I’ve been digging through sex blogs for the last few weeks and it seems like a fairly high percentage of women bloggers have a soft spot for bondage and/or discipline. Many have no partner on the horizon. Others have partners who aren’t interested in, say, spanking.

A recurring theme, though, is the things people do to themselves to get the same edge. Trying self-fisting, for instance, or flogging themselves, or experimenting with increasingly intense nipple clamps.

It’s unlikely that an equal percentage of women are secretly waiting for someone to nail them with a hairbrush. It’s also manifestly clear the women who do aren’t interested in men who might smack them around just any old time — outside the context of sex most have firmly modern boundaries. It does suggest there’s a lot of unmet demand, and maybe anonymous blogging is just a good way to vent one’s frustrations.

I can think of dozens of reasons for that frustration — thinking back I’ve surely missed very obvious hints from at least one former partner, and ducked out on at least one other I thought was just getting a little "intense." Mickey Spillane novels notwithstanding I don’t think many men enjoy hitting women in the first place, and the social and legal climate only reinforce that.

So. If you’re into BDSM, and you don’t have a willing and/or safe partner to play with, how do you play by yourself?