Where does one of the most classic sex positions get its name? Is it really about Christian missionaries? Or is this a historical… misunderstanding? It’s one of the most common positions in sex, but it has one of the strangest names – and that’s thanks to a mistake made by a… zoology professor. But let’s take them in order.

Celibacy for Catholic priests has been officially enforced since 1073. They cannot marry, nor have sexual relations, since such earthly pleasures would only alienate them from God. Of course, this did not mean that the rest of the people should show the same restraint.

“The Church naturally needs people who will go to the temples and keep the institution alive. So, the more children one has, the better Christian one is,” says Cinzia Giorgio, professor of women’s history and author of the book “Storia erotica d’Italia” (“The Erotic History of Italy”).

The representatives of the Church were convinced that there is one attitude to sex, which is particularly effective for reproduction: the missionary one – although at that time it was known by a different name.

According to the most popular theory the posture got its current name from missionaries who urged pagan peoples to have sex in this way. The ultimate goal was, when these people embraced Christianity, to contribute to the increase of believers.

Christian sexual ethics

This theory sounds reasonable enough, but it has one major drawback: that is not true. “It was just taken for granted that missionary came from Christian missionaries,” Kate Lister, historian and author of “A Curious History of Sex,” tells DW. There is no evidence that Christian missionaries promoted this attitude. “Even if one can find this theory in books, medical texts, dictionaries and research, it is just a rumor.”

Nevertheless the missionaries did have a new sexual ethic for the “pagans”. When God’s people helped the British to colonize India for example, the “Kamasutra” must have appeared to them as the work of the devil. Sex was a sinful act, allowed only within marriage and its sole purpose was reproduction.

The Trobriand Clan and Kinzie’s Mistake

But how did the missionary finally come about? “The term first appears in the 1960s,” says Lister. And it comes from the well-known American zoologist and sex scientist Alfred Kinsey.

In 1948, Kinzie wrote a pioneering book entitled “Sexual Behavior in the Human Male”. In it he posits that the American people prefer a certain attitude to sex, in which the man is on top – the “Anglo-American attitude”, as he calls it.

Kinzie referred to the research of the Polish anthropologist Bronisław Malinowski, who had traveled to Australia, New Guinea and Melanesia in order to “study” the indigenous peoples. In one of his many books he wrote about the sex life of the Trobriand tribe in Papua New Guinea.

In one of his own works Kinzi quoted some passages from this book, but made a crucial mistake. He mentioned that, as Malinowski wrote, the Trobriand people laughed at the way white men had sex. Kinsey characteristically writes that they “amused themselves by making caricatures of the Anglo-American attitude” – which the locals called “missionary”.

But even a top scientist like Kinzi can make mistakes. In fact Malinowski had written that the Trobriand Islanders made fun of the attitude they had observed favored by “white traders, farmers and civil servants”. There was no mention of missionaries.

The islanders, however, used the term “missionary fashion”, referring to white people holding hands – but not in the context of sex. This romantic move was something that amused them, since they themselves were not used to it – for them the goal was to have as many sexual partners as possible before marriage.

A legend that continues to this day

It was the anthropologist Robert Priest who debunked the myth about the origin of the term “missionary”. In 2001 the scientist authored a study entitled “The Missionary Position: Christian, Modernist, Postmodern”, having previously done thorough research and examined many texts, in order to discover the real story behind the denomination. As the anthropologist characteristically notes in this study, “Kinzi thought he was quoting historical facts, but instead he created a legend.”

Nevertheless, the legend surrounding the missionary continues to this day. After all, as Lister admits, it is a catchy and quite interesting story, which has now entered the world’s consciousness for good.

This article is based on an episode of DW’s English-language podcast with Charlie Shields, Rachel Stewart and Sam Baker entitled “Don’t Drink the Milk: The curious history of things”.

Edited by: Giorgos Passas