observation and recording of occurrences inside the vagina. The device could be adapted to fit each woman’s height and specific vaginal dimensions and, of course, the thrusting speed and depth of the artificial penis could also

be regulated to provide the required sexual arousal.

And even if one questions the validity of the observed responses obtained using this electrically powered device, one would think, with all of the elaborate equipment and huge number of cases observed, that they would also have dealt with the subject of female ejaculation. And yet the following lines from the groundbreaking and world-famous work “The Sexual Response” speak for themselves: “Many women reported an intense sensation in the pelvis and clitoris in the first stage of an orgasm combined with a feeling of pressing or expelling. This is often described as a feeling of acceptance or opening up, mainly by women who have given birth. Some of the women in this group also felt that they had expelled something or had some sort of emission.
Previous male interpretation of these subjective reports may have resulted in the erroneous but widespread concept that female ejaculation is an integral part of female orgasmic expression”
(Masters & Johnson, 1966; p. 135).

In a Playboy interview given in 1968, Virginia Johnson said, “There are a great many women whose physical experien- ces have reinforced their belief that they ejaculate. The fact that the intensity of the act causes many women to urinate could play a role here. But we just don’t know” (quoted from Boschmann, 1974, p. 71).

At that time, the standard of knowledge on female genital secretions was no more advanced in Europe than in the Uni- ted States. One of its most prominent representatives, Volk- mar Sigusch, claimed that “female ejaculation” was no more than an “antiquated expression” for vaginal mucous gene- rated by sexual arousal. Moreover, in the 1970 publication of the
German Society for Sexual Research
he banished the

concept of fluid emissions ejaculated by the female genitals to the realm of archaic legends. Only a few “older authors

– and it is no coincidence that they are all men”, although otherwise reputable, apparently have great difficulty letting go of this antiquated notion even today (Sigusch, 1970; p. 38 f.).

However, not only sexologists commit this error in good faith, but also literary historians and sociologists, for instance. They supposed that since the man ejaculated at the moment of climax, researchers in previous centuries could not imagine that it would be any different for the woman.

Hence, the English Lord Wayland Kennet, who in 1966 wrote the famous book “Eros Denied” under the pseu- donym Wayland Young, could only shake his head in bewil- derment: “
Nowadays, we wonder how anyone could ever have believed something like that
…” (Young, 1966, p. 323).

1. Rediscovery
   

   After Gräfenberg, it took 30 years before researchers once again began investigating the rumors about female ejaculation. The decisive impetus came from a 40- year-old mother, who told Professor Edwin Belzer of
   Dalhousie University
   in Halifax, Canada, that she had been ejaculating since she was 35. Since a doctor had once assured her that she suffered from incontinence she was pretty unsure of herself, because previous examination of the taste and smell of this fluid had led her to a com pletely different conclusion. So she decided to conduct an original experiment: She took pills to turn her urine blue.
   

   After she had had emissions again in the course of several orgasms, she observed the stains on the sheets. Some of them were completely colorless, while others had a very faint blue tint to them. To compare, she let a few drops of urine fall on the bed sheets and the resulting stain was dark blue. She concluded from the experiment that the fluid that she squirted during orgasm could not be urine (cf. Belzer, 1981; p. 6).
   

   Supported by these and other reports, Belzer presented a paper entitled “
   Female Ejaculation: Myth or Reality
   ?” at a meeting of the
   American Association of Sex Educators, Coun- selors and Therapists
   in Washington. Among the sneering, disbelieving audience was Martin Weisberg, professor of gynecology and psychiatry in Philadelphia, who summed up his personal impression as follows: “Bullshit”, I said. “I spend half of my waking hours examining, cutting apart, putting together, removing, or rearranging female repro- ductive organs. There is no female prostate, and women don´t ejaculate” (trans. from Weisberg, 1981; p. 90).
   

   Weisberg and a few of his colleagues then contacted the woman to see for themselves right there and then whether her claim was accurate: “The vulva and the vagina were normal with no abnormal masses or spots. The urethra was normal. Everything was normal. She then had her partner stimulate her by insert- ing two fingers into the vagina and stroking along the urethra lenghtwise... In a few moments the subject seemed... bearing down as if starting to defecate and seconds later several cc´s of milky fluid shot out of the urethra. The material was clearly not urine.” The professor admitted, “I was really confused. I checked with several anatomists, all of whom thought I was crazy...Years from now I am sure that a medical school lectu- rer will joke about how it wasn´t until 1980 that the medical
   

   community finally accepted the fact that woman really do ejaculate” (Weisberg, 1981; p. 90).
   

   The three colleagues of Weisberg’s who were also eye witnesses were the physician Frank Addiego, psychiatrist John Perry and sexologist Beverly Whipple. They were so impressed that they formed a research group together with Belzer. Soon thereafter, not only did this team of researchers film a woman in the process of ejaculating, in 1981 they also published the first chemical analyses of the “ejaculate” issuing from the urethra.
   

