The Missionary Position: How a Colonial Myth Became the World’s Most Misunderstood Sex Term

The Missionary Position: How a Colonial Myth Became the World’s Most Misunderstood Sex Term

Have you ever heard something so often that you stop questioning it? Like “it’s called the missionary position because missionaries told people to do it that way.”

Well, pour yourself a bourbon, buddy, because that’s not how this story goes.

The Lie We've All Been Told

For decades, people have repeated the same tale: that Christian missionaries in the 1700s or 1800s taught native populations to abandon their “animalistic” ways and only have sex in one approved way, man on top, face to face, like God and guilt intended.

It’s a spicy origin story. But it’s also probably a myth.

The Truth is Stranger (and More Boring)

According to research cited by Mental Floss and confirmed by linguists and anthropologists, the phrase “missionary position” didn’t show up in any official records until the 20th century.

No journals from missionaries, no colonial sex manuals (yes, those existed), and certainly no tribal interviews talk about such a rule.

The earliest known usage appears in Alfred Kinsey’s landmark 1948 book Sexual Behavior in the Human Male.

And even there, it’s presented as something people had already been calling it; likely with a wink and a smirk.

So, where did it come from?

Possibly American soldiers in World War II joking about sexual conservatism.

Or maybe it was just a slang term that stuck, like calling duct tape “hundred-mile-an-hour tape.”

Why It Stuck Around

It’s catchy. It fits the puritanical vibe. And it lets people act like history was kinkier than it really was.

But the idea that missionaries taught it as the only acceptable way? That’s folklore with missionary branding.

You know what’s even more ironic?

Many of the indigenous cultures supposedly "taught" this position had far more diverse, open, and healthy views on sexuality than the Europeans showing up with their coats and their Bibles.

Final Position

The missionary position isn’t missionary at all.

It’s marketing.

The kind of term that tells you more about the teller than the tale.

But now you know.

So next time someone mentions it as if it’s ancient wisdom, feel free to correct them, then go back to pretending you're still reading this article for the history.