Sounding 101

An Introduction To And History Of Putting Stuff Where We Pee.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that people with genitals find new and interesting ways of playing with them - whether that is specifically for sexy feelings, or just because they can. The depth and breadth of human imagination is impressive. This is how humanity stumbled across the idea of sounding in all its fascinating glory.

So what is Sounding?

Sounding refers to the practice of putting a special type of toy (typically stainless steel or medical grade silicone) into the urethra. 

Who can do it?

Anyone. If you’ve got a urethra, you can enjoy urethral play! One really good aspect to it is that your level of erectile function doesn’t really matter. You could be completely flaccid or hard or something in between, you can make anything work. AFAB (assigned female at birth) people also participate in this practice, generally using shorter tools since they have shorter urethras. While anyone can do it, everyone needs to fully understand how it works and the risks involved.

What? Why? How? Huh?

To understand the what, why and how of it all first we need to have an understanding of urethral anatomy! It is important to note that the urethra serves slightly different purposes depending on anatomy.

For penis-wielders the urethra is the vessel through which piss AND ejaculate flows. It is 15-20cm in length and it also passes through the prostate on its journey between bladder and meatus. 

Possessors of a bio-pene might be familiar with the “intensity” feeling of pressure building up and the relief of it passing through. Some people love nothing more than riding those waves of tension and intensity and for them there is nothing better than edging (see gooning). Stimulating the urethra by sliding a sound up and down evokes those feelings withlittle to no external phallic stimulation. Sounds great, right?! This is particularly appealing to people that want to separate the sensations of orgasm and ejaculation (yes, they are different things). 

With a little extra care taken, sounding and urethral play can be intensely mind-blowing for the coochie havers amongst us. The average urethral length for vulva-owners is just 4cm from opening to bladder. This comes as Not A Surprise to anyone that has experienced UTIs or cystitis from seemingly innocuous activities. but engaging in sounding when you're working with this set of genitals can easily lead to issues. BUT with care it can be avoided.

Pubic real estate is at a premium and the vulva is absolutely STACKED with nerves and glands. With this in mind, a little goes a long way.  The margin between delicious intensity and complete overwhelm is thin. So you'll get the best results by going slower and using shorter sounding rods for better control.The intensity has been likened to the sharpness of a clit-specific orgasm with the peaks and waves of a deeper g/body orgasm.

What does it feel like? What Can I Expect?

In my (considerable) experience, the sensations that people prefer can be classed as Depth, Girth, or Friction. 

• Depth - the longer, the better. Deep penetration brings a certain kind of eye-rolling, transcendental, mind-altering orgasmic haze. Depth play has its own challenges in this particular arena, the bladder being a sterile environment, and I would recommend investing in disposable catheters so you don’t have to fret about an accidental infection.

• Girth - pressure feels good and your eyes linger on the stainless steel rods while simultaneously thinking “there’s no way that will fitthere”. Newsflash - it will! Urethral tissue is amazingly stretchy, and with a lot of lube and patience you’ll be surprised at what will happen. I know I have been! Stainless is definitely the go for you, just make sure that the external end is MUCH LARGER if you’ll be driving solo. Like 50c coin big.

• Friction - it’s all about the motion and movement. If you want more than manual stimulation the options are limitless - textured sounds (!), electro sounds (!!), vibrating sounds (!!!)
  

You might experience a feeling of urgency, like you need to piss. Don’t worry about it. This is usually a side-effect of stimulating the nerves that run along your urethra, but occasionally there is some follow-through. That’s what the absorbent surface is for

How do you do it? What do I need to do to get started?

A little preparation will give you the best experience with ideally no unintended side effects (scratches or infections).

Things you need

• A clean surface
  Make your life easy by laying out all the bits you want to play with on a surface before you start. And the best surface (aside from a sterile field) is apuppy pad. If you want to start with something you’ve already got in the house, single-use and disposable is best.

• Your toy/s of choice, freshly cleaned
  Any toy should have a rounded tip and be AT LEAST the size of a cotton bud. Toys should have a wide/defined base, especially if you’re using them on yourself. If you’ve got a toy that doesn’t have a defined base (e.g. you’ve bought tapered sounds from ebay) wrap rubber bands around the base to make a grip. By freshly cleaned, I mean boiled to within an inch of its life, at least 20mins. Unless your toy has been autoclaved

• Thick, water-based lube
  The best lube is sterile - water-based, thick, and comes in single sachets. It isn’t always easy to find sterile lube so if you find yourself having to go with an off-the-shelf product, you want a pump bottle of plain water-based lube. No flavours, no special effects, no silicone. The design of pump bottles prevent the lube in the bottle from being contaminated by draw-back (like back-wash).

