Love or degradation? Hmmm?

So, I was wandering through Big W( like Kmart) at lunchtime when I saw Fifty Shades Darker, the follow up to the very successful Fifty Shades of Gray, book on sale. Apparently, speaking to one of the staff members there, they have restocked this book several times.  I walked away thinking to myself  “What does this say about women?” that they would buy such a sado-masochistic book that’s all about extreme sex that is saturated with degradation, submission, obsession and pain? Sure, there would be a small percentage of women who want to be shocked, outraged or titillated so they buy the book for that. But the rest? It could be argued that it’s because secretly a large percentage of women want to be controlled or dominated or treated like crap by a man or maybe the diatribe that are we more sexually liberated so we read stuff like this because we can. Either way I can’t help but feel it must be getting harder and harder for a man to work out what a woman wants. Force? Pain? Love? Romance? Denial? Bondage? Humiliation? Submission? Forever? I can’t help but think fondly of the good old Mills and Boon days where no one but the bad guy got hurt and the heroine slapped the hero occasionally.