Only 20-40% of Women Squirt: What the Research Actually Shows | Dr. Rena Malik

0:01This is a Be Well Moment, the most replayed moments from my latest conversation. It's a glimpse into the wider episode, which you can find linked in the show notes below. Because sometimes one small moment is enough to reconnect to living well and being well.

0:22When I was looking at your YouTube, which I have to say is amazing, it's so gripping when you're on there. And you just end up looking down all of these different videos where you're like, wow, these are things people just do not talk about at all. You know, from how long your penis length should be, how can you increase your penis length? Again, the average time to have sex, all of these different questions around sexual health. One that really stuck out, which had 3.6 million views. And I think this is something that women can get quite stressed about. And it's called squirting. And I was like, okay, let's just touch on this topic because it's really important.

0:59And I know we've already kind of touched a bit on female orgasms. We kind of started it by touching as well at the beginning of the conversation in relation to the pelvic floor on the G spot. Can you describe what is squirting? Because I think this becomes very misconstrued, especially from porn. How is it different from ejaculation as well? Yes. So squirting and ejaculation are both essentially emitting fluid from the urethra at the time of orgasm. And so basically when you're having ejaculation, it's typically a small amount of fluid that occurs with climax that can be like sort of milky in color and is from the skein's glands.

1:41And these are glands that are in that area, the G-spot area that essentially create fluid and sort of lubricate the area a little bit. And squirting is usually a combination of that plus some fluid that's released from the bladder. And it's usually colorless, odorless, and the volume can range, but it's definitely not as much as you're seeing on pornography, right? Porn is a edited product. They add special effects to make it look very much more volumous. And a lot of people, I think, misconstrued like, oh, squirting is always associated with pleasure. And what I'll say is that the research shows that yes, some people feel like there's more pleasure or they feel like it's a superpower that they have, but some people think it's kind of messy and they don't like it and they feel like not great about it and not everyone squirts.

2:32And that doesn't mean you're not having pleasure, right? So I think the issue is that people think this is a visual sign of pleasure, right? Men ejaculate. So we know that they are reaching climax and that is important to a lot of people. And then women don't have that, right? Unless they're a squirter. And so I think that's sort of where that this like obsession with squirting is in society. But like, again, I think it's not studied very well because it's hard to study like this sort of thing, you know, in a research setting, like, oh, how do you find squirters and how do you, right? You watch them climax or what you collect the fluid afterwards.

3:09And there have been studies where they do that to kind of see what the components are, right? To decide where is this fluid coming from? That's kind of how we know this data, but ultimately they're small studies and that's all we know. The bottom line is that squirting is something that women can do. It is not necessarily the only way to achieve pleasure. A lot of people do achieve pleasure with it. Some people don't. It doesn't matter. It's all about how you feel. And that's it. How do you feel? Do you feel pleasure? Great. You're good. That's it. That is the biggest indicator that people, I guess, need to start connecting to themselves as pleasure.

3:46Is there kind of a percentage on the scale of people that do do this, people that just don't? Is it more people do or less people don't actually engage in this? These studies are really small. So I would say it's somewhere between 20 and 40 percent, depending on the study you look at. So it's not a majority. And I think ultimately, people may do it and not even know it, right? And like, that's why it's hard to say like how many people really do it because a lot of people are not perceiving that or maybe they don't like notice because they're already so well lubricated. And it's already sort of messy at the time of climax, right?

4:20So like, whatever, I think it's hard to say. I think that's just really important, kind of knowing that you're not an anomaly in this, you know, and knowing that I know the studies are small, but still 20-40%, that's not even the majority or half of the people, that actually this is something that we shouldn't be putting a lot of pressure on ourselves for. And it's good to have these conversations. I feel like this podcast now should be taking into sexual health education and just played to people. So people start understanding these terms and start becoming familiar with them when they're younger and they take that pressure off.

4:51Because I guess like a really big part around this, and I'm sure you see this as a urologist, I'm sure you have a lot of people coming to you with an immense amount of shame. And even people then, when they're getting to see you, there's a big barrier of people probably not even feeling confident enough to come and see you because there's so much shame in this area. Yeah. And to school's credit, they have a lot to teach, right? They got to teach you all these curriculum that are required by, at least in the US, like by the state or by the country. And so I get that they only have so many classes dedicated to sexual education and they have to focus on safety and consent and like things that people need to know.

5:31But there is a whole host of things that we should be teaching younger kids. And I think, you know, it starts because one, we don't feel comfortable talking about sex. It's like, right. They don't feel comfortable. When you look at how people learn about sex, the majority is through pornography. And then the next subset is through, you know, family, like you'd learn from your parents and friends, right? But it's like very few are learning from, I mean, school is like a far, far cry, right? But very few are learning like the normal functions from people who are normal. They're watching pornography, which as I said before, is an edited product and it's not realistic, right?

6:08Those people are porn actors for a reason. They've chosen that profession because they have certain anatomic features or whatever, right? And they also have a lot of sexual confidence. So I think that's a very different scenario than what's actually normal. Thank you for listening to this Be Well Moment. If it resonated, the full conversation is linked in the show notes. And I hope it gave you a small pause to take a moment for you and to reconnect to living well and being well. If you loved it, please do leave a review, follow the show or share this maybe with someone you love.