There’s good evidence that women can ejaculate some kind of fluid during orgasm, but we’re only just starting to understand how and why it happens (Image: Spencer Rowell / Getty)

See also Six things science has revealed about the female orgasm

WHEN the British Board of Film Classification ordered 6 minutes and 12 seconds of material cut from British Cum Queens in 2002, they found themselves under attack from an unlikely quarter: a group of feminists.

The offending segment showed some of the female participants apparently ejaculating fluid from their genitals on orgasm. The film board stated that female ejaculation did not exist, so the actresses must have been urinating. And urinating on another actor on film is banned under the UK’s Obscene Publications Act.

The group Feminists Against Censorship marshalled all the scientific evidence they could find to prove that some women do in fact ejaculate. The film board eventually backed down from its complete denial of the phenomenon, stating that female ejaculation was a “controversial and much debated area”.

It was only a partial climbdown, however, as the film board insisted that the scenes in question were “nothing other than straightforward urination masquerading as ejaculation”. In their defence, most pornography scenes that depict women ejaculating are indeed staged. Either the fluid is put into the vagina beforehand off-camera, or the actresses are simply urinating.

The dispute raises an intriguing question. In the 21st century, when human biology has been investigated right down to the genetic level, how can the existence of female ejaculation still be open to debate?

Medical textbooks are silent on this aspect of female physiology …