Playing on the Edge: Sadomasochism, Risk, and Intimacy (24 page)

The conceptual tension between sex and violence shapes the discourse, mean- ing-making, and strategies surrounding SM play in Caeden. My efforts to under- stand how participants made sexual (or nonsexual) sense of their activities were consistently frustrated, as community members struggled to negotiate a discur- sive space in which the conflation of the erotic and the violent was not patho- logical. Few of them succeeded in this endeavor, ultimately choosing instead to accept the binary and disavow one “side” or the other of the SM experience.

Strategies of Resolution

DISAVOWAL AND DETACHMENT

Of the conceptual extrication of sex from rape, MacKinnon charges, “Aside from failing to answer the rather obvious question, if it’s violence not sex why didn’t he just hit her, this approach made it impossible to see that violence is sex when it is practiced as sex” (MacKinnon 1989, 323). Again SM poses an interesting turnabout: what is it if he often
does
“just hit her?” The “rather obvious” question implies that the hitting itself cannot be sex, in which case we would be left to conclude that SM is
only
violence, since it is not being “practiced” as sex.

For—and regarding—the SM community, this conclusion makes little sense. First, though SM is not sex, it is sexualized, and for many participants, it is an erotic experience. Similarly, while SM should not be confused with nonconsen- sual interactions in nonconsensual contexts, it makes little sense to ignore the ways in which it is violent.

Most of us, though, are not working with Jackman’s definition. We accept instead the underlying assumptions of Randall Collins’s perspective when he explains that “in slam-dancing, any sexual connotation is consciously negated by the violent tone, similar to the forearm bashes, mock punches, and butt- slaps that express solidarity among athletes” (Collins 2009, 279). The erotic is negated by the presence of violence, and otherwise-violent acts become non- violent when they express solidarity. Since SM cannot be both erotic and vio- lent without also being pathological, the members of Caeden must divorce the two, in practice, discourse, or meaning-making, in order to understand their experiences. Violence is thus defined in accordance with its contextual meaning rather than its action.

Discursively, this reconceptualization hinges on consent. Consent serves as the mediator between violence and eroticism, rendering SM
not
violence. It revokes violence’s claim to authenticity, setting it apart from nonconsensual violence (a term that then becomes redundant). Creating a distinction between violence itself and the performance of violence, the notion of consent prob- lematizes the authenticity of the violence among SM participants.

The use of consent as the intercessor between violence and eroticism is evident in multiple places in the community, including in the ways in which many of my respondents qualified their descriptions of their identities and activities:

A sadist to me is very pure—I believe in the dictionary definition [ . . . ] someone who derives pleasure from causing pain, inflicting pain on some- one. Note in the definition it does not say consensual or nonconsensual. It just says inflicting pain, period. A masochist is someone who derives pleasure from receiving pain. Period. I identify myself as a sadist. I do enjoy inflicting pain. I do get turned on, and sometimes get hard, seeing someone in pain. Knowing that I caused it. It just so happens I [also] have a kink for consensuality. Well, maybe not a kink for consensuality; I say that kind of figuratively. (Interview transcript, Frank)

Frank emphasized the word “kink” in his last sentence above to indicate that this did not quite capture the role of consent in his play. Regardless, the statement is a testament to the importance of the role of consent, and serves to reconcile his sadism with his erotic response. This conceptual and discursive rendering of SM as categorically nonviolent by way of consent legitimizes his erotic experience. It does not succeed in neutralizing the violence of SM entirely. It does not eliminate the experiences of pain and powerlessness in SM, and it does not address the erotic response to, or the desire for, the concept-elsewhere-known-as-violence. It does not, in other words, succeed in recasting SM as “kinky sex.”