   The chemical differences between the ejaculate and urine prove what the resourceful Canadian woman had already determined by coloring her urine blue: Female ejaculation has nothing to do with bedwetting and therefore must not be mistaken for incontinence. Even these initial bio- chemical data indicate that a substantial portion of the glandular secretion must stem from prostate tissue.
   

2. My Own Analyses
   

   In order to get to the bottom of this matter, the Viennese medical laboratory scientist Dr. Hans-Jörg Klein and I began a test series in 1983 analyzing data of 20 men and women (cf. Stifter, 1987).
   

   Among the subjects, there were five women who claimed to frequently emit a fluid during sexual activity. They were instructed to abstain from any sexual activity for at least 48 hours prior to the tests. (cf. Schumann et al., 1976).
   

   They emptied their bladders immediately before mastur-
   

   bating and the urine was collected in a measuring glass. The subjects stimulated themselves alone and undisturbed in the privacy of their own homes. Three women used solely clitoral stimulation, while the other two required vaginal stimulation as well. The subjects were between 31 and 39 years old and four of them were mothers. Since in most cases the fluid gushed forth, it was possible to collect some of the fluid in a test tube with the aid of a sterilized funnel. Only in one case was it necessary to let the fluid collect first on a sheet of plastic before transferring it to a glass container using an eyedropper. The consistently thin sexual secretion was translucent and milky in color.
   

   The results of the analysis were unequivocal. The secretion ejaculated from the urethra differed significantly from the urine of the corresponding subjects, as well as from the ave- rage urine parameters for all 20 men and 20 women in the experiment. We decided to examine additional parameters in order to further validate these findings. After the preli- minary test as outlined above, we took samples from two of the subjects, who had indicated that they sometimes eja- culated as much as a quarter of a liter, and subjected them to about 60 more chemical analyses. Based on our inter- pretation of the most significant results, we concluded that the orgasmic fluid was clearly composed of glandular secre- tions (Stifter, 1988).
   

3. Increasing Knowledge
   

   Traces of acid phosphatase were detected in women’s worn underwear. Positive values were already detected after 24 hours at the urethral opening and later increasingly, due in part to gravity, inside the vagina. It was confirmed that
   

   these traces in underwear originated from continuous female prostate secretions. They are solely female in origin without any sort of male involvement (Zaviacˇicˇ , et al., 1987b and 1988c).
   

   Women continuously secrete imperceptibly small amounts of fluid from their prostate glands, just like men. This rea- lization was a bombshell to the forensic science communi- ty in the late 1980s. The consternation was understanda- ble, especially since back in the days when DNA analysis, today a routine practice, was not yet available, detection of acid phosphatase was commonly used to establish irrefuta- ble evidence of biological traces in cases of rape and similar offences. The minute it was established that women also possess a functioning prostate gland, this was no longer con- sidered solid proof.
   

   Since the secretion from the prostate gland also contains fructose, its continuous presence may also be beneficial to reproduction. The basal fructose level in the vagina corre- sponds to the volume found in prostate secretion ( Zaviacˇicˇ , 1999). After the male ejaculates in the vagina during inter- course, the concentration of saccharide (a special type of sugar) significantly increases due to the fructose coming from the male ejaculatory ducts. Thus the woman can impact the motility of the sperm with her own fructose – although not to the same extent as the man. Since good motility is one of the decisive factors enabling the biologi- cally superior sperm cells to fertilize the egg, it is possible that both sexes contribute to this process because of the importance this holds for reproduction (Zaviacˇicˇ , 1999).
   

   Sexually masochistic people repeatedly experience strong sexual impulses and fantasies involving being humiliated,
   

   beaten, bound, or suffering in some other way. In one spe- cific form of this perversion, hypoxyphilia, the individuals choke themselves or place themselves in danger of suffoca- tion in order to increase their sexual pleasure, or they ask their partners to do so.
   

   Clinical reports of autoerotic
   asphyxia
   are on the rise. The victims, usually male and some still quite young, strangle, hang or choke themselves during masturbation, resulting in an unintentional fatal lack of oxygen supply to the brain. Many die in the process. There are over 100 such deaths reported annually in the United States. Paraphernalia com- monly found at the fatality scene are mirrors, erotic litera- ture and safeguards to prevent oxygen from being cut off permanently. Often the corpse is found with a post-mortem erection and signs of ejaculation caused by the life-threaten- ing lack of oxygen. Forensic doctors have also found in per- forming autopsies that some women also ejaculate in such situations (Zaviacˇicˇ , 1988c).
   

   Women, in general, apparently prefer having orgasms with the emission of fluid, because they subjectively derive great- er satisfaction from it than from an orgasm without eja- culation (Whipple, 1994; Schubach, 1997; etc). Conse- quently, the female ejaculatory phenomenon could shed some light on the motivation behind the life-threatening hypoxyphilia.
   

   Above all, the volume of the female ejaculatory fluid remains a mystery. How can female volumes by far exceed the amounts produced by men, given the fact that the male prostate is substantially bigger?
   

