Playing on the Edge: Sadomasochism, Risk, and Intimacy (13 page)

This reflects a narrower conceptualization of SM than their respondents held, and certainly than the people in Caeden hold today. Having excluded the activities of leathermen from their analytical category “SM” on the basis of self-definition, the authors retained “sex” as a fundamental and necessary characteristic of SM, despite the denial of this by some of their respondents. In light of their under- standing that the social construction of SM as pathology “makes sense of what appears to be bizarre behavior” (Weinberg, Williams, and Moser 1984, 380), the adherence to a sexual model is noteworthy. The framing of SM as sex makes a new “sense” out of what would appear to be, at this point, perhaps even more bizarre: SM activities outside the contexts of role play and alternative sex.

Another recent study follows Weinberg, Williams, and Moser (1984) in restricting eligibility for selection to people for whom SM is experienced as sexual. Taylor and Ussher’s respondents “were required to define their sexuali- ties or sexual practices as SM . . . it was to be their preferred means of sexual arousal” (Taylor and Ussher 2001, 296). Not surprisingly, given the exclusion of all SM-identified people who define their enjoyment differently, all of the respondents maintained that the enjoyment of their activities is dependent upon a sexual context.

This conceptual framework for SM has recently shifted to an assumption of primacy. Darren Langdridge observes that, despite “some recent moves within SM communities to minimize the sexual and instead focus on identities and practices that are more relational . . . at its core, SM, at least, appears to be
about
sex and this cannot and, I would argue, should not be denied” (Langdridge 2006, 380, emphasis mine).

For researchers committed to sexual rights and sexual citizenship, to under- stand SM as something other than sex is to sweep under the rug the very real and consequential problem of sex-based discrimination. Yet, and especially in this effort, it is relevant that some SM participants reject a sexual context for their SM participation. Langdridge reads this rejection as a movement in the community, which would seem especially important given his concern with sexual rights and citizenship, but it is dismissed. Having been socially con- structed within and for a discourse of sex, mainstream conceptualizations of SM ought to be engaged critically and theoretically before being adopted by scholars. We should endeavor to understand what SM is “at its core” that we believe makes it necessarily “about sex.”

The characterization of sexual fulfillment as a motivation for SM is prob- lematic for several reasons. The dismissal of the members of the community as denying their “true” motives evokes the very same essentialist identities against which Langdridge is arguing. The rationale for privileging the paradigm of sex- uality as the motive and reward for engaging in SM appears to be that it is the more common paradigm among participants. Yet SM participants who reject a sexual frame are excluded from studies of SM participants. Given the paucity of research on SM, and on play in particular, this assertion seems premature. However, even if it is the most common paradigm among participants, the uncritical procession from this assertion as the starting point is concerning.

It is of course likely that SM differs, to some extent, by community. Much of the recent work on SM has been conducted in the UK. It is possible that British SM is unequivocally about sex, and that, in turn, British participants

are disavowing this. It is also possible these participants should not “count” for reasons that have yet to be clearly demonstrated. Since, however, SM research- ers consistently note the rejection of a sexual context for SM play among par- ticipants, one must wonder what is behind these would-be denials, and how the “deniers” differ from the “accepters” of the sexual context. We might further wonder why it is that researchers are compelled first to mention them, and then to dismiss these particular “voices from the margins” (Langdridge 2006).

In Caeden during the time I was there, SM was neither a precursor to conven- tional sexual activity nor a replacement for it, but an end unto itself. Although SM is most often understood as having some erotic component for participants, several things trouble the unequivocal understanding of SM as sex. At least one person in any given SM interaction is almost always dressed, and sometimes all are, though nudity is generally permitted in play spaces. Kissing during play is rare, and genital play is much less common than other kinds of play (such as back-flogging). Participants often play with people they do not (initially) find sexually attractive, and with whom they are not interested in being sexual. After play, participants normally go out to eat or home to sleep.

