Gushing: the Spurting Story!

Yep, I'm going to be making water jokes with the pictures the whole time.

Gushing:  the Spurting Story!

 (Originally published in Sass Magazine)

            When I received a message about this, I honestly didn’t know much beyond the brief mention of “female ejaculate” in the first season of The L-Word (I love Dana!). The original message, and I’ll paraphrase here to protect the gusher, stated that she’d done this off and on in the past, but hadn’t done so yet with her girlfriend until one fateful night…apparently her girlfriend of two-ish months was not exactly into it, which I think is silly considering she caused it.

            Before we delve into the slippery and wet of the issue, there should probably be a history lesson (don’t go skipping through the history to get to the sex stuff—remember what the subject matter is—it’s all sex stuff). The existence of gushing or female ejaculation has been debated and it’s kind of odd who falls out on each side. A huge swath of the women’s lib movement/Gloria Steinam feminists dismissthe existence of gushing as pure fantasy, more specifically, pure malefantasy. If this made you shake your head in wonder, don’t worry, you’re not alone; I completely didn’t follow this when I read it either. Granted, my knowledge of straight male fantasies is about as plentiful as my knowledge of skyscraper construction:  I’ve seen them from the outside and have been in a few, but I have no idea how or why they’re made nor do I care to learn. Still, I don’t for an instant believe the entirety of female ejaculation was completely imagined, disseminated, and conjured into mythical existence by straight male fantasy. Other people have dismissed it as urine…that is apparently also completely false.

Aren't we glad it's NOT urine?

             Scientists of the vaginal, anatomical, and evolutionary bent have theorized that the g-spot is actually analogous to the prostate in what tissues each are made up of in the same way the clit is made up of a lot of the same structures as the penis. The g-spot and the prostate apparently function like valves. Gushing is not urine; this has been scientifically shown again and again by chemically testing what is actually in the liquid, and it isn’t urea (the protein base compound found in urine). To get down to the really chemically-analytical explanation, gushing seems to be the base liquid that semen would be added to in male ejaculate.

            Now that we know it isn’t a myth constructed by the straight male fantasy machine and it isn’t errant urine, let’s talk about why and how it happens. The answer, in a nutshell, is nobody really knows. I put it out to friends, lesbians, straights, bisexuals, stone-butches, super-femmes, and even gender ambiguous with some interesting, but largely conflicting reports. A lot of internet research said g-spot stimulation was the key, but then a friend of mine said she does it nearly every time she climaxes and she only climaxes through clitoral stimulation. I asked around and found a few other women who have gushed after clit-climaxes. At this point, it was less about the original question—which I do have an answer for, bear with me—I just wanted to unravel the mystery of gushing for myself.

As wet as you're likely to get if you use a dental dam--seriously, safe sex, ladies.

             I started eliciting advice on how to do it. Relaxing and letting go was something I was told, which, if true, would explain why I never had since I tense up like I’m undergoing electric-shock when I orgasm. Intensity was also apparently important; darn, poor me in researching this part. Armed with my two pieces of widely agreed upon information, I brought the quandary to my girlfriend. She told me she didn’t want to do it, wasn’t interested in making me do it, didn’t want me to do it in front of her, and if I was going to test it on my own, lay down a towel so I don’t make a mess on the off chance I do manage to make it happen. This really did demonstrate an element of the potentially off-putting aspects of the act. Before I could actually test whether or not I was able to gush, I had to know how common this reaction was.

            After asking a wide-range of people, I got an equally wide-range of answers, and they really didn’t seem to follow any helpful trends. Some lesbians loved it. Several butches I asked thought of it as ejaculating and really enjoyed the masculinity of that; other butches saw it as a badge of honor to make a femme gush. Many femmes agreed that they’d done it with a variety of reactions, but most didn’t really see it as masculine. Straight men I asked were almost completely split:  some liked it, some hated it, some had never seen it outside of porn and had no idea if it was real or not. Surprisingly, the two groups with a consensus were bisexual women, who didn’t seem to care one way or the other, and gay men who categorically thought it was creepy and several told me they thought vaginas had teeth in them (just kidding boys…but not really). Gay men aside, it really does seem to be entirely personal preference.

            Now let me state here, I did all due-diligence when it came to testing this for myself. I won’t get into the grittier of the extremely gritty details, but let’s just say, no stone of masturbation was unturned in trying to achieve this. And I couldn’t do it. Relaxing at the point of climax didn’t help, intensity didn’t seem to make a difference, and g-spot stimulation (which I canand do climax from, lucky me!) didn’t make any appreciable difference. I shared the results of my catastrophic failure with my girlfriend, and she assured me it was for the best that I didn’t teach myself a trick she didn’t want me learning.

