Playing on the Edge: Sadomasochism, Risk, and Intimacy (37 page)

Glossary
203

Glossary

203

204
Glossary

Notes

Introduction

1. Other organizations cropped up along the East Coast during the seventies, though none has been as successful or endured as long as TES.
   

2. “Play” is used as both a noun and a verb, to refer to SM interaction specifically (e.g., “Do you want to play?”) and generally (e.g., “It depends on the play”).
   

3. All proper names regarding the community I studied, including the names of people, places, and organizations, have been changed.
   

4. “The National Coalition for Sexual Freedom is a national organization com- mitted to creating a political, legal, and social environment in the United States that advances equal rights of consenting adults who practice forms of alternative sexual expression.” National Coalition for Sexual Freedom Mission Statement, http://www
   

   .ncsfreedom.org.
   

5. In the two years preceding my entry into the field, the community had been thrice burned by people who claimed to be academic researchers, but who were jour- nalists, bloggers, or students whose work either explicitly attacked SM participants or depicted SM in a particularly unfavorable light. This happened twice again while I was there, though in one of these cases the writer claimed to be a participant and did not disclose his project.
   

6. The swinger scene is an alternative sexual community of mostly heterosexual couples who swap partners for otherwise conventional sexual activity.
   

7. As the identification labels themselves suggest, “dominant” and “submissive” are used in the community to draw on narratives of unequal power relations in SM play. They are used as both nouns and adjectives. Male dominant/female submissive were the most common identification labels in EPP by far, but there were exceptions.
   

8. This subset of the community differs from Horizons in significant ways, many of which manifest themselves in differences in gender relations. An exploration of these differences is beyond the scope of this work.
   

9. Friends from the scene tell me that they think this may, in 2010, be changing.
   

10. See, e.g., Abu-Lughod 1986; Bourgois 1996; Prieur 1998; Duneier 1999.
    

    205
    

11. Interestingly, friends outside the SM community later informed me that the name I had chosen was a “stripper name.” People in the scene, however, most often guessed a rela- tionship to the Dakota, the famous building in front of which John Lennon was killed.
    

12. By press time, however, the word “kink” appears to have experienced a significant resurgence in the community. I am no longer sure that it is less common than either BDSM or SM.
    

1. Defiance
   

   1. I was smaller than most of the members of the community, and was often referred to as “tiny” and “skinny.” It is possible that respondents may have been disin- clined to discuss weight issues with me. However, informal word-of-mouth investiga- tion suggests that the desire to weigh less was not an issue with which most people in Caeden were especially concerned, at least discursively.
      

   2. For developments of these arguments, see Messerschmidt 1999; Monaghan 2005; and Bell and McNaughton 2007.
      

   3. See Bell and McNaughton 2007 for a thorough account of the literature.
      

   4. See Beauvoir 1952; Connell 1987; Doane 1991; Halberstam 1998; and Hole 2003.
      

   5. Interestingly, Jeri and Shane were the only respondents who left the community before I did.
      

2. Geeks and Freaks
   

   1. See Calhoun 1980 for a notable exception.
      

   2. See Evans 2007 for a review of research on sense of community and psychologi- cal sense of community.
      

   3. The date has been changed.
      

   4. In Caeden, the word “pervert” is used widely and positively, in an often con- scious effort to reclaim SM from the model of pathology.
      

   5. See Brubaker and Cooper (2000) for a compelling and thorough critique of the use of identity as a category of analysis.
      

3. Tipping the Scales
   

   1. Both Hopkins and Stear are deconstructing SM as it occurs privately, rather than public SM communities.
      

   2. “Scat” (short for scatophilia) refers to erotic play with feces.
      

   3. In Caeden, not all leathermen are SM participants, and many characterize their activities the way that Weinberg, Williams, and Moser’s leathermen did. These particu- lar activities, though, are viewed as SM in both communities in Caeden. As I did not participate in the gay (male) leather scene, I am grateful for the insights of others who are familiar with the national leather community, most notably Boymeat.
      

   4. The general resentment of wankers stems from their explicit and immediate “use” of other people’s play for sexual gratification. Many community members express a sense that this behavior “cheapens” their play. Additionally, women in particular tend- ed to be uncomfortable with wanking, often viewing it as symbolic or suggestive of sexual violence.
      

   5. It should be noted that in some D/s relationships, participants do not call their scenes “play,” in a deliberate construction of their activities as something more significant than a leisure pursuit.
      

   6. Though it is common to use SM in broad reference to the community and its activ- ities, when talking about play specifically, the term narrows considerably, referring par- ticularly to play that involves pain and anguish in the absence of a de facto hierarchy.
      

   7. In 2002, the film
      Secretary
      sparked controversy within the Caeden community, for featuring a character struggling with self-mutilation who finds fulfillment in a D/s relationship.
      

   8. This usage refers to play, sexual and romantic engagements, or any combination thereof, with multiple partners.
      

   9. The power of the blacklist in the SM community extends nationally; players with unsafe or otherwise significantly negative reputations can be blacklisted in SM clubs, venues, and private parties within hours.
      

