Dear Vera Blossom, I feel like squirting is a myth perpetrated by Big Porn. I’ve only ever heard whispers about it. I have a vagina, and I’ve never squirted. I sleep with people of all genders who have vaginas, and I’ve never seen any of them squirt. Am I just not performing well enough to get them to squirt? Is the lack of squirting in my sex life because I’ve actually never had good sex?

-Striving Sapphic Squirter, Chicago

Dear reader, you are not alone in your confusion about this elusive sexual phenomena. Recently, I was at a bar chatting about squirting with friends of many gender and sexual embodiments, and people had so many questions: Is it a myth? Is it pee? Can I squirt if I just try harder?

Their queries thrust me into a fact-finding mission. The next morning, I was perusing the stacks at Perpetual Books here in Chicago when I stumbled upon Juice: A History of Female Ejaculation, by Stephanie Haerdle. 

In the preface, Haerdle writes, 

“…for thousands of years, it went without saying that both women and men ejaculated during intercourse. In the late nineteenth century, however, female ejaculation came under fire in Europe, the fact of its existence denied, contested, suppressed, recast as taboo, and ultimately forgotten by most.”

So while porn can spread misinformation about sex and pleasure, your confusion about squirting likely didn’t start on screen. Our collective ignorance on this topic is emblematic of systemic discrimination and misogyny in medical and scientific research.

In an effort to reverse a couple centuries of neglected education around vaginas, I’m going to do my part and gush about squirting. (Note that while modern medical research often uses the term “female ejaculation” when discussing this topic, I prefer to utilize more gender-neutral language like “squirt.”)

The documented history of squirting dates back to more than 2 millennia. Texts like the Han Dynasty-era Secrets from the Jade Chamber and the nearly-2,000-year-old Sanskrit text Kama Sutra mention that vaginas can generate sexual fluids, including........

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