I mean, it's not water sports...google water sports if you don't know what that is.

             So, to the answer for our dear friend, Ms. Gusher…

            Depending on who you ask, what you did was a beautiful, sexy thing or a gross deal-breaker with a lot of gray area in between. From the sound of it, this isn’t an all-the-time sort of thing for you. From my own experimentation (and the abundance of how-to articles/videos/guides on the internet), it doesn’t seem easy to do. It also might need to be something your girlfriend gets the fuck over too. Bodily functions happen during sex. Once you get out of the honeymoon phase of the first six months of your relationship, you’ll probably fart, burp, and pee in front of your girlfriend on at least a weekly basis; some parts of relationship intimacy are gross, but you get over it because it’s just biology and part of doing business as a human being. Part of your girlfriend doing business with your business parts, might mean occasionally having to take a splatter on the face or hand. Come on, straight girls apparently do it all the time and the stuff they’re getting shot with has swimming things in it…I’m getting gayer just thinking about it. If she can’t get comfortable with the fact that sometimes you spurt a little bit, and the studies did show it’s not significantly more than average male ejaculate volumes no matter what internet porn says (I had to watch unspeakable things to research this article), then maybe she should go out and find herself a nice sandbox to play in. There are people out there who are into it, and if this is a deal-breaker for her, you’re probably better off finding one of the ladies who loves it and try spurting in their general direction.

Reciprocity and Straight Girls

Grown up lesbians dealing with grown up lesbian problems.

I'm going to field a couple of questions directed at me through Twitter and hopefully answer some general, all-purpose lesbian questions in the process. Then I might finish it up by talking about threesomes a bit just for the heck of it.

The first question from Twitter involves a young lady who has been dating her girlfriend for awhile now and things have cooled off significantly in the bedroom over the past few months (to the tune of once a month for several months in a row--ouch!). She tries to instigate sex and is rejected while the girlfriend (once a month) apparently is the only one who can instigate sex without rejection. It looks like this has been going on for about six months now and the pent up asker of the question is getting a little sick of being rejected. The reason given by her partner for the low sex drive is that sex makes her feel vulnerable, which is kind of a "duh" comment deserving of a "Yeah, and...?" response.

First things first, rejection, sexual rejection especially, sucks giant squid balls, and I encourage people to say yes to their partner as often as humanly possible. The only time you should reject your partner's sexual advances (especially in a lesbian relationship) is if you're bleeding out of your eyes and feel like all that eye blood might ruin the mood. Part of being in a relationship is tending your partner's sexual garden, which means you might need to do a little water if you don't want to end up with a dry dusty plot (pun intended). Don't get me wrong though, sexual permissiveness doesn't extend to ham-fisted approaches like "wanna fuck?" Part of the instigating partner's job in this sexual give and take is to do their damn best to get the other party in the mood. Wine them, dine them, dress up for them if they're into that sort of thing, keep yourself clean/sexy/lickable in just the ways they like, and tend to their emotional state as well or you're not very deserving of that 'yes' now are you?

Foreplay is I finish my cigarette first.

To the asker of the question, if you're doing all these things. If you're fit as hell, dressed in exactly that thing she loves seeing you dressed in, pitching crazy woo at her with compliments, flirty comments, and have turned your bedroom into a potential fire hazard with candles around satin sheets, AND she's still rejecting you, this is on her. If you're showing up after a long day, whipping off your stinky work shoes, pulling your hair back in a ratty ponytail, and saying, "How about a little head?" You're not all that deserving of any sexual attention and rejection should be the only thing you can and should expect. Let's just assume you're putting the effort in, staying fit, staying sexy, tending her emotional state, and putting forth a real seduction effort...

At this point, you need to lay it all on the table with her. Tell her you feel unappreciated when she rejects your well-thought-0ut advances, that you need more sexual tending, that you don't feel she is open to having sex instigated, and that you need her to say "yes" more often and give you the chance to get her into the mood even if she's not starting off that way. That last bit is key. She doesn't have to be in the mood to say yes, in fact, as women, we usually won't be to start out, but it's crucial that we are in an agreement with our partner that we will be open to them making the effort to get us into the mood, and I think she'll find that going into this with the right mindset, she'll end up being in the mood in short order.

This conversation can obviously go one of two ways. She's either willing to work with you on being in a true sexual partnership where both people's needs are given equal value and importance, or she's not. If she is willing to work with you, then you'll have to keep very open lines of communication through the process to make sure neither one of you is feeling taken advantage of and that you're both getting something out of your sexual trysts. If she's NOT willing to work with you, then you have to decide whether or not her company is worth 12 sexual encounters a year, all instigated by her. I can't make that choice for you, but, speaking only for myself, there's no such thing as someone that would be worth that for me.