   The amount of secretion depends mainly on the size of the
   

   glands and their storage capacity. Ninety-five percent of male ejaculate ranges in volume from 0.2 to 6.6 ml, while the maximum volume ever recorded was 13 ml (cf. MacLe- od, 1950). Approximately one-third of the total ejaculated fluid is produced by the prostate and the rest comes from the seminal vesicles and the epididymis. The small saliva- ry glands offer a useful comparison. Dentists know how much saliva is produced during treatment. One study, for example, recorded 103 ml of saliva in one hour (cf. Sauer- wein, 1974; p 158). There have even been reports of saliva spurting out in such streams that it even hit the dentist’s face. Nevertheless, this does not explain the reported vol- umes of genital secretion in excess of one liter.
   

   Since practically all of the literature, both old and new, only provided more or less rough estimates, I instigated a study to extrapolate more exact data. A subject who had reported frequently having excessive amounts of orgasmic emissions was instructed to take as much time as desired for clitoral masturbation. Within the space of almost two hours she experienced a series of orgasms. She took long breaks inter- mittently, during which she read erotic literature. The total volume of ejaculated fluid was 114 ml. In analyzing the colorless, transparent liquid, this time special attention was paid to the electrolytes. Here as well, there were marked differences from urine parameters (Stifter, 1988, tab. 8).
   

   The conclusion I draw from this research is that there must be additional sources of female ejaculatory fluid in addition to the paraurethral glands, which virtually all of the relevant recent literature considers to be the sole source of female eja- culatory fluid. It is hard to imagine that the female prosta- te is able to produce such volumes alone, especially consi- dering the dimensions portrayed in Huffman’s wax model.
   

4. Like a Japanese Fireman’s Hose
   

   I found important evidence of this in Japan, where I came across source material until then unknown to the West. It revealed that Professor Atsushi Oshikane had already been investigating the phenomenon back in Gräfenberg’s day in the 1950s. What made this so remarkable was that he encountered a completely different source of the fluid.
   

   One day a 35-year-old woman came to see him. She was the mother of two and completely healthy in terms of both inter- nal medicine and gynecology. She consulted the professor because she was concerned about the unusually abundant volume of secretions she produced during intercourse. She allowed Oshikane to observe her while she masturbated in the privacy of her own bedroom.
   

   What the professor saw both amazed and intrigued him: “…The fluid gushed out of her with great force, as from a fireman’s hose. This emission came out of the vaginal opening and not the urethral opening or the Bartholin gland” (trans. from Oshikane, 1977; p. 784). The only other conceivable source for Oshikane was the uterus.
   

   So he built an instrument which could be placed over the cervix like the suction cup of a plunger (Illus. 39). In the course of an elaborate second experiment, a secretion came out of tube A during masturbation which was collected in various test tubes over a period of 30 minutes. The sexolo- gist changed test tubes every two minutes. Illustration 40 shows all 15 test tubes with their respective amounts of flu- id arranged in chronological order. Particularly striking is the large volume of secretion contained in receptacle 10.
   

   Fig. 39
   

   

   Oshikane’s Cervical Suction Cup
   

   The test subject experienced the most intense of several orgasms at this point. A total of 56 ml of fluid had been collected and Oshikane surmised that they stemmed from the glands located around the cervix (1977; p. 787).
   

   Around the same time, the American ob-gyn Robert Latou Dickenson presented the same hypothesis. He referred to the gynecologist Munde, who had seen how a woman who had been sexually aroused spewed forth a cervical fluid or, as he put it, “made exit in jets” (cf. Dickerson, 1949; p. 91).
   

   Fig. 40
   

   

   All 15 Test tubes
   

   Jointly with gynecolo- gist Heinz Kittel, I conducted a test series using a test arrange- ment similar to Oshi- kane’s, but even after several repetitions we did not observe any flu- id coming out of the cervix (Stifter, 1987).
   

   

   Until well into the previous century, it was quite common for Chinese and Japanese to swallow a woman’s sexual secre- tions as a form of sexual stimulant or rejuvenating tonic. To collect the fluid, women
   

   Fig. 41
   

   used a special receptacle called a
   Heikonoinho
   , which was fitted with an artificial penis (Fig. 41). The fact that around 1890 this fluid was referred to in the erotic book
   Jitsugokyo Esho as Insui
   ,
   

   which loosely translates as “water of lasciviousness”, is
   

   Heikonoinho
   

   clear proof that this elixir consisted of female ejaculate and not simply a few drops of lubrication.
   

   This same term is used to refer to male ejaculate: fig. 42 dates back to the
   Yedo period
   (1603–1867) and serves as fur- ther confirmation. The fluid gushes forth. The fact that the orgasm occurs simultaneously is evidenced by the woman’s curled up toes, which is typi- cally indicative of sexual climax in Japanese wood carvings.
   

   Fig. 42
   

   

   Insui