# Are female breast considered sexual in societies where women are always topless? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [August 20, 2021, 2:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-female-breast-considered-sexual-in-societies-where-women-are-always-topless/949222 "2021-08-20T14:43:45Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Princhester](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3e96dc/32.png) [@Princhester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Princhester)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2021, 3:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-female-breast-considered-sexual-in-societies-where-women-are-always-topless/949222/61 "2021-08-26T03:37:33Z")
That may be so but that isn’t anything to do with my comment. ---
**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2021, 4:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-female-breast-considered-sexual-in-societies-where-women-are-always-topless/949222/62 "2021-08-26T04:50:49Z")
Kama Sutra is cool but why are they they arbiters of this? ---
**Author:** ![md-2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9d8465/32.png) [@md-2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md-2000)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2021, 2:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-female-breast-considered-sexual-in-societies-where-women-are-always-topless/949222/63 "2021-08-26T14:49:34Z")
This is why I recommend Jared Diamond’s _Why Is Sex Fun_ as a good examination of the topic. He delves into a number of reproductive strategies, and how ours differ from other apes and monkeys particularly. There are a wide range of strategies. For example - eating the male, why would this happen? A mating insect can produce hundreds of eggs after one mating session. Some species only lay eggs once. A well-nourished female has a better chance of producing many more healthy eggs. The offspring need/get no attention from the male after the eggs are laid. The best strategy for ensuring his genes propagate is to ensure his mate is well fed. Weird, but logical. Some obvious points - unlike other apes, human females have hidden fertility. This keeps a prospective father around much longer than just during her fertile time. Humans have pair bonding (such as it is) since at birth humans are essentially still under-developed and the mother needs support providing enough food for her and to nurse the child. Making sex intensely pleasurable means Mother Nature has provided an added incentive for the male to keep trying to propagate his genes and so hang around and help provide for his (hopefully) offspring. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2021, 3:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-female-breast-considered-sexual-in-societies-where-women-are-always-topless/949222/64 "2021-08-26T15:52:42Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > The whole reason it’s called the “missionary position” is because, allegedly, most humans in most parts of the world mostly didn’t use that position, until educated by Europeans. I always understood it not as most people not having used that position before, but as the missionaries demanding that people use only that position (face to face, p in v, and man on top), when they’d otherwise been in the habit of using multiple positions, including multiple face to face positions. ---
**Author:** ![md-2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9d8465/32.png) [@md-2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md-2000)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2021, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-female-breast-considered-sexual-in-societies-where-women-are-always-topless/949222/65 "2021-08-26T18:02:55Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > I always understood it not as most people not having used that position before, but as the missionaries demanding that people use only that position (face to face, p in v, and man on top), when they’d otherwise been in the habit of using multiple positions, including multiple face to face positions. As I posted earlier - a more detailed look at the term that I read, said it originated in Polynesia. The typical Polynesian position was apparently spooning; the locals found it amusing that the missionaries (who presumably succumbed to desires from time to time with local women) wanted the “missionary position”. The article also went in depth into the habits of local men of forming a group to support a single “courtesan” that they all took advantage of, in addition to their wives. IIRC, the ceremony Captain Cook and his officers witnessed in Hawaii involved a fairly underage girl doing the cowboy with the local bigwig while being egged on with suggestions from several surrounding older women. The South Sea Islanders were as imaginative as any other human population in coming up with interesting variations… ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2021, 7:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-female-breast-considered-sexual-in-societies-where-women-are-always-topless/949222/66 "2021-08-26T19:48:14Z")
> [@md-2000](#): > > As I posted earlier - a more detailed look at the term that I read, said it originated in Polynesia. The typical Polynesian position was apparently spooning; the locals found it amusing that the missionaries (who presumably succumbed to desires from time to time with local women) wanted the “missionary position”. > > The article also went in depth into the habits of local men of forming a group to support a single “courtesan” that they all took advantage of, in addition to their wives. IIRC, the ceremony Captain Cook and his officers witnessed in Hawaii involved a fairly underage girl doing the cowboy with the local bigwig while being egged on with suggestions from several surrounding older women. The South Sea Islanders were as imaginative as any other human population in coming up with interesting variations… I went poking around this sidetrack for a bit, and most sources seem to say that Kinsey coined the term due to a misreading of Malinowski. Do you have a link to the article you found? I didn’t see one in your original post. [Missionary positions: Christian, modernist, postmodernist - PubMed](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/14992209/) . > 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 In any case, if as you say “South Sea Islanders were as imaginative as any other human population in coming up with interesting variations” (which seems quite likely to me), they presumably used face-to-face versions as well as others. So, it turns out, do bonobos and occasionally gorillas: [Gorillas in the missionary position | Nature](https://www.nature.com/articles/news.2008.578) . > in a forest clearing in the Nouabale-Ndoki National Park in the Republic of Congo, a female gorilla, Leah, and her groups’ dominant male silverback, George, have been photographed in the face-to face position. > > This type of behaviour has only ever been seen in the wild in the bonobo ( _Pan paniscus_ ), as well as a single, brief, unphotographed observation in mountain gorillas ( _G. beringei_ ). > > In captivity, gorillas often have sex face-to-face ---
**Author:** ![Dark\_Sponge](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dark_sponge/32/121_2.png) [@Dark\_Sponge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dark_Sponge)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2021, 8:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-female-breast-considered-sexual-in-societies-where-women-are-always-topless/949222/67 "2021-08-27T20:19:23Z")
I’m often struck by how differently breasts are regarded when I travel to other countries outside the US. In most of the counties I visited outside of North America it is 100% normal for women to walk around without bras all the time. And when a women is breastfeeding they often don’t bother to cover up at all. I’m sure breasts are still considered sexual (as buttocks and other female anatomy is) but they’re not nearly the big deal they are in the US. ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2021, 7:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-female-breast-considered-sexual-in-societies-where-women-are-always-topless/949222/68 "2021-08-28T19:16:40Z")
Certainly, it is not evidence of anything being “natural”; the idea there is that positions are chosen according to what is most comfortable/stimulating and also— tellingly— depending on local fashion. The translation does mention lying down in a “natural position” in the context of not deliberately tightening or loosening up, but apparently does not elaborate. ---
**Author:** ![SciFiSam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/47e85d/32.png) [@SciFiSam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SciFiSam)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2021, 11:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-female-breast-considered-sexual-in-societies-where-women-are-always-topless/949222/69 "2021-08-28T23:31:15Z")
> [@Dark\_Sponge](#): > > In most of the counties I visited outside of North America it is 100% normal for women to walk around without bras all the time. And when a women is breastfeeding they often don’t bother to cover up at all. Which countries are those? It’s not the norm anywhere in Europe, and also clothing choices wouldn’t always tell you anything anyway. ---
**Author:** ![Dark\_Sponge](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dark_sponge/32/121_2.png) [@Dark\_Sponge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dark_Sponge)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2021, 2:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-female-breast-considered-sexual-in-societies-where-women-are-always-topless/949222/70 "2021-08-30T14:47:53Z")
> [@SciFiSam](#): > > Which countries are those? It’s not the norm anywhere in Europe, and also clothing choices wouldn’t always tell you anything anyway. Perhaps I worded that poorly. I didn’t mean to imply that all or even most women went bra-less but rather that it was it completely normal for a woman to not wear a bra. The last time I was in France there were many examples. No eyebrows raised, not a big deal. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-female-breast-considered-sexual-in-societies-where-women-are-always-topless/949222.md?page=3)