A lovely email from a reader recently thanked us for helping her to realise that there are other people who share her interest in spanking.

I think many of us have been through the process of hiding away our secret interest in spanking, sometimes feeling ashamed of it, certainly feeling lonely. (“Am I wrong to think about this so often; am I the only one? Please don’t let anyone find out!”).

And then there’s that moment of liberation, elation, when one tests the water with a partner, or discovers other folks online discussing exactly the things that have been so fascinating for all this time. For me, that tipping point came in the late 90s, just after I’d turned 30; for younger folks growing up in a more online era, the discovery’s typically coming at an earlier age. And I’m guessing there are not an inconsiderable number of folks of my sort of age – early 40s – who are only now exploring their long-hidden spanko side after years of supressing it vanilla marriages entered into in the pre-internet era.

But how many of us are there? I seem to recall reading in various sex surveys that 10% of the population is interested in kink in some way. In a nation the size of the UK (62 million or thereabouts), that’d probably equate to some three to four million people (by the time one’s ruled out those who aren’t sexually active). Of those, I’d guess the majority ‘toy’ with kink – liking the occasional light spanking, having tried it a couple of times, tying the odd rope to the bed to brighten up their frolics. And people tend to overestimate the variety in their bedroom lives in surveys anyway – “yes of course I’m into spanking, I’ve had 40 sexual partners this year, enjoy foursomes outdoors on a regular basis, and the neighbour’s dog [squick] is very friendly”.

So the number of true spankos – in our sense: people whose private lives are, to a greater or lesser extent oriented around spanking. People who actually play, roleplay even, with their partner and others on a reasonably regular basis. Who read anything they can lay their hands on about the topic, who find it endlessly fascinating? Whose kink really is primarily *spanking*, rather than BDSM more generally with a little spanking thrown into the mix?

You know, I’d like to think there are millions of us out there. It’d be great if one could look around any pub, restaurant, meeting, event and be certain in the confidence that there were lots of other spankos in the house. But the more I’ve explored the scene, and discovered how many people know how many of the other people in the spanking community, the more I downgrade my estimates.

So here goes with my best guess for the full-on active spanking-centric community in the UK: 5,000 individuals – plus perhaps twenty times that (up to 100,000) who are deeply fascinated by spanking but who don’t play actively for whatever reason. Not 10%; perhaps more like one in 10,000 for the truly active community. Seems low – but I guess it’s as a good a guess as any, based on people we know, extrapolating guesses based on the likely number of pervy friends of friends, and general gut feel. But I’d be really fascinated to hear others’ views.