Abstract
This paper is based on a study of the centuries-long controversy over female ejaculation. Culture and language tend to obscure knowledge that the human female has a prostate gland and is capable of ejaculation. Despite this existing scientific knowledge, contemporary research on female sexuality presupposes that women do not ejaculate. Nevertheless, current findings establish that more similarities than differences exist between men and women in coital responses. To the known homologues in adult urogenital anatomy are added female and male prostates. Studies of the female prostate (urethral glands) report marked variation from woman to woman in the extent and size of these glandular structures. The more recent clinical literature is oriented towards anatomy and pathology, whereas de Graaf's seventeenth-century treatise documents not only the anatomy of the female prostate, but also the discharge of prostatic fluid from the female urethra described as a cause of pleasure. How denial of this phenomenon came about is traced to semantic confusion over the word "semen" in relation to the Aristotelian controversy concerning the procreative function of female fluids. This study concludes that women can ejaculate, and that the female prostatic fluid discharged through the urethra is a component of female sexual fluids that contribute to erotic pleasure.