   10. There were several reasons for this. I did not know how to top and could not therefore do it safely. Also, at the beginning of this project, I was most interested in issues of interpersonal power between “submissive” women and “dominant” men. I further expected that with a dual identity as a researcher and a new top, I would have more difficulty finding play partners than as a researcher and new bottom. Significantly, I was unwilling to grapple with IRB issues if my fieldwork involved hit- ting people. And, finally, I was generally more comfortable ethically with bottoming than with topping.
       

   11. Interestingly, though women are more likely in Caeden to enter the scenes as bottoms as men, they are far more likely to later identify as switches.
       

4. Fringe Benefits
   

   1. I am indebted to D. J. Williams (2006) for the suggestion that SM might be understood as serious leisure.
      

   2. See Newmahr 2010 for a more detailed analysis of SM in relation to the numer- ous aspects of serious leisure.
      

   3. “Boi” in the community refers (most often) to a lesbian or an FTM transgen- dered person with an identity and presentation as an adolescent boy.
      

   4. “Breath play” usually refers to anything that restricts the flow of oxygen, to either the lungs or the brain. This is most commonly accomplished by placing a hand over the bottom’s mouth and nose, by applying pressure to the trachea or to the carotid artery, or by covering the bottom’s head or face with non-permeable substances such as plastic.
      

   5. Having later witnessed other such situations, I have no cause to suspect that the concern for me was heightened because of my role as a researcher. The community is similarly protective of all newcomers, particularly those who bottom.
      

   6. The hermeneutics here are hotly contested, but I contend that submission is best understood as a particular kind of bottoming, in which the objectives of play are intertwined with experiences of power and powerlessness.
      

   7. See Lewis and Weigert 1985; Misztal 1996; Möllering 2001.
      

   8. Excerpt from interview with John Geirland, “Go with the Flow,”
      Wired,
      Septem- ber 1996, issue 4.09.
      

5. Badasses, Servants, and Martyrs
   

   1. The exceptions to this are female dominatrixes.
      

   2. More men top exclusively than bottom exclusively, and more women bottom exclusively than top exclusively. There are women who exclusively top, but the majority of the women I knew who did so were professional dominatrixes, who, again, I am not here considering part of the public SM scene in Caeden.
      

   3. Often in this case, the accusation that the bottom is “topping from the bottom” comes more readily than the identification of the top as a “service top.” Both are con- sidered derogatory, but the former is an action rather than an identity and therefore the insult is less severe.
      

   4. The exception to this is bratting, which might be viewed as badass bottoming pre- sented in a more palatable (less overt) way, to preserve the fantasies of powerlessness.
      

   5. I use “post-feminist” to refer to a period in which the word “feminism” and vari- ous conceptualizations of meanings of the word became part of the shared vernacular for people outside of academic and activist circles.
      

   6. Another reason that the pro-domme/client relationship differs meaningfully from SM in Caeden is the absence of a gender-subversive space here, for topping in this context is paid service.
      

   7. I claim this as the case overall, but there are important contradictions. For exam- ple, though it is generally accepted that tops should bottom before learning to top, this is more actively encouraged, and more actively occurs, among women who top. Men who top are more likely to only top throughout their SM careers.
      

6. Reconcilable Differences
   

   1. See Dworkin 1981, 1987, and MacKinnon 1987.
      

   2. Although players create their own safewords, the community also, on the whole, accepts a “traffic light” safeword system as a default. “Yellow” means that the scene needs to slow down; the top should check in and be prepared to stop.
      

7. Collaborating the Edge
   

   1. This is reference to the 1960s sci-fi show
      Lost in Space.
      It is used to indicate that a person (in the show, the character Will Robinson) is about to make an irreversible mistake.
      

   2. I witnessed this only three times during my fieldwork and was told a handful of stories about other instances in the history of the community.
      

   3. See Kidder 2006; Lois 2001; Ferrell 1995, 2002; Laurendeau 2006; Laurendeau and Van Brunschot 2006; and Lyng 2005.
      

   4. This is not necessarily the case, as was demonstrated in a case in Attleboro, Mass., when tops and bottoms were arrested during a raid of a private party, allegedly on the grounds that a person is not legally permitted to consent to assault.
      

   5. Faye, introduced in chapter 4, had witnessed the death of a man via flogging.
      

8. “What It Is That We Do”
   

   1. See, e.g., Hatfield 1984; Clark and Reis 1988; Baumeister and Bratslavsky 1999.
      

   2. See Jamieson 1999; Pasko 2002.
      

   3. See Boles and Garbin 1974; Enck and Preston 1988; Ronai and Ellis 1989; Barton 2001; Frank 1998; Pasko 2002.
      

   4. Written by C. Edward Crowther.
      

   5. “Barebacking” is unprotected anal sex, generally in the absence of certainty about the HIV statuses of the participants. “Bug-chasing” is the practice of attempting to become infected with HIV through unprotected sex.
      

   6. I am referring here to murder as social interaction; this analysis is only in regard to one person killing another while both are in one another’s physical company.
      

   7. See, e.g., Russell 1982; Rian 1982. See Hopkins 1994 for a thorough summary.
      

   8. See Brownmiller 1975; Dworkin 1981; MacKinnon and Dworkin 1997.