Lucky Ladies...Cross your legs boys!

While many raise their eyebrows (and possibly wince) at the thought of gential piercings, they are by no means a 20th century thrill.

While conquering new territories, early Spaniards, despite their "professions of piety", took an interest in the sex lives of their natives. The first Europeans to record Filipino sexual practices were Antonio Pigafetta and Fray Juan de Plasencia who interviewed and examined couples in some detail.

Pigafetta found that among the natives of the Phillipines:
"Both young and old males pierce their penises with a gold or tin rod the size of a goose quill. In both ends of the same bolt, some have what resembles a spur, with points upon the ends; others are like the head of a cart nail. I very often asked many, both young and old, to see their penis, because I could not credit it. In the middle of the bolt is a hole, through which they urinate.
The bolt and the spurs always hold firm. They say that the women wish it so, and if they did otherwise they would not have communication with them.

When a man wishes to have intercourse with a woman, she takes his penis not in the normal way, but gently introduces first the top spur and then the bottom one into her vagina. Once inside, the penis becomes erect and cannot be withdrawn until it is limp."

Pigafetta states that the women detest this practice as it cut their organs. He brags: "they very much preferred our men to their own."

Stanley Karnow writes: "He was wrong. Later, Spaniards found the painful posture to be the rage, especially in the Visayas. Juan de Medina, an Agustinian friar, wrote that women there would copulate only that way and were "grief stricken" when Catholic missionaries compelled them to reform. "

Guess once you've had pikimata (pictured) you can never go back to the missionary position!