Why is what some might call the most classic, or perhaps conservative, of all sexual positions named after missionaries? It’s time to pull back the sheet on this erotic origin story and see what lies beneath.
The missionary position is a strange name for a face-to-face, horizontal, often heterosexual sexual position with the man on top.
But the story behind the designation of this routine sexual position has more twists and turns than one might expect.
Was it missionaries who spread the idea of the missionary position?
Since medieval times, Catholic popes, bishops and priests were required to abstain from sexual relations, an indulgence that would distract them from their devotion to God.
But that doesn’t mean they think other people shouldn’t do it.
“It is clear that the Church needs people to attend, to keep it alive. That’s why, the more you have children, the more you are a good Christian“, said Cinzia Giorgio, professor of women’s history and author of ”The Erotic History of Italy”, which he wrote while teaching at a university linked to the Vatican.
Furthermore, it was claimed that there was a specific sexual position that was more conducive to making these babies: the missionary position. It is alleged that medieval Church authorities made this claim for centuries, relying not on scientific evidence but on some vague ideas about gravity.
One plausible and very popular theory is that missionaries, who traveled all over the world trying to convert people to Christianity, told people to have sex in this specific way in order to increase the Christian population.
“But this is not true,” Kate Lister, historian of sex and sexuality and author of ‘A Curious History of Sex,’ told DW.
Lister says there is no evidence that Christian missionaries promoted this position.
“Although this theory is found in books, medical texts, dictionaries and research works, It’s a huge rumor. It has been taken as an evangelical truth that the missionary position came from Christian missionaries. It wasn’t like that.”
But while missionaries may not have popularized a classic sexual position, they did impose a whole new system of morality and sexual values.
This includes India, the birthplace of the Kama Sutra, an ancient guide to love and sex, where talking about sex became a taboo topic when missionaries helped the British colonize the country.
Solve the mystery of a sexual cliché
But why do we still call it the missionary position?
“The term emerged around the 60s,” says Lister, adding that it can be attributed to legendary American sexologist Alfred Kinsey.
In 1948, Kinsey wrote a groundbreaking book, “Sexual Behavior in the Human Male,” which argues that Americans apparently prefer a face-to-face, man-on-top sexual position. He called it “the american english position”.
Kinsey further referred to the work of anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski, who traveled to Australia, New Guinea and Melanesia to “study” indigenous peoples in 1914-1920. In one of his numerous books, he writes about the sexual lives of the Trobriand people in Papua New Guinea.
Citing this book in his own work, Kinsey said that Malinowski noticed that the Trobriand people were in fact laughing at the way white men had sex. He said they were making “caricatures” of the Anglo-American position around the campfires.”for your great enjoyment”. And that the locals called it “the missionary position”.
The problem, however, is that Kinsey made a mistake in researching and citing Malinowski.
“If we go back to Malinowski’s work, he doesn’t actually say that,” notes Kate Lister.
Instead, Malinowski wrote at one point in his book that the people of the Trobriands enjoyed face-to-face sex with the man on top, but that learned from “white traders, planters or officials”not with missionaries.
And the people of the Trobriands invented a phrase to make fun of something romantic that the white man did, but it was translated as “missionary fashion” and not “missionary position”, and referred to hold hands and to public displays of affection, not sex.
“As a result, Kinsey misdescribed Malinowski’s work,” says Lister. He adds that the myth of the name of this sexual position continues to “enter the conversation and general culture” because It’s a “good and interesting” story.
Along the way, the story is changed slightly: Instead of the locals mocking white men’s sex, it has often been wrongly suggested that the missionaries were telling people to have sex this way.
How did all the misunderstanding come to light
In 2001, anthropologist Robert Priest wrote an article titled “The Missionary Position: Christian, Modernist, Postmodern,” for which he unexpectedly went down a rabbit hole, combing through countless texts to try and ascertain the true story behind the name .
“Apparently, Kinsey invented a legend, believing he was reporting historical fact,” Priest wrote. “He created a new expression, thinking he was relating an old.”
