The Pleasure Of Sexual Positions

[James Ivan Kingsley]

The Pleasure Of Sexual Positions

by

Alma D. Hyatt

I would like to introduce the readers of E-Lit 1st Magazine to a new concept: Sex Sells. We often think of sexual intercourse as a rather sophomoric activity, something that only children or teenagers do. Nonetheless, there is an intellectual process to sexual behavior in the human animal. There is a science behind this activity. There can be an art and an ambiance to sex. Commercially speaking, we in the traditional publishing industry understand the marketability of these “sexual intricacies.” Sex sells because, as documented evidence suggests, people are interested in the intellectualism of sexual behavior. Therefore, whenever I hear the predictable arguments of why we in the publishing world choose to publishing pornographic film stars like Jenna Jameson or Pamela Anderson over the so-called unpublished geniuses, I often respond, rhetorically, “Well, sir. Would the average reader rather have sex with Jenna Jameson or with unpublished John Doe from Nowheresville, Idaho?”

This lesson on sexual behavior is well illustrated by freelance writer Alma D. Hyatt, who explores the topic of sexual intercourse in this well-written and intensively researched article. You will notice that she actually interviewed credentialed experts in the field, something that unpublished Internet writers will never comprehend. In order to reach a mass audience, you must rely on expert testimony to prove a contentious point. I will let Alma's brilliant work speak for itself.

James Ivan Kingsley





After exhaustively compiling a list of all the intimate positions and their corresponding degree of pleasure, researchers found that most people experiment with sex for the same reason; they want a climax. They discovered that climaxes aren’t always reached by assuming the same position repeatedly, so they look for a little variety while having sex.


College-aged men and women agree on their top reasons for variety — it stimulated more of the erogenous zones, it heightened physical pleasure and the missionary position was boring, according to a peer-reviewed study in the November edition of Advanced Concepts in Sexual Activity. Twenty of the top 25 reasons given for experimenting with different sexual positions were the same for men and women.


Among the top ten positions included were sitting, standing, in the shower, on the kitchen table and the classic “sixty-nine”, but the number one preference was still facing each other. "Somehow, I was just able to do more that way,” was the standard answer.

Researchers at the University of Iowa spent twelve years and their own money to study any overlooked sexual positions and their corresponding degree of pleasure.


"I thought I was familiar with all the erogenous zones and all the ways you could stimulate them," said University of Iowa clinical psychology professor Lucy Lovemore, the study's co-author. "What I discovered was, there are a lot more sexual positions that I had ever thought possible.”


The number of positions available are still climbing "the more we look, the more pleasure zones we find," said Dr. Ernest Goodwin, director of advanced sexual techniques at the Technical School for Innovation in San Francisco. Goodwin, who wasn't part of Lovemore’s study, said the Iowa research made a lot of sense and adds to growing evidence that the views of limited sexual positions with their accompanying degrees of pleasure were probably held only by those with sexual inhibitions .


Lovemore and colleague Arthur Slunglo first questioned 1,557 men and women — ranging in age from 17 to 84 — to come up with a list of three hundred distinct positions and their accompanying degree of pleasure. Surprisingly, the elderly were able to recommend the greatest number of positions. They ranged from the use of vibrators which women ranked number four and men ranked two hundred ninety seven to complicated gymnastics near the bottom for both men and women. “I just don’t know how you can move,” confessed one interviewee, “with one leg wrapped around someone’s neck, and the other wrapped around their knees.”


Once they came up with that long list, Lovemore and Slunglo asked 5,389 college students taking psychology classes to rank the positions on a one-to-ten scale on their degree of pleasure in relationship to their experiences.


"Both genders agreed that experiencing a climax ranked highest in degrees of pleasure," Lovemore said. "Men were more pronounced in their views of what constituted a climax, while thirty seven percent of the women were not sure if they had ever experienced one. Researches agree this is probably due to anatomy. There are outward physical indications that men are aware of their climaxes immediately. Women are more likely to believe a climax comes from within."


“However,” she conceded. “College students are very proliferate when it comes to taking up positions. “I imagine a examination of older people will come up with more degrees of pleasures without the necessity of so many climaxes.”

Since her initial study, which was released on Thursday, people are coming up with new positions for having sex.


"Originally, I thought that we had exhausted all the positions and their degrees of pleasure, but I’ve discovered a few more since then," Lovemore said.