the ejaculate fairy

The other day I did a presentation for my History of Sexuality class on the female prostate. I began by quoting 17th century Dutch physician Regnier de Graaf. In 1672, he was the first to recognize the prostate as the ejaculatory source in women. He observed: The urethra is lined internally by a thin membrane. In the lower part, near the outlet of the urinary passage, this membrane is pierced by large ducts, or lacunae, through which pituito-serous matter occasionally discharges in considerable quantities. Between this very thin membrane and the fleshy fibres we have just described there is, along the whole duct of the urethra, a whitish, membranous substance about one finger breadth thick which completely surrounds the urethral canal…The substance could be called quite aptly the female prostatae or corpus glandulosum. Here too it should be noted that the discharge from the female prostatae causes just as much pleasure as does that from male prostatae.
I also provided the class with visuals taken from Female Ejaculation and the G-spot by Deborah Sundahl, which was referencing Dr. Milan Zaviacic's The Human Female Prostate: from Vestigial Skene’s Paraurethral Glands and Ducts to a Woman’s Functional Prostate. Dr. Zaviacic studied the female prostate extensively from 1982 - 1999.

These illustrations are courtesy of Dr. J.W. Huffman who created molds of prostates removed during autopsies.

I meditated on why this information has been suppressed/ignored. Sexologists Sevely and Bennet believe the debate began as a semantic confusion. They outline the debate as follows in their 1978 essay "Concerning Female Ejaculation and the Female Prostate" Initially, the generic term semen was used to describe sexual fluids both male and female. "Galen and Hippocrates argued that a fetus is as much like its mother as its father; mothers therefore, as well as father have child producing semen."

Aristotelians differed. They claimed “If ejaculation of semen for generation never takes place unaccompanied by pleasure, it must be true that women do not contribute semen, since they sometimes conceive without experiencing pleasure.” Furthermore: “a female sometimes becomes pregnant without having excreted any of her own fluid, but never without having gone through the monthly cycle; menstrual blood is therefore essential for generation, but not female semen.”

Once the Aristotelians won the argument, the language used describe both sexes was left to the male alone.
With no words left to describe female ejaculate, it disappeared right along with female semen.

I segued into Dr. Zaviacic's research. Zaviacic confirms that the female prostate is a functional genitourinary organ with a specific structure and function.Compared to the male counterpart, the female prostate has a similar structure, expression of prostate markers and enzyme equipment.He identified two functions: exocrine (production of prostatic fluid, ie female ejaculate) and neuroendocrine (production of hormones)As of right now - only the production of serotonin has been established.

Then to illustrate the way science is often used to prove what one already knows seen through the lens of particular ideologies I listed these conflicting quotes concerning female ejaculation:

“…sometimes described as being emitted in a jet which is thrown to a distance.” -Havelock Ellis (1937)
“If there is an 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.” -Grafenberg (1950)
“Since the prostate gland and seminal vesicles are only vestigial structures in the female, she does not actually ejaculate.”- Kinsey (1953)
Man does this at the moment of pleasure, so presumably that little passive counterpart of himself which is the woman does the same. We wonder now how this can ever have been believed…”- Wayland Young (1964)

The last one got some rather amused chuckles from other women in my class.
Then I sited tests done by Dr. Zaviacic and one done by Shannon Bell that prove ejaculate is not urine. It has a higher pH, more gravity, less urea, less creatine and a much higher concentration of glucose.
(And on a personal note - which I most certainly did NOT include in my presentation, I can personally attest to the distinct difference between ejaculate and urine.)

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I guess I shouldn't have been so surprised that my presentation raised some ire but the whys still upset me. My prof really took issue with the fact that female bodied folks could have a prostate. He could concede that we ejaculate, but only men have a prostate. Since ejaculate has to come from somewhere and using the term prostate has come up against so much resistance - I propose we start telling people that in female-bodied people ejaculate is delivered by a fairy. That's right the ejaculate fairy. And since several parts of the female genitals already have already been named by the men who "discovered" them (Thanks Grafenberg! Thanks Skene! -even though you came up short) we can dedicate the ejaculate fairy not to me but to the lovely sexologist whose name I erased from my memory, who when comparing the vigor of the male orgasm to that of the female said: the woman's orgasm is a flimsy thing, a gossamer nothing. C'mon -everybody knows fairies love gossamer. See it all makes sense.

Identity Politicking Part II: Who am I and why should I care if you know?

