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Techniques of Coitus 6
In the past, some puritanical Christian cultures expected the faithful to have coitus in only one position: Face-to-face, with the woman lying on her back and the man on top of her. (The less inhibited "heathens" of Africa, Asia, and the Pacific Islands used to ridicule it as the "missionary position".) However, with the increase of cross-cultural contact in the 19th century, Europeans and Americans realized that their approach to sex was unnecessarily rigid. They began to search ancient Greek vase paintings, Roman murals, Chinese scrolls, Japanese woodcuts, and Indian love manuals for new, exciting coital positions, and their discoveries soon led them to believe that they had found the long lost secrets of true sexual fulfillment.
East and West
This 18th century Indian painting shows an Indian woman
and a European man in the “missionary position”.
However, while rigidity and routine in sexual matters are undoubtedly bad, there is no special magic in ever-varying athletic contortions. Nor is there such a thing as the ultimate, superior, or even “natural” or “normal” position for coitus. After all, imaginative sexual partners who try to satisfy all of their needs and desires will vary their approaches spontaneously as the circumstances require, and thus they will continue to find new coital positions on their own. Detailed descriptions of such positions are unnecessary and may even be harmful because they tend to encourage a mechanistic view of coitus.
Indeed, it is perhaps unwise to list any distinct and clearly defined coital positions at all. Coitus always involves a series of movements which form a continuous whole, and most partners shift from one position to another without any advance planning or conscious effort. It seems pedantic to single out 10, 12, 20, or more particular postures and to ascribe to each of them some special meaning. One can, of course, differentiate between a few basic approaches to coitus, but their number is really quite limited: the partners may stand, sit, or lie down; they may face each other, or the woman may turn her back to the man; either partner can be on top, or they can both lie on their sides.
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