How Does a Woman Squirt? What Actually Happens

Squirting involves a rapid, involuntary release of fluid from the bladder during sexual arousal or orgasm. Despite decades of confusion in both popular culture and medical literature, researchers have now identified it as a distinct physiological event, separate from what scientists call “female ejaculation,” which is a much smaller secretion from glands near the urethra. The two can happen at the same time, which is part of why they were lumped together for so long, but the fluid sources, volumes, and mechanisms are entirely different.

Two Different Fluids, Two Different Sources

Until about 2011, any fluid a woman expelled during orgasm was grouped under the umbrella term “female ejaculation.” Research since then has drawn a clear line between two phenomena. Squirting is a transurethral expulsion of a relatively large volume of dilute, clear fluid that originates in the urinary bladder. Female ejaculation, by contrast, is a secretion of a few milliliters of thick, whitish fluid from the paraurethral glands, also known as Skene’s glands.

The chemical profiles of the two fluids confirm the distinction. A systematic review and meta-analysis of biochemical and imaging studies found that female ejaculate is small in volume, typically one to five milliliters, and contains high concentrations of prostate-specific antigen (PSA) with very low levels of urinary markers like urea and creatinine. Squirting fluid, on the other hand, had a median volume of about 60 milliliters, though individual volumes ranged anywhere from 15 to 900 milliliters. Its urea and creatinine levels were comparable to diluted urine, and the ratio of creatinine in the fluid versus the blood was dramatically higher for squirting than for ejaculation.

The practical takeaway: if you’ve experienced a gush of clear, watery fluid during sex, that’s squirting, and the fluid came from your bladder. If you’ve noticed a small amount of milky fluid, that’s ejaculate from the paraurethral glands. Many women experience both at once without realizing they’re separate events.

What Happens Inside the Body During Squirting

The most informative study on the mechanics of squirting used pelvic ultrasound imaging on women who reported being able to squirt regularly. Each participant emptied her bladder completely before starting, and an initial ultrasound confirmed the bladder was empty. After a period of sexual stimulation, a second ultrasound taken just before squirting showed that the bladder had noticeably refilled. A third scan taken immediately after squirting showed the bladder was empty again.

This rapid bladder-filling pattern is the key finding. It means that during arousal, the kidneys produce urine faster than usual and the bladder fills in a compressed timeframe. The fluid is then expelled through the urethra during orgasm or intense stimulation. In some of the participants in that study, biochemical analysis also found traces of PSA in the squirting fluid, which suggests a small amount of paraurethral gland secretion can mix in along the way. That overlap is another reason the two phenomena were conflated for so long.

The involuntary nature of the expulsion is worth emphasizing. Squirting isn’t something a person consciously decides to do. The release appears to be tied to pelvic muscle contractions during orgasm, and many women describe realizing it happened only after the fact. The sensation can be similar to the feeling of needing to urinate, which leads some women to tense up and suppress what would otherwise happen naturally.

The Paraurethral Glands and the “Female Prostate”

The paraurethral glands, or Skene’s glands, sit alongside and just below the urethra. In the research literature, they’re increasingly referred to as the “female prostate” because they share a developmental origin with the male prostate gland and produce some of the same proteins. Immunohistochemical studies dating back to the 1980s showed that these glands test positive for prostate-specific antigen and prostatic acid phosphatase in most women examined.

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More recent work has confirmed this homology in greater detail. Updated tissue analysis found that the female periurethral glands are immunoreactive for several markers associated with male prostatic tissue, including androgen receptor, HOXB13, and NKX3.1. Markers of nerve supply also localized to certain regions of the glandular tissue, indicating these glands are wired into the body’s nervous system and not just passive structures.

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These glands are responsible for female ejaculation (the small-volume, milky secretion), not for squirting. But their proximity to the urethra means their secretions can mix with squirting fluid, which is why chemical analyses of squirted fluid sometimes detect PSA even though the bulk of the liquid is bladder-origin.

Why Some Women Squirt and Others Don’t

One of the clearest factors is anatomical variation in the Skene’s glands themselves. A study comparing women who reported ejaculating fluid with orgasm against women who did not found a striking difference in gland anatomy. In a general group of 300 women, the Skene’s gland openings numbered one to three on each side of the urethra. Among seven women who regularly reported fluid expulsion, the openings numbered four to seven per side. All women in both groups reported regular orgasms, so the difference wasn’t about whether orgasm occurred but about the glandular infrastructure available.

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That’s a small sample for the ejaculating group, which the researchers acknowledged, but the pattern suggests that built-in differences in gland size and number of openings play a role. It’s also worth noting that the study title references “plasticity,” raising the possibility that these glands may change over time with repeated stimulation, though that aspect is harder to confirm.

Beyond gland anatomy, there’s no evidence that a specific erogenous “spot” on the vaginal wall drives the phenomenon. A detailed mapping study of nerve fibers and blood vessels in the paraurethral region of the anterior vaginal wall found that nerve and vessel density was fairly regular throughout, with no concentrated site that would correspond to a discrete “G-spot.”

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That doesn’t mean the anterior vaginal wall isn’t sensitive or that stimulating it doesn’t trigger squirting for some women. It means the sensitivity comes from the general nerve supply of that area and the underlying structures (urethra, paraurethral glands, clitoral complex) rather than from a single anatomical button.

How Common Is Squirting

Self-report surveys give us the best available estimates, and they suggest squirting is more common than many people assume. A U.S. probability sample of women aged 18 to 93 found that about 40 percent had squirted at least once in their lifetime, with a median frequency among those who had of roughly three to five times.

