"missionary position"

by belbab 10 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  belbab

  Now don't get all excited,

  This is a research project, not in the actual act itself, but the origin of the term..

  From whom did the expression "missionary position" surface.

  I swear to God that I believed that a missionary first used that expression. He received a diploma from Ole Pappy Kno back in the sixties. Toward the end of the sixies or early seventees, he coined this expression, did not write it down, but used it in conversation with someone.

  That michzinary was the writer of this post.

  I wanted to try and find out if the origin of this expression first came out around the late sixties, so I typed "missionary position" in Google and one of the results was:

  Missionary positions: Christian, modernist, postmodernist.

  Priest RJ .

  Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, USA. [email protected]

  In the late 1960s and early 1970s"the missionary position" became widespread as a technical expression for face-to-face man-on-top sexual intercourse. It was accompanied by standard (and undocumented) stories as to the origin of the expression, stories featuring missionaries and either Polynesians, Africans, Chinese, Native Americans, or Melanesians. By the late 1980s and 1990s the expression had become a core symbol in modernist and postmodernist moral discourses. This paper examines accounts of the origin of the expression, provides evidence that it originated in Kinsey's (mis)reading of Malinowski, analyzes the symbolic elements of the missionary-position narrative as synthesizing modernist objections to Christian morality, analyzes the "missionary position" in postmodernist narratives as synthesizing postmodernist objections to modernist morality, and explores some of the functions of this myth within the academy.

  Jesus! Jesus! Am I going to go down in history for this? If any one can find any writing that this expression was used before the late sixties, I would appreciate it.

  I wish to apologize to any one that has been incovenienced by the popularization of the expression: Missionary Position

  belbab
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  MissingLink

  From Mirriam Webster -- http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/missionaryposition

  missionary position
  

  Main Entry: missionary position
  Function: noun
  Etymology: from the name given to the position by Trobriand islanders
  Date: 1948
  : a coital position in which the female lies on her back with the male on top and with his face opposite hers
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  hamsterbait

  Just like the Witchtower, the 19th cent. missionaries wanted to tell people what to do in bed.

  In line with ideas of Headship they projected into the bible, the missionaries told their little brown primitive brothers that the MAN should be on top.

  Hence the position commanded by missionaries.

  HB

  Sorry forgot to add that I got this from the Oxford Dictionary.
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  Fatfreek

  missionary position
  
  • noun a position for sexual intercourse in which a couple lie face to face with the woman underneath the man.
  
  — ORIGIN said to come from the fact that early missionaries advocated the position as ‘proper’ to primitive peoples.
  
  Perform another search of the Compact Oxford English Dictionary

  I like the Knorr story better.

  Len
  
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  R.Crusoe

  Surely this was the only reason anyone spent so much time special pioneering - because they heard it would get them a missionary position!
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  WTWizard

  The Witchtower is hereby telling couples exactly what moves they are allowed to do during copulation. They have it narrowed so much that there is only one act that is allowed, and that has to be done in the prescribed manner or else "uncleanness" results. They can't call it "porneia" because they lost that in 1978, so they just call it uncleanness so that couples can get disfellowshipped but not divorced.

  And yet they are allowed to molest children, using their bogus authority and in the pretense of a hounding call, with impunity as long as there are not two witnesses to the event.
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  GentlyFeral

  By citing the OED and talking about religious control of sexual activity, y'all are missing belbab's point.

  This paper examines accounts of the origin of the expression, provides evidence that it originated in Kinsey's (mis)reading of Malinowski, analyzes the symbolic elements of the missionary-position narrative as synthesizing modernist objections to Christian morality, ... and explores some of the functions of this myth within the academy.

  gentlyferal
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  Roddy

  The Witchtower is hereby telling couples exactly what moves they are allowed to do during copulation. They have it narrowed so much that there is only one act that is allowed, and that has to be done in the prescribed manner or else "uncleanness" results. They can't call it "porneia" because they lost that in 1978, so they just call it uncleanness so that couples can get disfellowshipped but not divorced.

  And yet they are allowed to molest children, using their bogus authority and in the pretense of a hounding call, with impunity as long as there are not two witnesses to the event.

  Which bugs me. During the Bedroom Inquisition Period, how did the local elders know when couples were not doing Watchtower approved copulation?
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  truthsetsonefree

  Wow, I always thought that it was because the missionaries were always f***ing the people.... :)
  
  Isaac
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  Ayla

  Question: what do ya'll have against the missionary position? It rocks with the right person. I'm multi-positional and open to whatever shows up on the agenda; however, I have to say that missionary is my personal fav. I'm probably buying into some 19th century notion of what a woman wants, but I just love it and make no apologies for that. I love having my man on top of me - I'll say it - love having him there being the man. Love it. Perhaps I reveal too much, but I subscribe to the notion that the only truly bad sex is no sex.