Fridae

Even with more than 2,000 sex shops, it's a hard task to get your hands - or any other part of your anatomy - on decent lesbian sex toys in Beijing.

All I'm asking for is a piece of smooth, slightly curved silicon - maybe 6 inches by 1 � - and a simple adjustable leather strap with clit access. I won't even insist on a swirly pastel design. A solid colour will suffice.

But the People's Republic of China - which makes around 70 per cent of the world's sex toys - appears to specialise in dyke-unfriendly shafts complete with veins and testicles. You have to root around really hard to find a harness - I cannot count the times I have mimed strapping it on to bemused sex shop assistants. In the unlikely event they do stock straps, they are inevitably flesh colored and plastic - a combination guaranteed to make any girl lose her hard on.

The city simply cannot come up with the goods.

So it was that one evening last month I found myself trawling US and UK sex toy websites with fellow dyke in despair, an American editor for a local entertainment magazine, and known to some as The Stud of Beijing, in the vein (sic) attempt to fill my virtual shopping basket with a pleasing assortment of silicone and leather. The Stud comes with her credit card; I supply the wine.

But we are butt plugged at every turn. The Babes in Toyland website stubbornly rejects our Chinese address; we try calling the helpline - but the phone card we buy from the local shop is domestic calls only; Skype, which China threatens to block, doesn't work with my 10 yuan microphone; and a US$20 online IDD phone card requires a confusing array of passcodes and we can't work it.

The Stud sends the phone card company an angry email. Which, of course, is never answered.

The flaccid state of decent dildo availability in China may just stem from a lack of demand. Perhaps mainland lesbians just aren't that hot for strap-on sex.

Says Elisabeth Lund Engebretsen, an anthropologist researching lesbians in Beijing: "Few people I met had actually had experience with them - they either did not find them, found them too expensive, or didn't dare go into a shop to buy them.

"One pure T (stone butch) said she'd never wear one as that would make her realise even more that she is not a man, which she wanted to be."

She says she felt that while dykes here showed some interest in using sex toys they didn't make much of an effort into getting their hands on the equipment.

Some Chinese femmes, she adds, said they felt inhibited by the idea of their partner strapping it on.

"If women are unsure about how they can enjoy penetrative and slightly 'active' sex then strap-ons might feel disempowering and scary. Some of the younger P's (femmes) seemed a bit like that. They liked T's (butches) because they were 'soft' and 'gentle' (compared to men) and all that� "

For some lesbians, strap-on sex is a mind game they don't want to play. They reject dildo action on the grounds it's modeled on the act of straight sex.

Says The Stud: "When I first started having sex with women, I bought into the idea that wanting to use a strap-on was somehow acknowledging sex wouldn't be complete without penetration.

"At some point I got radical enough to make a distinction between penetrative sex and intromissive sex� to (overcome) the fear that if I wanted something in my cunt it would mean I wanted sex with a boy."

Elizabeth, who is originally from Norway, says she is all for strap-on sex.

"I'm all in favour of it! I don't buy the 'resemble hetero sex' argument, but perhaps that's what it would be like for some stone butches."

Today's fake cocks have been smoothed and castrated until they look more like pocket rockets than a phallus. They come in all colours from baby pink to pistachio; all shapes from curved for g-spot action to swirly ribbed for those who like to be corkscrewed; all materials from velvety cyberskin to tempered glass; and all sizes from the 11-inch "Hammer of Insatiability" to the stubby 3.5-inch baby smoothie.

And strapping it on doesn't mean you have to think like a man or fuck like a man. Because you can't feel through that piece of silicon - although some female-to-male transsexuals will swear that they can - you're not getting off in her but on her.

Strap-on a dual tool harness or strategically place a bullet vibe and you could get off on yourself too.

If anything, dildos widen our sexual spectrum.

"The best thing about being a lesbian is this," says The Stud.

"You have so many choices. You have more choices than gay men, you have more choices than straight couples.

"Lesbians have the most catholic range of expressing sexual vocabulary."

But getting it on by strapping it on is not as simple as tightening your buckle and getting stuck in.

Strap-on sex is goofy sex. Dildo's slip on, slip out, and slip off; especially with all that lube.

The Stud recounts the first time she strapped it on for a straight girl.

"So there I am. This poor girl has never had sex with another girl before. She's lying on the bed and I'm strapped up ready to go. I get lubed up and I try and put the piece through the cock ring and the shaft comes clean off the base and I'm left holding it in my hand.

"She's staring at me a little scared. Don't worry I say, that always happens. I throw the broken dildo behind me and it bounces off the wall.

"Luckily I had four or five dildos handy waiting under the bed. I reloaded and plunged in."

This misadventure marked the start of a three and a half year relationship, after which the straight girl went back to the kind of cock that doesn't come off in your hand.

Back in Beijing, and a week after our online flop, The Stud declines my invitation for a repeat online stab at silicone shopping.

She's going back to the States in July and will buy the toys over there.

And despite knowing The Stud, until July, I'm well and truly fucked. Or not, as it were.