There were many examples of the incongruity between violence and eroti- cism during my interviews, but the tension between them in SM crystallized for me during a casual conversation. Justin, who identifies as a dominant and who has a reputation as a particularly affectionate play partner, talked to me about his reluctance to bring (consensual) violence into his play despite the extent of his sadistic desire in erotic fantasy. He shared his sense that he has “become more of a sadist” over time, as indicated by his inability to reach orgasm with either vanilla or standard SM pornography. Instead, he uses “severely sadistic stuff,” in which people are badly beaten. There is a disjunction for him between what he likes on one erotic level, and his comfort level in play. Trying to recon- cile being “a nice guy” and being a sadist, he waffled back and forth in his char- acterization, alternating between using dramatic sadistic language (“I mean, I could throw you against the fucking wall,” he said while explaining himself to me) and lamenting this disinclination to play that way, given his inability to find “nice guy” material erotic.

The difficulty that Justin had in reconciling violence with eroticism even within his own SM play underscores their culturally embedded moral oppo- sition to one another. Despite the violence of his fantasies, Justin’s SM play often seemed more like kinky sex than a safe space for the intersection of eroti-

cism and violence. When violence and eroticism are linked at the level of social behavior, the result is not only more morally problematic than either on its own, but more conceptually problematic.

In other cases, the violence of SM is disavowed entirely, and the erotic significance becomes central to the understandings and the descriptions of play. Bobby, a dominant, indicated that eroticism is not only integral in his play, but both the motive and the objective. He maintains that he does not eroticize hurting women. Therefore, he views his desire to bind and torture women as entirely sexual, in both origin and outcome:

You can tease someone sexually the same way. Where you can get to a point, slowly, slowly build up, where they just are screaming and can’t stand it and they can’t sit still anymore. Well, if they’re restrained, you can take them past that point. And—well, tears, screaming, crying—and bring them to a higher level of endorphin rush than they could other- wise have achieved. And then, you know, that’s—they come back look- ing for more. The restraint is not there to hurt—it’s not the endorphins that shoot the pain to the endorphin rush; it is direct, it’s done for long, extended periods of sustained stimulation.

When I asked Bobby if this is erotic to him, he responded affirmatively. But he was careful to point out:

Nothing deflates me faster than if she’s hurting. And really hurting. I mean, I’m talking about if this is distress pain, “I’m being hurt and I’m being panicked.”

It was important to him, both in the community and during our interview, to make it well known that he does not like to hurt women. Yet he also told me:

I’ve dealt out some pretty, you know, severe switchings, canings, stuff like that, if this is what—you know, we’ve worked to that level and I know she can take it [ . . . ] As far as fantasy play, anything goes, any dress and level of bondage and restraint, as long as it’s being watched. I’ve done breath play. That can be very dangerous, but it’s like a swimming pool. You hold your breath and you go underwater.

For Bobby, play is about captivity and controlling sexual pleasure, rather than pain as its own end. This avoidance of pain play or its recognition as such, com- bined with drawing on a discourse of the conventionally erotic (his arousal and her orgasm) mitigates the violence of his play.

Because the pain in SM is inflicted, it is a symbol of violence. Accidents aside, when pain occurs in SM play, it is the result of violence. Even if we reject Jack- man’s conceptualization of violence, pain remains necessarily the result of per- formances of violence. Yet most of the members of this community deny pain, as either a goal or an experience. This disavowal emerges from this relationship to violence. The renouncement of pain, combined with the important issue of consent, provides the foundation for an understanding of SM as not violence.

Most SM participants do not view pain as integral to their play or to their identities. Pain, in and of itself, was not a thematic focus of my interviews. Because meanings surrounding pain were so varied, I did not identify it as an especially salient concept across the community. Later analysis of interview transcripts and field notes, however, revealed that pain was central for the com- munity, even when it was being resisted, disavowed, refused, or ignored.

DISCOURSES OF PAIN

The members of this community draw on four different discourses in framing and understanding pain. Three of these discourses—which I call “transformed pain,” “sacrificial pain,” and “investment pain”—reproduce pain as inherently negative. The fourth, which I term “autotelic pain”—is uncommon and stigmatized.

