I still remember the first time I came across the word “prone” as a teenager. Surprisingly, it wasn’t because I shakily mistyped the word “porn” while losing my Incognito Window virginity. It was, actually, way cringier—I was learning the controls for Call of Duty: World At War. Basically, on COD, you can press “Circle” to make your character go “prone”—meaning they lay flat on their stomach, their pelvis pressed to the battleground.
Soon after, I stumbled across the term again in a very different context. “Prone masturbation”—as I remember reading online, at the time—is the act of lying face down on your stomach and rubbing your penis or clitoris against a surface to achieve orgasm. It’s something I had been doing myself as an angsty teenager, humping my mattress after, well, playing too much COD.
But as I went down the Reddit hole, I started to panic—people were warning others of the negative impact. I immediately stopped and switched to lying on my back. I was fortunate; some people who keep going later report permanent sexual dysfunction. “Prone masturbation destroyed my life,” reads one poignant thread. “Prone masturbation destroyed my penis,” outlines another. And now, prone masturbation is more pertinent than ever, because—extreme curveball—it’s being fetishised by online kink communities.
It’s hard to calculate how many people masturbate with their face buried into their pillow. Alfred Kinsey’s milestone publication Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, published in 1948, noted that 5 to 10% of men regularly masturbate in the prone position. More recent studies roughly align with this, suggesting that 4.78% of men have engaged in FaceDownTime. No clear data exists for women and those with a vulva (there’s that famous gender gap in medical research).
For Mark*, a 30-year-old project manager from Oregon, it came naturally. “I discovered prone masturbation when I was very young, around age nine. I used to sleep in a prone position on my stomach and remember rubbing my penis against the mattress and it felt really intense and pleasurable.” He says it became a habit he fell into. This reflects leading urologist Dr. Rena Malik’s thesis: “It is largely speculative, but I suspect individuals experiment with different positions for pleasure, find this specific stimulation enjoyable, and then just continue doing it.”
Locker room talk at school revealed that most of his peers were using his hands—but Mark didn’t think too much of it. As he got older, though, Mark noticed that it was becoming less satisfying. “But it was kind of the frog in the boiling pot where it was happening so slowly. So I didn’t have the foresight to take corrective action.” The fading sensitivity had downstream effects that impacted his libido and put a strain on a serious relationship. He began searching for more information. A visit to the urologist proved to be fruitless. “He kind of rolled his eyes and slapped me on the back and said, it’s all in your head.” Mark switched to a more traditional masturbation style, but the negative effects were lasting.
Mark’s sexual dysfunction could be a case of Traumatic Masturbatory Syndrome (TMS), a clinical hypothesis first proposed by Dr Lawrence Sank in 1998. It posits that prone masturbation can lead to a desensitization of the penis, as well as issues like erectile dysfunction and anorgasmia. It’s adjacent to the issue of “death grips” (not the band, the masturbation style)—where getting used to stimulating your dick with a tight fist makes penetrative sex unsatisfactory. Concerned men have even reported their penises becoming bent or permanently damaged. Still, no medical literature proves this is the case.
Perhaps because of these purported risks, a story much different from Mark’s is developing in the Goon Cave; some prolific masturbators are actively fetishizing the prone position. Subreddits like r/ProneHumping and r/GOONING share tips on how to savor as much ecstasy as possible through prolonged prone masturbation.
“I’ve stumbled across it in the past year or two and it’s incredibly disturbing. It’s like a self harm fetish as far as I can tell, I think they fetishize impotence,” Mark says. Some apparently actively try to become “perma limp” (turn their penis into a permanently flaccid, shrinked “clitty”) through prone masturbation, seemingly hoping that it induces irreversible impotence.
But, experts don’t agree about the actual threat prone masturbation poses—or if it’s even a threat at all. “I wouldn’t necessarily categorize it as having ‘risks,’ as studies show some healthy men masturbate in this position without issue,” Dr. Malik says. Some skeptics would argue that it’s part of the moral panic that surrounds masturbation, an ailment to be filed next to hairy hands and shrunken dicks.
A handful of research papers seem to back-up Sank’s seminal thesis. One recent International Journal of Urology study analysing 448 men found that those with erectile dysfunction were 2.2 times more likely to masturbate in a prone position. “Atypical masturbatory behaviors are more common in young men presenting with erectile dysfunction,” it concludes. Prone masturbation could even be used to counteract premature ejaculation, due to it delaying orgasm, according to one study. “The regular prone masturbation training method, as a novel behavioral therapy, probably has a therapeutic effect on premature ejaculation,” concludes a 2023 study.
For sex therapist and clinical psychologist David Ley, prone masturbation may be “rooted in origins of autism, sensory difficulties, and anxiety, which lead to prone masturbation filling pre-existing psychological issues.” And, he says, the discussion of harm around it is a moral panic. “In my opinion, this panicked response is rooted in traditional stigma towards masturbation, heteronormative attitudes and how easy it is to exploit sexual anxieties,” says Ley. He says that all research is “correlational and cross-sectional with no good causal information” and that fearmongering surrounding the issue exacerbates symptoms.
“Unfortunately these studies have contributed to a high degree of anxiety in men who engage in prone masturbation,” he says. “That anxiety can be iatrogenic in causing sexual dysfunction, because the men feel shame and concern that they are somehow “doing it wrong” and harming themselves. I’ve seen a great many such men who develop serious anxiety difficulties from reading the panic-inducing media around this behavior.”
But for those who believe they are victims of prone masturbation, it seems entirely physiological rather than totally psychological. Mark emphasises that he has no issues with guilt around sex, has never been on SSRIs or any other medication that might cause similar ailments, has never been clinically depressed and has been an athletic person who runs marathons and stays in great shape. The denial of it being an issue, he says, “adds to the isolation and pain.”
While Mark doesn’t believe he has physically damaged his penis, he believes “extreme conditioning” has dampened the pleasure of conventional stimulation. He thinks that many sex therapists recoil at patients saying that they have been harmed by masturbation, as it seems like they’re trying to call back oppressive ideas around sex. “Masturbation is obviously healthy and good. But there’s a specific style that’s harmful.”
Dr. Malik acknowledges this is a possibility. “Because the specific sensations of prone masturbation cannot be replicated during standard penile-vaginal intercourse, a person can become habituated to that stimulus. This can make it difficult to climax with a partner because the body has been conditioned to require that specific type of pressure or friction.”
Some in the community have found relief through seeing a sex therapist (something, Mark says, has helped) or urologist. And there are potential workarounds. “To address the habituation, one can try changing masturbation patterns, limiting masturbation for a period, or incorporating different types of stimulation—such as temperature, vibration, or light touch—to engage the spinal cord in different ways,” Dr. Malik says.
Others, though, say their sex life has been permanently affected. It’s why many who identify as TMS sufferers spread awareness around the apparent dangers of prone masturbation on forums like Reddit. “It helps to connect with others and lessens the isolation. I thought I was the only person in the world with this issue, but it’s comforting in a way to know others are dealing with something similar,” says Mark.
This simultaneous push and pull towards and away from prone masturbation makes it a complex issue, where attitudes towards self-pleasure and anxieties surrounding health entangle. There’s certainly no rock-hard proof that it can do any irreversible damage. But, if you can masturbate without flipping onto your front, it’s probably best to do so, as the risk outweighs the reward—there are much better ways to get laid.
*Indicates name has been changed for privacy.