intercourse, terminology, historyI’ve always thought of a missionary as the sort of person that visits a new country/continent in order to spread religion.
But where did the term ‘missionary position’ originate? Is it from these types of missionaries? If so, why was this the case?
It isn't clear.
The commonly repeated story is that missionaries who came to the Americas were horrified to see the natives having sex in positions reminiscent of animals (i.e., doggy style), and informed them that god only condones sex with the man on top, face to face with the woman.
However, the first recorded use of the term is from the late 1960's, which is somewhat puzzling. The Straight Dope says:
The earliest citation for "missionary position" in the Oxford English Dictionary is from 1969, and the Random House unabridged says the term first showed up circa 1965-70. In other words, it may have been invented by 60s hipsters who looked down upon the uncool Presbyterian proselytizers of an earlier age. In any case the missionary position was not some Anglo invention; surveys suggest it is, and no doubt always has been, a common sexual position in most of the world.
More recent investigation has suggested a link between the term and a misunderstanding with roots in the respective work of the sex researcher Alfred Kinsey, Divinity School Professor Robert J. Priest, and anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski. From a follow up article on The Straight Dope:
[Robert J. Priest] unearthed what he believes to be the missionary position urtext, namely the following quote from Alfred Kinsey's Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948):
"It will be recalled that Malinowski ([The Sexual Life of Savages in North-Western Melanesia,] 1929) records the nearly universal use of a totally different [sexual] position among the Trobrianders in the Southwestern Pacific; and that he notes that caricatures of the English-American position are performed around the communal campfires, to the great amusement of the natives who refer to the position as the 'missionary position.'"
According to Priest, however, Malinowski's book says nothing about the missionary position as we now understand the term. What it does say at widely separated points is that (a) Trobrianders play ribald games at gatherings during the full moon; (b) islanders who work for whites sometimes mimic the inept (in their estimation) copulatory flailings of their employers; and (c) some Trobrianders object to public displays of affection between lovers, which they term misinari si bubunela, "missionary fashion," viewing such things as an immoral Christian import.
Furthermore, Kinsey in his book claims that the Christian church once considered non-MP sex sinful. Priest conjectures that Kinsey conflated these disparate elements to come up with the missionary position tale, apparently never bothering to compare his faulty recollection against Malinowski's words.
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