Quick summary: be worth saying yes to, everyone needs to be open to the possibility of being gotten into the mood, and if you're in a relationship with a huge discrepancy in sex drives it might not be the relationship for you.

The second question I got was from a bi-curious but straight identifying girl who was wanting to know how she could tell if a girl in her office was a lesbian. This question and a lot the answers to my follow up questions to her, really kind of bugged the shit out of me. First and foremost, bi-curious looking for lesbian is one of my pet peeves. Lesbians don't exist solely for straight identifying girls to run science experiments on. Secondly, after a loooooooong stretch of trying to get at the heart of all this, I found out the asker of the question didn't really have any plans of hitting on the girl because she thought the possible lesbian was out of her league, and she probably was. Anyway, I'll address this lack of gaydar to the best of my ability with the caveat of "no, you shouldn't pester her with your bi-curiosity" and "yes, she probably is out of your league."

Portia is a perfect example of why it is hard to play "spot the lesbian"

Gaydar rule #1 -- does she show the slightest bit of interest in men of any kind? Seriously, most lesbians have as much regard for men as most people have for floor lamps. They clearly serve some mundane purpose (like lighting a room or decorating a corner) but beyond that we don't really have much use for them. If she's chatting with men, open body language, and seems really interested in what he has to say about sports/movies/drywall/cars you've got yourself a straight girl. If her longest conversation with a co-worker male consists of: "Is that coffee fresh?" "Yep" "Cool" you're far more likely to have a lesbian (not proof positive, but it's a good sign).

Gaydar rule #2 -- does she dress the part? This is kind of related to rule #1 in that straight girls dress to impress guys and lesbians don't do that as often since women aren't as visual when it comes to most things (smell and sound count for a lot with ladies and guys can get past both if something looks good enough; when we're working on what we're attracting, this factors in). Does she wear 4" heels with tight jeans? Classic straight girl move. Does she wear contacts or glasses? Lesbians tend to go for comfort and glasses over poking ourselves in the eyes. Are there any hint pieces of jewelry or clothing that would indicate gay pride, equality, or that she is a fan of Tegan and Sara? Rainbows, little yellow equal signs in the middle of blue squares, and Lilith Faire memorabilia are used to signal other lesbians that we're in that club. Check her makeup, is it subdued, natural tones, or is it applied with a spray can? Lesbians are usually minimalists in the makeup department. WARNING! Don't rely on this solely! I am sitting here as a contradiction to at least two of these (makeup and contacts and maybe the clothes). There are lesbians out there who are visibly indiscernible from straight girls, and they're not as rare as you might think. Some real red flags should be icon neck-wear: a huge ass crucifix/Mormon pendant screams straight and rainbow rings/interlaced female symbols are pretty much only worn by lesbians.

Gaydar rule #3 -- what does she do with her free time? Again, this one can be tricky. Softball, walking dogs, golfing, and riding motorcycles used to be dead give-aways. Not so much anymore. Still, if she tends to have a lot of hobbies that most men would view as kind of threatening to their masculinity, you might be on the right track. Strangely enough, I think this rule's increasing ineffectiveness is owed to modern men not being so easily threatened by modern women usurping their roles, which has given straight girls far more latitude in what they can be interested in without scaring off men.

The Mona Lisa's look during college.

Gaydar rule #4 -- what is she doing with her hair? Again, I'm a walking contradiction here as I do the hell out of my hair. But lesbians in general do tend to go with shorter, less hassle, cute but not hot type of looks. Probably because we don't want to be bonked on the head by a caveman and dragged back to the cave; if that's not your thing, low handle length and easy breakage are good things.

These are obviously all across the room type observations. The real key would be to go up to the lady, have a conversation with her, and find out by listening to her answers to obvious questions that will hold lesbian indicators, but, since the asker had no intention of actually speaking to this woman, I have to assume this would be out of the question.

My real concern here, and I have been yelled at before my lack of concern for bisexuals, is that bi-curious girls do tend to views lesbians as fun experiments and breaks from men without real concern for the women they're hurting. My opinion, and this might just be the gold star in me talking, is that bi-curious girls should go fuck other bi-curious or bisexual girls, and leave us lesbians alone. I can just hear the bi girls now, "But Cassandra, lesbians are so experienced and exotic, and you know all about the wily woman on woman ways..." TRUTH! Okay, not always true, but in my case it sure is. Trust me, there are plenty of bisexual girls out there who know all about pleasing women. But, and more importantly, maybe you should have to build up lesbian cred before you can come to us with your head empty of knowledge when it comes to pleasing women. Which leads me to the rules for bi girls...

