Middle Eastern Study Declares Female Ejaculation Pathological

Ah, female ejaculation. The holy grail of sex. Not many have seen it, fewer have lived it, but there it is. Hanging over our heads as science continues to scramble to understand its cause, function — or whether it exists at all.

A recent study from the Middle East brought to our attention by Scientopia, concluded — after some really questionable science — that female ejaculation is pathological.

Things we currently know about female orgasm: swelling in genitalia, increases in blood flow to the clitoris, culminating in spasms of various muscle groups and a spike in heart rate and blood pressure. As far as female ejaculation, there are definitely women who do it, no question there. […] Some studies have shown that the fluid which ejaculating women spurt contains fluids which are associated with prostate tissue, which some women have, and which lend credence to the idea of a separate ejaculatory ability in women. Other studies show it’s just urine, and still OTHER studies show it’s a mixture of both.

In this study, scientists were trying to ascertain whether ejaculation was related to orgasm in women. To do this, they put needle electrodes in the corpora cavernosa of 38 women. The corpus cavernosum is a sponge-like body of erectile tissue that flanks the clitoris in pairs (the plural, thus, being corpora cavernosa). Allow us to illustrate:

Balloon measures were inserted into the uterus and vagina to measure pressure.

With the everything in place, scientists used electrovibration to stimulate the women. As Sci points out, there is no data detailing how they dealt with possible interference of the vibrator on electrophysical recordings, but let’s skip over that and move to their conclusions, which are the most problematic aspect of this so-called experiment.

So they applied vibration to the clitoris to induce orgasm. The women did so. None of them ejaculated or urinated.

The scientists thus concluded that female orgasm is not associated with ejaculation. Thus, female ejaculation must indicate pathology.

We kid you not.

Thirty-eight women — who may or may not have ejaculated in their lives, we don’t know — were brought to orgasm. The lack of an incident of female ejaculation in this group led researchers to conclude female ejaculation was pathological.

As Sci concludes:

I don’t think they WANTED to find anything. After all, in the introduction they state:

The above-mentioned studies suggest that there is controversy regarding the existence of female ejaculation. Meanwhile, if it is prove[n]–that ejaculation exists in the female, its absence would represent a pathologic condition the cause of which has to be investigated. We hypothesized that female orgasm is not associated with ejaculation.

So basically, they don’t think orgasm is associated with ejaculation in women because if it WAS, it would mean that women who couldn’t ejaculate were suffering from a PATHOLOGY. I don’t buy that logic. Just because you can ejaculate doesn’t mean that it’s horribly wrong if you don’t. We aren’t men, you know. There are a bunch of differences, most particularly including the fact that sex can be enjoyable and fulfilling in women without the presence of ejaculation (while this is not really true in most men). […] And then when they don’t find ejaculation, they conclude that women who ejaculate must be pathological. Ok, just because we can doesn’t mean it’s wrong if we don’t, and just because we DO doesn’t mean it’s wrong either. This is a big pile of speculation that is completely unsupported by the literature.

The Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy, in which this study ran, needs to seriously give more thought to its contents, that’s all we’re going to say.

Header image by Manos Simonides. Vagina illustration from Wikipedia. Information from Scientopia.