All the reading I’ve been doing got me thinking further about how things would have been different if identity hadn’t been set up around sexuality. What if queers hadn’t been forced to create our own subculture in reaction to being classified as perverts? How would humans relate to each other sexually then? Would it be more free flowing with people acting on their attractions without identity crises since who or what you did wouldn’t define you?
All musings on sexual utopia aside, I’ve thought about this before of course. I am well aware of how segregated our social networks are and how identification can be limiting even as it is liberating. It’s so easy to give in to the pressure to de-emphasize or deny parts of yourself that do not fit within given rubrics. Or you have to advocate for a new identity or way of being known so you don’t feel invisible or unknowable, outside the matrix of intelligibility, if you will.
I had all this in my head as I was talking to a close friend of mine about how he seriously has to start consistently using male pronouns with my partner. This wasn’t something we had strongly emphasized until recently. Over the summer I introduced him as my girlfriend after a discussion of what terms we would use and we gave folks the option of using whatever pronouns they want. Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, a few people switched between male female and gender-neutral pronouns, but mostly they just defaulted to female.
My friend G. conceded that he realized his fuck up when he said “Goodnight, ladies” and saw the look in my partner’s eyes. Oops, shouldn’t have done that, he thought, but it was too late and would have been socially awkward to apologize at the moment.
G. went on to say that it was complicated for him and the other Conchitas*, which is not to absolve him of responsibility by any means, because even though they can see my partner is a boy, “He certainly looks like a boy, a gay boy.” G. says, he’s with me and the Conchitas see me as a dyke. So it seems my dykeyness is canceling out my partner’s faggyness. How’s that for a brain twister?
G. and I spoke further about my identity and my partner’s identity and how the perceived relationship between the two generates a variety of confusion for folks as we challenge existing concepts of gender and sex. I tried to explain to G. how my partner felt left out that evening and that, no matter how we look to them, we are not lesbians. I think he got most of it. At least I hope so. But then he asked a question for which I did not have an answer, not least of all because I am loathe to explain someone else’s identity – I don’t kid myself into thinking I know exactly how it feels to move in the world in another’s skin, even my lover’s – G. said, “I understand that you’re not lesbians, but why does he want to be a fag like us when he can be his own special thing?”





My love and I have had quite a few conversations now as to how to maintain queerness in our relationship as his transition progresses and more people start to see him as male. We’ve tried to anticipate how this will affect how we relate to each other. Will I want to be less affectionate with him in public as people start to identify me as an object belonging to some man, as they are wont to do when a guy has his arm around a lady? Will I have an increased need to assert my autonomy in public as people try to ascribe traditional gender roles upon us? Will they hand him the check? Acknowledge him first? See me only as his property? And though it will be less stressful not having to worry so much about anti-queer violence – we don’t want to lose our queerness. We may lose the hostile looks on the street – but what about when we lose the friendly conspiratorial gay eyes as well?
We came to the conclusion that what was most important was our friends. I assume the folks that know and love us will know who we are and see us as such, in all our lovely complexity. We will still be living in a very queer world. We are both adamant about not being absorbed into some sort of heteronormative existence. I think the most issues will arise in public spaces and from meeting new people. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little anxious and scared.
Even though I’ve passed as straight out of fear during various intervals of my life, I really hate being seen as straight. Having been in relationships with straight identified males, I remember well the claustrophobia, that feeling of being completely cut off from myself as my identity was absorbed into another’s. As heterosexuality was assumed and my partners pressured me to stay silent and straight lest their family and friends think I was sexually depraved and socially and emotionally maladjusted, (Just for kicks, I recommend trying to think up all the bisexual characters you’ve seen in pop culture and see how many you can name that weren’t slutty or half crazy.) I literally felt like I was dying. It’s a god-awful feeling, being forced to hide who you really are. Disassociation ensues as you wonder if these folks who fawn over you and tell you how great you are for their son would feel the same if they knew you. You begin to feel like they are praising someone else even as they look into your eyes. You wonder, what do they see? You get scared – am I a disgusting freak? A monster? Someone who has to hide their obscenity from decent god-fearing folk?
Thus the importance of having community support. Being perpetually surrounded by heterosexism distances you from yourself and you start to forget, or at least I do, that you are worthy of being loved for who you are. And nothing will ostracize you faster from your queer community than a soul-sucking straight boy who demands all your time. Having said that, I am happy to say I don’t have to worry about that with my partner, as he is a queer identified trannyboi. Oh lord, never bioboys again. I could do a thousand joyous jumping jacks just thinking about it. Anyway, my love and I have no intention of leaving the community that has nurtured us and makes us feel at home.