While SM communities certainly include people who engage in sadomas- ochistic sex, they are also sites of engagement in sadomasochistic activities that are not so clearly or necessarily experienced as “sexual.” Some SM participants insist that their play has nothing to do with sex at all, and there are community members who decry the presence of any sexual activity in SM clubs, lest SM be conflated with “kinky sex.” Others view SM as potentially sexual, but not a core aspect of SM experience. Sophie explained, “I haven’t actually had the experience of it having very much to do with my sexuality—I can get aroused, but it’s not a default position.”

Either SM itself has changed, or SM participants are now renouncing a sexual explanation for what they do, or the sexual context has never had the stronghold that has been assumed. Yet SM communities are flourishing and SM participation appears to be increasing in frequency. It may be that, as Plummer (1995) predicted, another kind of sexual story is proliferating in late modern discourses of sex, one in which the erotic is desexualized. The divorcing of sensory, carnal, and potentially erotic experience from all that is culturally sub- sumed by the notion of “sex” may be one indicator of changing criteria for what is sexual, and a widening perspective on carnal pleasures. It may also signify a response to changing gender scripts—strategies for negotiating the anomic state of gender for middle-class straight men and women. It may also be that SM is not—at least not simply—about sex.

In part, then, this is an issue of narrative and meaning-making. The extent to which SM participants understand their experiences as sex or as not sex is important, as are the social contexts in which they come to make these mean- ings. These questions cannot be adequately addressed outside an understanding of what it is SM participants actually do during SM play.

Understanding Play: “Straight” SM versus D/s

The members of the SM community in Caeden categorize play along multiple axes. On the simplest level, play is defined by the toys used in the scenes—knife play or spanking or a bondage scene, for example. Play is most easily defined as one of these types when it is either the only or the principal activity in the scene. This choice is also subjective; a scene in which a top singletails a bottom after intricately tying her with rope may be referred to as a bondage scene by one and a singletail scene by the other. It is further contextual in place and time; at a bondage meeting, the same person who last week called it a singletail scene elsewhere may now call it a bondage scene.

The most salient distinction between kinds of play hinges on the role of power in the scene. Issues of power are at the core of SM play. For most people in the community, the illusion of an explicit power differential is crucial for the enjoyment of play. In this kind of play (called “D/s,” for “dominance and submission”), participants incorporate inegalitarian power dynamics. This can be accomplished explicitly in and for the scene itself, as, for example, when one player is fastened to the end of a leash held by another player. It can also be incorporated into a relationship built around a D/s dynamic, wherein all scenes are understood and experienced within this context.
5

D/s takes for granted a hierarchical status between players even before a scene begins. In contrast, “straight” SM,
6
neither assumes nor seeks a hierar- chical structure at the outset. For this reason, “straight” SM is viewed as being about pain
rather than
power. D/s is therefore usually understood as potentially more inclusive than other kinds of play.

In practice, the distinctions are often evident. The use of honorifics (e.g., Mistress, Sir) during play, for example, can characterize a scene as D/s. Similar- ly, one player might carry the bags of the other to the play space, abstain from speaking until “permitted,” or sit at the feet of another. Arguably, D/s more closely resembles the mainstream idea of SM as role play than does straight SM. Even in D/s, though, this is a more complicated issue. Early in my fieldwork, during my second scene with Liam, this became clearer to me:

Liam said that wearing his collar was important to him, and I had, after much conversation about it, agreed to wear one. He gave me a choice of four collars—three were rope, one was leather. The leather was the small- est, and I chose that one without hesitation. I didn’t like any of them, and I didn’t like the implication. [ . . . ]

He had some kind of protocol for handing it over—he wanted me to take it from him, and then hand it back or something—I don’t know. I was supposed to say please, I think. I shot him a look that made it clear that I was humoring him, but I did what he asked and put it on. [ . . . ]