While some SM participants are comfortable with the verb “hurt” to describe their actions and their experiences, many people reject this in favor of “giving pain” or “receiving pain.” During my fieldwork period, this distinction had such a stronghold in the social scripts of the community that it was rare to hear the word “hurt” in this context without the subsequent objection. A brief (and formulaic) discussion normally followed. Some, however, saw no need for discussion; one person forcefully corrected an assumption I made during conversation: “I don’t like to be hurt. I like to receive pain.”

In this formulation, pain is not something that is happening to her, but some- thing provided to her, something she can accept if she so chooses. While both views are equally passive, and therefore equally effective in maintaining the belief in a power differential, she is not a victim of pain in her reconceptualization of it. If she is not a victim, this cannot be violence.
Being hurt
indicates that violence is occurring;
receiving pain
does not. This discursive twist provides the foundation for “transformed pain.”

The transformed pain discourse centers on a disavowal of pain as such. SM par- ticipants who frame pain this way tend to engage in mild to moderate pain play,

but when pain is experienced, it is understood as
not hurting.
Instead, pain is “transformed into pleasure.” This transformation occurs almost instantly, usu- ally in a process that is understood as conscious, though barely. Viewed this way, would-be painful situations are not experienced as hurt. This relies on a conceptualization of pain as an objective stimulus, which may or may not result in the
feeling
of hurt. During a conversation at a restaurant one night, Faye cap- tured this idea; she said that she “can convert pain to pleasure . . . make my body produce chemicals” by changing the context in her conscious experience.

This “processing” of pain sensations as pleasurable, within seconds or less, fuels a discourse in which pain can be
real
but not
bad.
For bottoms, this dis- course reconciles masochism with rational thought; if pain does not “really” hurt, it is de-pathologized and therefore its enjoyment is unproblematic. Tops engage in the same discourse, potentially mitigating some of the struggles with guilt that often accompany topping, particularly for newer players. When I asked Seth about a scene I had watched, in which it seemed to me he had caused Stephanie a good deal of (intended and desired) pain, I again used the word “hurt.” Seth was quick to correct me:

Seth:
No. I want to provide the sensation of pleasure. If that pleasure is pain transmogrified into pleasure, I’m very happy to provide it.

Me:
What if it’s not?

Seth:
I don’t want to beat somebody who wants to be beaten so that they feel something. I’ll beat somebody—I’ll flog somebody or I’ll cane some- body who is enjoying the sensation of being caned. The experience. It’s having a good time. That’s what I’m there for. [ . . . ] If they’re going, “Fuck, that hurts!” Generally, my agreement is—what I say to people is, for me, if you say “Ow,” in a way that indicates that you don’t like it, I’m going to yellow.
2
I’m gonna yellow on our scene and I’m going to slow down or do something else. I use “Ow” as a safeword. My default posi- tion is “Ow” is bad. Generally when someone says “Ow,” it’s something that they don’t like.

Seth’s sense was that his play partners’ experience of pain is “I like pain; pain feels like pleasure,” rather than “I like to be
hurt.
” His definition of SM hinges on this distinction:

SM is the seeking of pleasure, I think, in a way, by people who can trans- late pain into pleasure, and by people who can translate the act of giving pain . . . or seeing that the other person . . . is having pleasure. I think a

good sadist is somebody who is really empathic—somebody who really can feel what the other person is feeling, and take joy in that.

By recasting pain as something other than hurt, Seth, like other partici- pants for whom this frame resonates, does not draw explicitly on discourses of violence and victimization. Pain becomes a gift, a gesture of affection; there is therefore nothing “violent” about it.

For Bobby, the presence of anger threatens the context of his infliction of pain, which he finds enjoyable only if he interprets it as pleasurable for the bottom. In the context of punishment or discipline, pain is experienced and performed as pain. During our interview, I found it challenging to address pain in its own right, divorced from pleasure. I tried rather doggedly to talk about pain, resulting in the following exchange about his enjoyment of caning:

Bobby:
It’s from her reaction. And not in—from seeing the rear end get- ting a strike, but the end that I prefer to watch is the front end. Watching her eyes, and her reaction to what’s going on.