Rule #1 for bi-curious girls: YOU HAVE TO FUCKING EAT PUSSY! In fact, I'll put a sidebar on this one and say you should eat her pussy before she's allowed to go near yours. Being eaten out by a girl does not make you bisexual or lesbian, it means you have the ability to be licked while staring at the ceiling and thinking about whatever you feel like thinking about. To be blunt, ANYONE CAN FUCKING DO THAT. In Latin-American cultures, it was long thought (and still is sometimes) that a man who gets a blowjob from another man is not gay, but the man who gives the blowjob is. Same rules apply to us ladies, until you reciprocate by going down on her, all you are is a selfish straight girl. Bisexual/bi-curious tag denied!

Rule #2 for bi-curious girls: BE HONEST ABOUT YOUR GOALS! There are lesbians out there who are into one night stands, fooling around, and then sending you back to the forest of penises you came from with stories to tell that'll turn on frat boys. The problem is, most of us aren't like that. Find out if the girl you're hitting on even wants to touch bi-tail. Find out how freaking hurt and pissed she'll be if you go running around telling people you slept with her. News flash! You can do far more damage to our reputations than we can to yours. If you're honest and clear about your intentions and she still wants you, proceed to rule 3.

ZOMG I hope the guys are watching us so we can feel relevant!

Rule #3 for bi-curious girls: DON'T INVOLVE MEN IN ANY WAY SHAPE OR FORM! If you want male attention for making out with girls, go find yourself another drunk straight girl and you can both be swimming in jizz before the night is over. If you want another woman to come back and fool around with you and your boyfriend, find a bisexual girl or hire a hooker. Lesbian does not mean, "hasn't met the right penis yet." You may thrive on male attention, we couldn't care less.

Fantasy land has a fight club.

This kind of loops around to the threesome thing (see how I did that?), which is something of a question brought up by one of my stories oddly enough. In Astral Liaisons, I have a story about a lesbian couple who has occasionally seduced lesbians girls for threesomes, but never in a way that threatened their primary relationship, and then they end up in an odd situation where they have to seduce someone who may be bi-curious or just plain straight. It's called "Flesh Menagerie" and you should probably read it to get the full effect. Anyway, one of my friends and readers asked if I thought this was something realistic to do. Honestly, I think so, but it's not something I've done in my own relationship. I absolutely do think there are open and poly relationships out there that work just fine. I am a little curious about what my readers think about this topic though. Any thoughts, concerns, experiences, or opinions on the validity of threesomes in committed relationships should go in the comments below.

So I answered a couple questions, established some rules, and invited comments about threesomes...that's a full blog's work in my book.

Strap-ons: Squeak Softly and Carry a Big Stick

This article was originally posted in Sass Magazine but will soon be replaced by a new column about gushing, so I thought I'd archive it here for people who haven't had a chance to check out Sass yet (and everyone should), where I can include some links and visuals not supported by the magazine format. Enjoy!



I’m going to break the first rule of sex advice and give advice that wasn’t necessarily asked for. Second column and I’m already breaking rules laid out in the first one? Get used to it, ladies; I am woman and thus reserve the right to be inconstant. The topic to cover, one I wasn’t explicitly asked about, deals with strap-ons. I don’t mean to brag (okay, maybe a little), but I know a ton about these. The background for the question…recent discussions in a multi-racial, multi-generational LGBTA group led me to believe there is more misinformation than information in the lesbian community and so I thought I’d be Miss Information and let everyone in on my extensive knowledge.

The squeak reference in the title alludes to the squeaking sound so many of the harnesses make until they get broken in, and, odds are, you will break them in. A little background on the question (that I wasn’t asked, but should have been) is probably in order. There are some generational divides in the lesbian community in America (and probably everywhere else) that relate very closely to the second wave feminism movement of the 1960s and 70s. I’m going to skip all the ways lesbians, women in general really, of my generation disagree with Gloria Steinem save the one about sex toys. For a lot of lesbians, especially those of Ms Steinem’s generation, penetrative sex is still taboo with the exception of fingers, of course, and I still can’t understand why. With the emergence of the modern butches and drag kings, who view worn-toys as not just practical but part of their sexual identity, I’ve found a lot of new allies for my pro strap-on agenda despite being a femme in an all-femme relationship.

