The most dangerous sexual positions: an investigation
Reverse cowgirl can cause serious harm if not practised correctly. Which is obviously bad news to get before Father’s Day.

SOME BAD NEWS ahead of Father’s Day this weekend. A recent TikTok video by Dr Karan Raj has found reverse cowgirl is responsible for up to 50 per cent of penile fractures.
But your package has the tensile strength of titanium with a Kevlar coating? Well, with all due respect to you and your formidable member, if you’re not practising safe sex, and by ‘safe’ we’re talking about ensuring the dynamics of your thrusting align with your partner’s, angles aren’t too ambitious and lubrication is on point, then you’re potentially putting yourself at risk of injury. It’s enough to make the most adventurous lover sheath their member for good.
So, how serious should we take this warning? If the thrusting of two sexual partners is just a little out of sync, says Raj, it can lead to your member slipping out and “being crushed by the female pubic bone”. We’ll give you a moment to take a sharp intake of breath and remove that wincing expression from your face. You good? Okay, let’s keep going.
Fracture isn’t actually the operative word here. The penis doesn’t have any bones in it (despite an erect penis being colloquially referred to as a ‘boner’), so we’re actually talking about a tear in the rubbery sheath of tissue known as the tunica albuginea. According to a 2021 study, forcible bending of the erect penis can lead “to haematoma formation and classical ‘aubergine’ deformity”.
Now, unfortunately, I have to admit I have seen the devastating effects of this injury up far too close. About a decade ago, a colleague arrived at a fun run my company was holding and said he couldn’t participate because he’d, “broken my dick, hey”. The fellow was a Kiwi, and he proceeded to proudly grab his testicles from beneath his shorts and reveal to exclusively uninterested male onlookers that his “veg” was the colour of a Violet Crumble wrapper—he helpfully explained that the bruising had spread from the shaft of his penis to the testicle area. As I wasn’t expecting him to provide visual confirmation of his injury, I looked away a second too late and thus my retinas were irrevocably scorched.
The fellow kept doing it throughout the morning, seeming to revel in the horrified looks and violent recoiling it was causing. I also think he enjoyed the insinuation that he had been engaged in a particularly athletic form of intercourse and was wearing his bedroom injury as a badge of honour—Kiwis huh. I already had a dim view of the fellow (and Kiwis for that matter) and he proceeded to sink further in my estimation. Now, when I occasionally see his posts crop up on social media, I’m immediately taken back to that harrowing image of those pulverised balls.
”A quick internet shallow-dive on reverse cowgirl surprisingly doesn’t reveal a trove of serious scholarship on the practice, although it was found to be the favoured position in Singapore and Hong Kong, which means precisely nothing. There are also countless articles on how to best execute the position, however, the focus is more on performance than safety.
At this point, if you’re still reading, know that sex injuries from other positions are also common. A 2017 study from the International Journal of Impotence Research named doggy style as the most dangerous position, accounting for 41 per cent of fractures, while missionary, which you would assume to be close to risk-free was responsible for 26 per cent of injuries—bad news for the nation’s geography teachers.
This new reverse cowgirl finding could be something of a kick in the guts for a particular type of dad who was planning to celebrate this coming Father’s Day with his tri-annual reverse cowgirl session; birthdays and anniversaries being the other occasions he and his partner pull it out. To ensure there isn’t a spike in visits to emergency this Sunday evening, the advice here is tread carefully.
And, if you’re undeterred and want to look for positives, perhaps focus on the fact that risk can be thrilling. Finally, and I’m probably being overly cautious here, if you do injure yourself, don’t show anyone.
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