A word long reserved for a female physiological event is folded back onto the male body.

Otoko no shiofuki (Japanese: 男の潮吹き, “male squirting”; otoko-shio; English male squirting) is a Japanese expression for the expulsion of fluid from the male urethra under stimulation of the prostate and related areas, and for the adult-video staging that thematises it. It is generally described as a mechanism distinct from ejaculation, and is used in recent usage as the counterpart of, or an extension to, the term shiofuki (female squirting). This article covers the term’s range, the competing physiological accounts, its treatment in adult video, and its distinction from neighbouring concepts.

Overview

What “male squirting” refers to is not uniform. In the narrowest sense it denotes the fluid that seeps, or is expelled forcefully, from the urethral opening during prostate massage or perineal stimulation. This fluid differs in colour and viscosity from the milky-white semen: it is clear or thinly milky, and both its volume and viscosity often differ in character from those of ejaculation. In a broader sense, any urethral fluid release synchronous with or unrelated to climax is also called “squirting,” and the boundary of the word shifts with the user.

Where female squirting circulated as an established item of vocabulary, the male version does not rest on any clear medical consensus. It is rather a latecomer, a figurative coinage that borrows the female-side word in order to describe a male bodily response. For this reason the very question “do men squirt too?” carries less the character of confirming a physiological fact than that of a cultural operation reprojecting the image of female pleasure back onto the male body.

Physiological background

That a man can release fluid from the urethra separately from ejaculation is itself explained by several routes. Which of them constitutes the substance of “male squirting” is uncertain, however, and the phenomenon is composite.

First is the pre-ejaculatory fluid secreted from the bulbourethral (Cowper’s) glands as sexual arousal mounts. This is a clear, viscous, small-volume secretion, distinct from a forceful “jet,” but in individuals with copious exudation it can appear squirt-like. Second is the secretion of the prostate itself. The prostate produces the majority of the liquid component of semen, and prostate massage can push out prostatic fluid independently of semen. The phenomenon in which fluid drips from the urethral opening without passing through the ejaculatory reflex, under sustained pressure from the rectal side by finger or toy, can be understood as this mechanical expulsion of prostatic fluid.

Third is fluid of bladder origin: the admixture of urine or dilute urine. Just as research on female squirting (Salama et al., 2015, among others) reported the major part of the expelled fluid to be of bladder origin, so in men it is suggested that under strong perineal stimulation the control of the urethral sphincter slackens and fluid containing urinary components is released. citation needed Because the male urethra has a structure in which the ejaculatory ducts join at the prostatic part, semen, prostatic fluid, and urine share the same channel. This anatomical circumstance is the cause that permits multiple interpretations of the phenomenon of “fluid that is not semen coming out of the urethra.”

The correspondence with female squirting is often framed through the Skene’s glands (the so-called female prostate). On the grounds that the Skene’s glands are embryologically homologous with the male prostate, the schema arranges matters as “the male version of female squirting = a prostate-derived release.” This homology is itself an anatomical fact, but whether that makes them “the same phenomenon differing by sex” is a separate question, and the facile equation calls for caution.

Treatment in adult video and the adult genre

Male squirting in adult video was thematised from the 2000s onward, following the path by which female squirting had established itself as a standard staging device. Central to it is the body of works dealing with prostate teasing and anal teasing, where the typical construction has a chijo (dominant woman) stimulate the prostate of a passive man from the rectal side and position the moment when fluid seeps from, or jets in an arc from, the urethral opening as the visual conclusion.

In staging, this scene is shot with a grammar different from ejaculation. Where ejaculation is filmed as “an active release, a dominant conclusion,” male squirting is often staged as a passive reaction in which control is stripped away and fluid spills out unintentionally. The composition in which only fluid emerges, unrelated to erection or while ejaculation is forbidden, is used in works thematising male receptivity in connection with mes-iki staging.

In practice, titles circulate that use a prostate-massage toy (including the diverted use of a denma electric massager or an insertable vibrator) to apply sustained stimulation, and sell themselves on the volume and number of releases. The same quantitative differentiation as the female-side “100 consecutive” or “climax squirting” has been carried over into the male version, and as a genre it is positioned as a derivative form that traces the structure of female squirting while overlaying the theme of the passivisation of the male body.

Distinction from related terms

Male squirting is often confused with several neighbouring concepts. Three need sorting out.

The difference from ejaculation is the basic point. Ejaculation is the forceful release of semen of seminal-vesicle and prostatic origin through rhythmic contractions accompanying the ejaculatory reflex, normally synchronised with orgasm. Male squirting, by contrast, is distinguished in that it releases a fluid different in colour and composition from semen, not necessarily by way of the ejaculatory reflex. The two may occur consecutively or independently.

Its relation to mes-iki and mes-iki glans teasing also needs clarifying. Mes-iki denotes a subjective state of pleasure, an enraptured climax unaccompanied by ejaculation, whereas male squirting denotes an objective phenomenon, the release of fluid; the focus differs. In prostate-teasing scenes the two are readily spoken of together, but mes-iki does not necessarily produce fluid, and fluid emerging does not necessarily accompany climax.

It is also distinguished from the so-called dry orgasm (a male orgasm unaccompanied by ejaculation). Dry orgasm denotes “a climax in which no semen comes out,” whereas male squirting has its centre of gravity rather in the phenomenon that “fluid other than semen comes out.” The two overlap in some scenes, but in the matter of whether a release occurs they carry opposite implications.

Reception and discourse

Behind the circulation of the term male squirting lies a desire to free male sexual response from the single-track schema of ejaculation-as-goal. Where ejaculation bears the active, conclusive image of “shoot and finish,” borrowing the female-side word “squirting” produces the effect of overlaying onto the male body an endless, uncontrollable, passive image of pleasure. This is continuous with the recent subculture around mes-iki discourse and prostate development.

On the other hand, “male squirting” as a medical reality remains ambiguous. Multiple phenomena, mechanical expulsion of prostatic fluid, copious secretion of pre-ejaculatory fluid, admixture of urinary components, are bundled under one word, and no single physiological definition of “this is male squirting” has been established. citation needed That the word’s popularity has run ahead of the elucidation of the phenomenon overlaps with the way female squirting spread as a general term before any medical terminology.

See also

• Shiofuki
• Shasei (ejaculation)
• Mes-iki
• Mes-iki glans teasing
• Prostate
• Adult toys
• Denma
• Zecchou (climax)