8. Pronovalence: What could be more delightful, as a trusted psychiatrist or erastophiliac, than to declare to some female patient that she clearly suffers from pronovalence due to her Catholic upbringing. Oh the power of the psychiatrist. Terrifying isn’t it?
Pronovalence is the psychological inability to have sexual intercourse except in a prone position, a position that has frequently become an object of discussion in the Christian church. The “prone position with male superior” for sexual intercourse was advocated by no less a sexual expert than Thomas Aquinas, although to be honest, it wasn’t an original posture, either physically or philosophically.
Historically, it is well established that in Ur, Greece, Rome, Peru, China and Japan, the woman on top position was rather trendy, although in India, as the Kama Sutra indicates, they were all over the place. By contrast Ancient Greeks were partial to the standing-up-but-from-behind position until Artemidos of the Stoics, started to evangelize the Angel Position (as it was known before there were any missionaries to make it “missionary”)
The medieval Catholic Church came out against the doggy position on the basis of it being unnatural. Thomas Aquinas seemed to believe that intercourse in unnatural positions constituted a crime against nature and from that point on, the missionary position became de rigeur among Christians. Pronovalence thus became a psychological ailment that one could catch from one’s spiritual advisers.
9. Amomaxiaphobia: If you suffer from pronovalence then you’ll need a stretch limo in order not to suffer from amomaxiaphobia. Amomaxiaphobia is the fear of making love in an automobile and in most automobiles the Angel Position is impossible unless you’re both rather short or you leave the doors open or you have a long vehicle. Basically there’s not a great deal of room to spread yourself about. I doubt if that’s the particular issue that most amomaxiaphobics grapple with.
Most probably there’s the fear of being discovered, by the authorities, or worse, some peeping tom. However one cannot eliminate the Catholic Church here. Strange as it may seem, in 2007, the Catholic Church issued a set of commandments for Catholic drivers. In among sensible suggestions about respect for other drivers, compassion for victims of traffic accidents and basic road safety, is commandment number five: “Cars shall not be for you an expression of power and domination, and an occasion of sin.”
I’m not exactly sure what the Catholic Church is getting at here, since sex isn’t necessarily a Catholic sin (unless it’s sex outside marriage, gay sex, sex with contraceptives, masturbation, sex in the wrong position or sex not intended for procreation). Hopefully some well-informed Catholic will add a comment to this post to clarify this.
10. Lenocinant: Technically, lenocinant is defined in most dictionaries as “given to lewdness,” but its etymology suggests also that it is more corruptive than that. It appears to involve enticement to lewd behavior, since the Latin “leno” means pimp. I suggest we keep this information from Jay Leno until we find out something etymologically damning about the names of other talk-show hosts like “Letterman” and “O’Brien”. Fair’s fair. Luckily, the word “lenociny” (closely related to “lenocinant”) simply means enticing medicine, much like the satirical medicine the Jay Leno regularly dispenses on his popular show.
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~ Thomas Jefferson