• Disposable gloves 

• An absorbent surface
  A folded towel will do, or grab another puppy pad if you’ve got one.

How to do it

• Set up your play station
  Spread out your clean surface and in one corner pump out some lube. Put your nice freshly cleaned toy/s onto the surface with all the handles facing the same end. Put down your absorbent surface in a comfortable and convenient spot. Some people like a mirror so that they can see what they’re doing.

• Clean up
  Give your crotch and your hands a detailed and thorough clean. Lather, rinse, dry.

• Get ready, get set
  Get comfy on your absorbent surface, then put 2 gloves on your dominant/preferred hand. This is now your CLEAN hand and it is only allowed to touch the things that are on the clean surface. If it touches something else, or if you get lube on your fingers, take off the outer glove and don a fresh glove. Try not to take off the base glove…it is really hard to put gloves on sweaty or damp hands.

• Go!
  Use your gloved hand to hold your toy/s by the base and then draw them through the lube to coat the shaft. Use your un-gloved hand to arrange yourself for easy access to your chosen urethra. Gently guide the tip of the toy to the entrance of the urethra, and then let lube and gravity draw the toy in. You can use a little pressure to encourage the movement that feels good, but if you feel resistance, don’t force it.

Penny xoxo

A Brief Historical Perspective (A Shlong Time Ago Lite)

Building on the incredible (and far more useful) information provided by Penny above: now we’re gonna take a brief journey into the past, because humans have been weird since forever and I need everyone to know about it. 

I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again, trying to find conclusive historical evidence for when people started getting off on something is a particularly tough challenge for historians. In this case everything I’ve found related to urethral dilation is in a medical context. It didn't seem right to do a post purely related to history, since I want to know about it as a sexual practice rather than a medical practice. (Although sounding is commonly associated with medical kinks so it's not unrelated) 

I don’t know when people started doing this for funsies but I’d bet money that there have been people out there doing it for longer than you would think. (thats not really based on evidence - only vibes - so take that with a large grain of salt)

Urethral dilation is used in the field of urology for a variety of reasons, including to identify and treat blockages like kidney stones. The earliest records we have come from Hindu scholars in the 6th century BCE who used instruments functionally similar to sounding rods for medical purposes. We see them crop up from over the centuries typically in centers of highly skilled medical practice. A lot of the vintage surgical examples I’ve found come from France between the 17th to very early 20th century.

Urethral dilator combined with concealed double-bladed lithotome. Made c 1650-1750 A610528 Science Museum Group Collection Online 

Simpson's urethral dilator. Made c. 1800-1900. A613639 Science Museum Group Collection Online 

The equipment has also varied pretty widely over the years, some of the earliest urethral tools were actually made of wax, which made them very flexible. In the early 20th century rigid metal sounds could be used with rubber covers on them, but according to this medical journal that could get dicey as sometimes the rubber covers could get left behind when removing the sounds. 

1909 - Wyndam -Powell -use of Kollmann dilator

Which brings me onto my next topic: 

For the love of GOD use a tool specifically designed for this. 

Researching this post I fell down SEVERAL niche internet rabbit holes including modern medical journals documenting various things people have used in place of Sounds for sexual pleasure. All of these things caused substantial harm to the urethra owner in question and had to be surgically removed. The following list is just the ones I found most notable, but is definitely not exhaustive. Check out the list here if you’re curious. 

PLEASE I’M LITERALLY BEGGING YOU NOT TO TAKE THESE AS SUGGESTIONS

• Needles

• Cutlery

• pencils 

• safety pins 

• Allen keys

• telephone cable

• Straws 

• Toothbrushes 

• Household batteries 

• Light bulbs (literally HOW)

• Marbles 

• Cotton tip swabs 

• Thermometers 

• Carrot

• Cucumber

• Beans 

• Tampons

Here you can see a fork fully lost inside a 70 year old man that was stuck for over 12 hours because he pushed it in too far and lost hold of it. Don’t do that. No one wants to tell the nice ER doctors and nurses that. 

So yeah, there's a bunch of information for your edification, hopefully this all made sense. Check out the range of Sounds we have online and in store!

Stay curious friends xx

Funtasia Sexperts and lovers of infodumping 

Penny and Verin (P ‘n V)