Playing on the Edge Sadomasochism, Risk, and Intimacy [Paperback]

Representations of consensual sadomasochism range from the dark, seedy undergrounds of crime thrillers to the fetishized pornographic images of sitcoms and erotica. In this pathbreaking book, ethnographer Staci Newmahr delves into the social space of a public, pansexual SM community to understand sadomasochism from the inside out. Based on four years of in-depth and immersive participant observation, she juxtaposes her experiences in the field with the life stories of community members, providing a richly detailed portrait of SM as a social space in which experiences of violence intersect with experiences of the erotic. She shows that SM is a recreational and deeply gendered risk-taking endeavor, through which participants negotiate boundaries between chaos and order. Playing on the Edge challenges our assumptions about sadomasochism, sexuality, eroticism, and emotional experience, exploring what we mean by intimacy, and how, exactly, we achieve it.

Contents
Acknowledgments

Introduction

Part 1: People
1. Defiance: Bodies, Minds, and Marginality
2. Geeks and Freaks: Marginal Identity and Community

Part 2: Play
3. Tipping the Scales: Striving for Imbalance
4. Fringe Benefits: The Rewards of SM Play
5. Badasses, Servants, and Martyrs: Gender Performances

Part 3: Edges
6. Reconcilable Differences: Pain, Eroticism, and Violence
7. Collaborating the Edge: Feminism and Edgework
8. What It Is That We Do : Intimate Edgework

Concluding Notes: Erotic Subjectivity and the Construction of the Field
Glossary
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Playing on the Edge. . . is an exciting sociological contribution to academic explorations of SM, providing an empirically rich window into a rarely seen SM community.Newmahrs decisions to use passages of creative representation to convey felt experiences, as well as to use her own body as an instrument of intellectual inquiry to such an extent, bring a sense of depls*