In 1912, Lady Hillingdon wrote of her marriage:
‘When I hear his steps outside my door I lie down on my bed, open my legs and think of England.’
Thankfully, the days when sex was a joyless duty for women are long gone, but if one study is anything to go by, men are paying a painful price for bedroom variety.
Doctors and academics looking at patients with suspected ‘penile fractures’ (don’t Google that – seriously) in three A&E units found that the cowgirl position was responsible for almost half of those injuries.
The study, published in the Advances in Urology journal, looked at men in their mid 30s over a 13-year period to ‘determine the mechanisms predisposing penile fracture’, concluding that the most dangerous position was ‘woman on top’.
‘Our study supports the fact that sexual intercourse with “woman on top” is the potentially riskiest sexual position related to penile fracture,’ reads the study.
‘Our hypothesis is that when woman is on top she usually controls the movement with her entire body weight landing on the erect penis, not being able to interrupt it when the penis suffers a wrong way penetration, because the harm is usually minor in woman with no pain but major in the penis.’
Some of the men, half of whom reported hearing a crack and feeling a sharp pain, waited up to six hours before seeking medical help.
The study also found that 44 men in the group had attended hospital, with 42 having the condition ‘confirmed’. Of those, 28 were having heterosexual sex, four were having homosexual sex, six were a result of ‘penis manipulation’ and four were from ‘unclear circumstances’.
The study was done at three hospitals in Campinas, Brazil.
Doggy-style was responsible for 29 percent of suspected ‘penile fractures’ while missionary was blamed for just 21 percent. Maybe Lord Hillingdon was just very cautious.