Not long after all these discussions, the boi and I were talking on iChat, when one of my coworkers looked at my computer screen and asked, “Oh, is that your boyfriend?”
Without hesitation, I answered yes. I looked back at the screen and my partner and I grinned at each other. The self-confessed nosy girl kept looking over at my screen throughout our conversation, even interrupting to tell us that she thought my lover looks like one of the characters from that 70’s show. It was the first time I had been read as straight in a long time and I still haven’t unpacked how it made me feel. I wasn’t bothered by it per say. Though I did get a little nervous fearing that one of the Conchitas would stop by and use the term girlfriend or make a gay joke at me. Thereby promising a particularly awkward scene with this girl with whom I have to sit at a desk once a week for four hours a minimum of two months more at least.
I have to say it was weird though – because once I logged off of iChat, having now seen proof of my boyfriend and hence my heterosexuality, she proceeded to bond with me over her own dating woes. I notice this rarely happens when I am seen as queer, as if I could not relate otherwise. This has always been odd to me. But then again, any investment in maintaining sex difference always has.
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*The Conchitas are a group of gay men with which I hang. I, of course, am a "Conchito."

Identity Politicking Part I

Tuesday in my History of Sexuality class, I had to introduce the day’s reading and give some points for us to talk about. The selections were under the heading “Sexology/Perversions” and came from Sexuality Ed. by Nye and Foucault’s The History of Sexuality: An Introduction. I prepared two main points knowing full well that in all likelihood the first would be met with quiet diffidence.
The first point I raised concerned an excerpt by Sander Gilman taken from his book Difference and Pathology: Stereotypes of Sexuality, Race, and Madness. This excerpt, I noted, was the first selection we have read this semester in which sexuality was racialized. Gilman introduces the idea that in the 19th c. we began to view sexuality as occurring in progressive stages. This inherently racist evolutionary worldview reinforces the system of Cartesian binaries (under which we still operate) in which the white European male is seen as the most advanced stage and the black woman is seen as the primitive stage. Thus a binary is set up between self (white) and other (black) in which the Other is seen to embody the lower more primitive type. This, of course, is a paradigm which continues today. For further investigation in which the man continues to exploit and profit off of fantasies of the hypersexualized black person see Byron Hurt's documentary Beyond Beats and Rhymes or simply look around you and pay attention.
To my professor’s credit, he was very excited that I had raised this point, encouraged me to speak further, and tried to provoke the class to join in the discussion. However, as I predicted, we were met with a sea of placid speechless white faces and my black friend on my right staring down into her notebook. Of course, it is not the responsibility of the two sole people of color to take up the topic and preach to a bunch of disaffected white liberal arts kids so I hold no ill will for her silence. Especially since as of late I have been too tired to speak up and out in class as well. As one of my mentors once said, “I get tired of educating whiteness.”
So I moved on to my second train of thought in which I recapped another overarching theme of the readings. In the 19th c., we witness the advent of sexology and hence the medicalization of sexuality. Instead of religion defining the correct way to have sex (heterosexual missionary procreative married) we now have sexology. Not surprisingly, medicine was in collusion with the Judeo-Christian ethic in terms of the proper way to relate sexually to one another. Therefore, previous sinful sexual acts were now medically defined as perversions. Not only that, but those who practiced these acts were classified and identified as perverts. (There were some exceptions of course as Krafft-Ebing explained. According to him, depending on what led up to the perverse act(s) one could be classified as a dyed in the wool perv or not. He wrote: “In order to differentiate between disease (perversion) and vice (perversity), one must investigate the whole personality of the individual and the original motive leading up to the perverse act.”) Thus began the process of sexual behavior defining ones identity and therefore step one in identity politics as identities were formed by the so- called perverts (see also homosexuals, masochists, sadists, etc) around these classifications in resistance to the power held by the medical establishment.
What is also interesting about this moment in history is the shift from so much attention and analyzation of hetero married relations to a sole focus on the classification and specification of perversions. Suddenly, “legitimate couples”, as Foucault calls them, have more right to privacy and discretion. I see this continually manifested today in terms of the ways in which desire is codified and negotiated within the queer community. (Tops, Bottoms, Switches, Bottoms, Daddies, Ponies, etc, etc.) Moreover, in the ways in which straights will not even hesitate to ask us who puts what where and who gets on top, in such a way as they would never off handedly question a fellow straight person or expect a queer to ask of them as if they had some sort of right to this information. I find it so odd and not at all enviable that there is such a silence concerning what straights actually do. Outside the realm of kinky sex or BDSM there doesn’t seem to be any explicit declaration of which sex acts one prefers or what end one would prefer to be on and certainly there is no identity formed around these preferences, as if “straight” covers the entire plausible expression of sexuality in terms of what happens between hetero lovers. Honestly, I don’t know how heteros who like the same kind of sex manage to find each other. I’ve had a total of one straight identified male-bodied lover with whom I really got on with sexually.
Although I have a problematic relationship with identity politics – I’m not so sure that I want the sum total of my being determined by what I like sexually- however there needs to be a way of identifying and negotiating desire that will facilitate pleasure more easily for everyone. I am all about bringing the hanky codes back. Even for straights. C’mon guys, let’s all get in on the fun!