We had this incident once . . . he’d moved me to the opposite wall, for no apparent reason. He caned me, and I guess he wanted me to ask for another. He’d been big on the asking for another thing, and I felt like I’d been a good sport about it. But then he wanted me to ask for another and—I don’t know what happened . . . I just really didn’t want another, I guess. In any case, I said no, and he sat himself down on the chair and didn’t move. I could see him in the mirror. I turned around to look at him a couple of times and said nothing. It was extremely awkward and very annoying. I was self-conscious and irritated with him. (Field notes)

Liam wanted this to be a D/s scene, a kind of play with which I had had no experience and which I assumed was essentially role play. Had I safeworded (the utterance of “yellow” would have signaled to him that he needed to change course), Liam would have been able to redirect the scene. Instead, I directly and overtly challenged the power performance by simply refusing to do what he asked. Liam was uncertain about whether I was playing a power game, wanting him to force the issue somehow. He did not step out of his role because he did not understand himself to be
in
a role. He was still Liam, trying to construct a particular dynamic in the interaction between Liam and Dakota that would, if it succeeded, be experienced by each of us as authentic.

This anomic situation emerged from my refusal to employ the normative strategies of the community in D/s play, while failing to communicate produc- tively with him. Without the power performance, the D/s aspect of the scene lost its meaning entirely, leaving both of us without a clear sense of how, or even whether, to proceed. Had Liam shifted to a “straight” SM scene, the expecta- tions would have been clearer. In most D/s scenes, these “roles” usually reach beyond the finite space of the SM interaction itself. The dynamics that players create and maintain through these strategies during play are carried through to community interaction. They are intended to structure the interaction between

dominants and submissives more generally. For this reason the consideration even of D/s as role play obscures important dynamics in the community.

Because “straight” SM does not incorporate these power performances, many members understand it as being “only” about pain, for its own sake rather than for experiences of inequality. Straight SM is therefore often regarded as
less
than D/s.

The argument that playing with physical pain is not
also
about power is of course problematic, for SM is about the
infliction
of pain on one body by another.. Contrary to popular stereotypes, bottoms in SM scenes do not enjoy hurting themselves; the appeal is at least as much in the infliction as it is in the sensation.
7
The infliction of pain—injury, in the broadest sense, to one body by another— cannot be extricated from power. There is power in the intent to injure, the intent to withstand injury, and the responses to injury. While D/s play renders explicit the ideology of domination through rituals of hierarchy, straight SM necessarily manifests
consequences and symbols
of this ideology on the body.

The ideology of domination is not carefully preserved in this kind of SM play precisely because straight SM is, inherently and carnally, about domina- tion. Where straight SM play is defined in the community by the absence of a D/s “dynamic,” D/s play may or may not include SM. This leaves straight SM play as the only kind that
necessarily
mimics assault. As explicit as the ideol- ogy of power is in D/s play, it is based on the acceptance of a hierarchy for the purposes of the scene. D/s performs dominance and submission where SM performs conquest and defeat.

Protecting Performances of Power

These power performances are symbolic. Unlike contrived performances, the objective of SM play is the achievement of emotional, psychological, and physi- cal experience of the
actors
as
authentic.
To that end, participants expend a good deal of effort creating and maintaining perceptions of power differences
outside
of SM scenes. The suggestion that these inequalities are illusory meets with impassioned resistance. More a script than a debate, these conversations normally result in identity policing; inevitably the challenger learns that she must not be a “real” dominant or submissive if she believes that the submissive is “in charge.”

In more private settings, however, where the illusion on which the com- munity is based is not threatened, most people entertain the complexity of the power paradox, as Laura did:

You are putting yourself in a situation where you could truly be power- less. Most of the time, people are responsible and know that you’re play- ing a game. Most people know this, and aren’t going to do those things. It’s possible that they can, absolutely, and you don’t want that, but it is possible. But the more likely situation is that they’re gonna respect your limits, and you’ll get your illusion and enjoy it. It’s an escape from reality. The illusion of powerlessness [ . . . ] I think for me the illusion of power- lessness goes into my leaving my real world behind.