In mixed circles, which I travel in on occasion, the issue of sex toys comes up all the time. The prevailing “wisdom” is that if men use dildos they must be gay and if women use them they must not be. This is, of course, utter nonsense. Wanting to be penetrated has never had anything to do with a person’s sexuality and everything to do with penetration being pretty fucking great. One of the ground rules for just about anyone into penetration, and I’m not alone in thinking this, is that craving penetration does NOT mean craving cock. You can call a strap-on a cock, write cock on it with a Sharpie, register it in the sex toy hall of fame as Mr. Cock and it will never ever be a cock. Cocks deliver sperm and are attached to men—strap-ons don’t do either of these no matter how much you spend.

With that out of the way, we have to deal with what goes in the harness. I’ve discussed this with everyone I could get my hands on to gather as many opinions as humanly possible and I’ve come to two major conclusions:

#1 – If you don’t want it going inside you, it’s not going to do you much good; aesthetics are important. I’m like most people—I like shiny things (you have no idea how long it took me to figure that one out) be it cars, jewelry, clothing, hair, or, in this case, toys. There’s just something about shiny toys that I find visually appealing; maybe I was a crow or raccoon in a former life. I don’t like realistic looking toys in the slightest: veins, faux-pubic hair, flesh color…it just grosses me out. So, when it’s my turn to be on the penetrated side, we go with the pearly, pink, torpedo looking dildos. The point is: figure out what you find visually appealing. You should want that thing inside you and that starts with liking what it looks like.

Also, figure out beforehand what you want to call it. Nothing can derail fun like hearing one of those pet-peeve words uttered by your partner mid-coitus. My girlfriend hates the word ‘moist’…no idea why, but I know not to say it during sex. Most gay girls have similar issues with any number of the expansive library of names for penis; get the labeling ironed out beforehand.

In one of the discussions I had about strap-ons in one of those mixed groups I mentioned, a bi-guy friend stated, in a fairly cock-centric way, that evolution perfected cocks for pleasing pussies. I pointed out that evolution perfected cocks to deliver sperm, which turkey basters do a better job of, and sperm delivery doesn’t matter for strap-ons. Besides, don’t we live our lives telling evolution it didn’t do a very good job? If evolution got everything exactly right, we wouldn’t need shoes, eyeglasses, or toothbrushes. Don’t assume nature got it right; find what’s right for you.

#2 – One size does not fit all. Pussies come in all shapes and sizes; thankfully, so do sex toys. Harnesses, even the adjustable ones, are not necessarily going to be universal enough to fit both you and your girlfriend, unless you’re lucky enough to be about the same size, and even then, there’s a lot of preferences on where those straps sit. You may be able to get away with one harness, or you might have to buy two; they’re expensive, but getting the right one is worth the money and typically they last longer than your memory of the money you spent. Whether you go with leather and buckles or vinyl and Velcro, thong back or around the legs, you have to make sure it fits snugly, holds the desired dildo, and is comfortable enough to wear for awhile. Getting worn raw by an ill-fitting harness can really cut future rides short, cowgirls. In addition to the advice of spending money to achieve good quality, I do have to add that our womanly curves (or lack thereof in my case) can be a hindrance to fit. Leather harnesses with buckles offer the most customization in this area, and the rule of thumb should be: if you have trouble finding clothes to fit your body type, odds are you’ll need something with buckles for your strap-on. For petite women, like myself, this is especially important as I can punch new holes to fit the harness even smaller if need be.

A huge mistake I see a lot of newly strapped ladies is the wearer picking the toy, which is, pardon the pun, ass-backward. When you’re wearing the harness, she picks the dildo. Don’t assume the size and shape you enjoy are going to work for her; you can end up with an uncomfortably sore partner or a massively unsatisfied one with that kind of thinking. Trust me, even if you don’t particularly like the look of the toy she picks out, you’ll start to like it when you see how well it works.

Something that goes overlooked is how stylish these things can be.

We were built with g-spots for penetrative sex, toys are often necessary to stimulate the g-spot, and g-spot stimulation is pretty damn nifty; no social construct or hang-up about toys looking like penises should deny you or your partner a g-spot tickle—besides, a lot of toys look like popsicles with pink bunnies riding them, which sounds pretty damn feminine to me. If you haven’t tried a strap-on yet, what are you waiting for? If you have one and enjoy it, tell me what’s working for you and I might mention it in next month’s article, especially if I missed something. The point is, when you’re eating French fries, it’s fine to use your fingers, but when you’re eating spaghetti, you need a fork. So, get a strap-on and fork your girlfriend!

If you enjoyed the first installment, check out tips and tricks of strap-on uses from Erotic Answers!