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A Swedish cross-sectional study reported even higher numbers: 58 percent of women said they had personal experience of ejaculation or squirting, and another 6 percent were unsure whether it had happened. Women with non-heterosexual orientations were more likely to report the experience than heterosexual women, at roughly 63 percent versus 52 percent.

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These numbers carry some caveats. Most surveys group squirting and female ejaculation together in the same question, because most participants don’t distinguish between the two. The actual prevalence of large-volume squirting specifically, separate from the smaller ejaculate secretion, is probably lower than these headline figures. A systematic review noted that objectively documented female ejaculation has been confirmed in only tens of cases in laboratory settings, and that the high prevalence reported in surveys is driven largely by subjective self-report.

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Still, the gap between lab verification and survey data doesn’t mean women are imagining it. It reflects the fact that very few researchers have had the funding or volunteer pool to study squirting under clinical observation with biochemical analysis. The experience is real; the precise numbers just remain fuzzy.

Squirting Versus Coital Incontinence

Because squirting fluid comes from the bladder and shares chemical similarities with urine, a natural question is whether it’s simply urinary incontinence during sex. Clinicians draw a clear distinction. Coital incontinence is an involuntary urine leakage caused by underlying conditions like urethral dysfunction or overactive bladder. It can happen during penetration, during orgasm, or both, and it’s considered a symptom that warrants evaluation and treatment.

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Squirting, by contrast, occurs specifically with sexual arousal and orgasm in women who don’t otherwise have incontinence. The rapid bladder refilling observed on ultrasound is part of the arousal response itself, not a malfunction of the urinary system. Women who squirt generally don’t leak urine when they cough, sneeze, or exercise. If you do experience leakage outside of sexual contexts, that’s worth discussing with a healthcare provider, because the treatment approaches for incontinence and squirting are completely different. Squirting doesn’t need treatment at all.

The emotional dimension matters here too. Some women feel embarrassed or worried that squirting is “just peeing,” and that anxiety can lead them to avoid sexual situations or to suppress arousal. Knowing the physiological distinction, that squirting is a recognized part of the sexual response that happens to use the same plumbing as urination, can go a long way toward reducing unnecessary shame.

Hormonal Influences on the Paraurethral Glands

There’s some evidence that hormonal environment affects the size and activity of the paraurethral glands, at least in animal models. Research on gerbils (a common model for studying the female prostate because their gland structure is similar to humans’) found that combined oral contraceptive exposure promoted glandular hyperplasia, meaning the gland tissue grew larger and showed increased cell proliferation. The glands also showed increased sensitivity to both androgen and estrogen receptors.

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What this means for human women isn’t fully clear, but it raises the possibility that hormonal changes across the menstrual cycle, during pregnancy, with hormonal contraceptive use, or after menopause could affect paraurethral gland function and therefore the volume or frequency of ejaculate production. Some women anecdotally report that squirting became more or less frequent after starting or stopping hormonal birth control, but controlled human studies on this specific question don’t yet exist.

A Surprisingly Long History

The idea that women expel fluid during orgasm is not a modern discovery. A historical review traced descriptions of the phenomenon across cultures and centuries. Ancient Chinese Taoist texts mentioned female ejaculation as early as the fourth century, and ancient Indian texts described it as well. In India, detailed accounts appear in most works of the Kāmaśāstra tradition beginning around the seventh century. Western sources go back even further in some respects: Aristotle described the emission of female fluid around 300 B.C., and Galen wrote about it in the second century.

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The first scientific description of the glands responsible came from Reinjier De Graaf in the seventeenth century, who referred to the periurethral glands as the “female prostate.” That term persisted among scientists for centuries before being largely replaced by “Skene’s glands” in mainstream medical vocabulary, though researchers have been arguing for a return to “female prostate” given the immunohistochemical evidence of how closely the tissues match.

An Evolutionary Hypothesis

One of the more interesting open questions is why the female prostate and its secretory function persisted through evolution at all. A hypothesis published in Medical Hypotheses proposed that female ejaculation may have served an antimicrobial purpose. The idea is that secretions from the paraurethral glands, flushed into the urethra during orgasm, could help protect against urinary tract infections, particularly those triggered by intercourse. The authors predicted that female ejaculate contains antimicrobial compounds, potentially including zinc, and that women who could produce this secretion had a reproductive advantage because they suffered fewer UTIs, remained more receptive to frequent intercourse, and therefore had more opportunities to conceive.

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This remains a hypothesis, not an established finding. The antimicrobial properties of female ejaculate haven’t been directly tested in a rigorous way. But it offers one plausible explanation for why these glands weren’t simply eliminated by evolutionary pressure, given that they serve no obvious role in reproduction itself.

What Imaging Research Has Revealed About Arousal

MRI studies have added to our understanding of what happens in the pelvis during sexual arousal, even beyond the bladder-filling dynamics of squirting. Dynamic genital MRI allows researchers to visualize the arousal response in real time, including changes in blood flow and tissue engorgement.

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One early and widely cited MRI study of couples during intercourse found that during arousal without penetration, the uterus was raised and the anterior vaginal wall lengthened.

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These internal changes during arousal help explain why the sensation of needing to urinate can intensify during sexual stimulation. As the vaginal wall shifts and the uterus lifts, pressure on the bladder and urethra changes. Combine that with the rapid bladder filling that precedes squirting, and you get a strong urge that many women describe as feeling like they need to pee. Understanding that this sensation is a normal part of arousal, not a sign that something is wrong, is one of the most useful practical takeaways from the research. Women who allow the sensation instead of fighting it are the ones most likely to experience squirting, and those who don’t want to squirt can reduce the likelihood by emptying the bladder beforehand, though that’s not a guarantee.