The short answer is yes, squirting fluid is primarily composed of diluted urine. The most cited study on the topic used ultrasound imaging to track bladder volume before, during, and after squirting, and found that the bladder fills rapidly during arousal and empties during the squirting event. Chemical analysis confirmed that the fluid contains urea, creatinine, and uric acid at concentrations comparable to urine. But there’s more to the picture: squirting fluid also contains small amounts of prostatic-like secretions, making it not purely urine either.
Squirting and Female Ejaculation Are Different Things
One of the biggest sources of confusion is that “squirting” and “female ejaculation” are often used interchangeably, but they are two distinct phenomena produced by different organs through different mechanisms.
Female ejaculation is a small release of thick, milky white fluid from the Skene’s glands, sometimes called the female prostate. These glands develop from the same embryonic cells that form the prostate in males, and the fluid they produce contains proteins similar to those found in male semen, including prostate-specific antigen (PSA). This fluid typically comes out in a very small volume and may not even be noticeable during sex.
Squirting, on the other hand, involves a much larger volume of thin, watery, clear fluid that is expelled in gushes. This fluid comes from the bladder. Biochemically, it resembles diluted urine: one detailed case study measured its density, urea, creatinine, and uric acid levels and found they matched the profile of dilute urine rather than glandular secretions. In practice, the two can happen simultaneously, which is part of why they get conflated.
What the Ultrasound Study Showed
The key piece of evidence comes from a 2015 study published in The Journal of Sexual Medicine. Researchers had participants empty their bladders, confirmed the bladders were empty via ultrasound, then monitored what happened during sexual arousal. Despite starting with an empty bladder, participants’ bladders refilled noticeably during arousal. After the squirting event, ultrasound showed the bladders had emptied again.
The researchers then compared three fluid samples from each participant: urine collected before arousal, the squirting fluid itself, and urine collected after. All three showed comparable concentrations of urea, creatinine, and uric acid. The study concluded that squirting is essentially an involuntary emission of urine during sexual activity, though a small contribution of prostatic secretions from the Skene’s glands is often present in the mix.
Why It Doesn’t Look or Smell Like Urine
If squirting fluid is mostly urine, people reasonably wonder why it doesn’t seem like it. The fluid expelled during squirting is typically clear or nearly colorless, thin and watery, with little to no odor and no obvious visual resemblance to regular urine. This is because the bladder fills rapidly during arousal, meaning the fluid is highly diluted. It hasn’t sat in the bladder long enough to concentrate in the way normal urine does. Think of it as similar to what happens when you drink a large amount of water in a short period: the urine you produce shortly afterward is pale and nearly odorless.
The Role of the Skene’s Glands
The Skene’s glands sit on either side of the urethra and produce a mucus-like substance during sexual arousal and orgasm. Because they share developmental origins with the male prostate, the fluid they secrete contains prostate-specific antigen and other proteins found in semen. Some researchers believe these glands are responsible for the small amount of non-urine fluid that mixes into squirting, which is why biochemical analysis often picks up trace prostatic markers even in the larger gush of diluted urine.
The size and activity of the Skene’s glands vary significantly from person to person. Some people have well-developed glands that produce noticeable secretions, while in others the glands are minimal. This variation likely explains why the composition of squirting fluid differs slightly between individuals and why some people experience more of the milky ejaculatory fluid alongside the watery squirt.
What This Means Practically
For many people, this question comes with some anxiety or self-consciousness. A few things are worth knowing. Squirting is an involuntary response during sexual arousal or orgasm, driven by relaxation of the muscles around the urethra. It is not a sign of incontinence in the clinical sense, even though the fluid originates from the bladder. The rapid bladder filling that occurs during arousal appears to be a distinct physiological process tied to sexual response, not a failure of bladder control.
The fluid is heavily diluted and, in most cases, essentially odorless and clear. It’s a normal variation in sexual response that some people experience and others don’t, largely influenced by anatomy, arousal patterns, and individual differences in the Skene’s glands and pelvic floor muscles.