I want you to be safe.
For women
This section is primarily directed at women, and particularly women who want to be spanked, because they are the most vulnerable.
There are risks in finding a man to spank you. This section discusses those risks and suggests ways to minimize them. There is much you can do to protect yourself, but there are no guarantees. I want you to be able to pursue your spanking dreams without running unnecessary risks. Take your time; go one step at a time; the odds will be in your favor.
It’s not hard to find erotic spanking. If you have a boyfriend, whisper in his ear that you want him to spank you. Tell him it’s exciting. Most women have no trouble coaxing an erotic spanking out of their boyfriends or husbands.
Things get trickier if you want to be spanked harder. The man in your life he may balk at giving you more than a play spanking. If so, or if there’s no man to begin with, it’s up to you to find someone to give you the spankings you crave.
Safety in clubs and online
If you meet people in a local spanking or BDSM club, you will probably find the more experienced members more than willing to let you know who is safe and who is not. Most clubs recognize that protecting newcomers is an important function. To take advantage of this, take your time. Don’t go home with a guy who seems wonderful before you’ve had a chance to learn more about him from people who can vouch for him.
If you are interested in meeting someone online, you won’t have the protection of other club members, so you have to be particularly careful. Men have safety issues, as well, but their problems aren’t as serious, especially if the man is doing the tying up and the woman is being tied and spanked.
There is a lot of information online about meeting people safely. This is my own perspective, and I encourage you to look around for more information. You need to find a system that feels right to you. The discussions on Fetlife have lots of information about this, and of course Google will help you find your way.
Caution
The most fundamental part of safety is not putting yourself at risk with someone who may act trustworthy but is actually dangerous. Safewords—a way of letting the man you want him to lighten up, or stop—only work when the man is responsible. They won’t deter someone who wants to injure or kill you. That doesn’t mean the spanking scene is any more dangerous than your local bar, only that you need to apply the same common sense whenever you meet someone new.
The safety rules are imperfect. There is always some way a determined person who is very clever and a good liar could harm you. Of course, you could also have a bad situation with someone you meet through friends or at church; the only way to be perfectly safe is to stay home with the door locked. But if you follow the safety rules carefully, you stack the odds in your favor.
Safewords
Safewords are a way to stay safe with people who are responsible. Please see Safewords.
First steps for getting to know someone
I’m going to go through the process of meeting one another online and then in person with special attention to safety. The meeting process increases both parties’ knowledge, understanding, and comfort in steps.
Getting to know each other moves by steps from e-mail, to telephone calls, to meeting in a neutral place. Finally, if all of that goes well, you will find yourself over his lap. But there are those preliminary hurdles to pass first.
We start with e-mail, of course, which actually tells you a lot about each other. The next step is a phone call.
First meeting
When you meet in person, get together at a restaurant with a clear agreement that this meeting is just to get to know one another. At this time there is no reason for him to know your last name or any other specific details about you. Even if you both feel the chemistry is perfect, don’t make a final decision about meeting for a spanking until after you’ve gone home. That way you have time to heed any subtle misgivings, any red flags from your intuition, that otherwise you might suppress.
The first time you meet for a spanking, and for as many times after that as you wish, you should have a safe call. This means that someone knows where you are, calls you on your cell phone during the scene (perhaps more than once), and sends the police if you don’t answer with the code reply for “I’m really OK.” There’s more information about safe calls in various sources, I’m not going to repeat all of it here, but it’s worth doing.
Don’t let him rush you
Finally there is the question about the tempo of these steps. You should never feel rushed (that is definitely a warning sign!) but it is a good idea to move along steadily. This prevents you from building mental images of a perfect person in your head and spending too much time in fantasy la-la land. It’s better to meet in person, rather than spending a prolonged time on just e-mails, because you will have a much better idea if you are really compatible.
Follow the rules and follow your instincts. You may open the door to wonderful spankings, and your biggest danger will be romantic disappointment . . . and I have no rules to prevent that! As my friend Mrs. Mish once said, “There are no safewords for my heart.”