Qual Sociol (2010) 33:313–331

DOI 10.1007/s11133-010-9158-9

Rethinking Kink: Sadomasochism as Serious Leisure

Staci Newmahr

Published online: 15 June 2010

# US Government 2010

Abstract Based on extensive ethnographic research in a public SM (sadomasochism)

community, this paper frames SM as recreation. Drawing on Robert Stebbins’ work on
“serious leisure” (1982), I posit that in order to more adequately understand SM as it occurs
in this community, we need to shift from mainstream assumptions of SM as (simply) “kinky
sex” to a more nuanced perspective. I explore the unique skills required in order to engage
in SM, as well as the benefits and rewards that participants derive from it, in order to
illustrate that SM can be more usefully understood as serious leisure.

Keywords BDSM . Sadomasochism . Leisure . Serious leisure . Edgework . Sexuality

I made my way past the soda-fountain style counter and the old-fashioned, red vinyl-
covered stools. Behind the counter, signs advertised milkshakes, Belgian waffles and
nachos. I paused to consider whether I wanted a bottle of water, and someone came up
behind me and hugged me enthusiastically, lifting me off of my feet. I laughed.
Jacob set me down and I turned around to say hello. “Hey, guess what I just
got?” he said, grinning excitedly.
He gestured for me to follow him back to the diner-style booths, upholstered in the
same sparkly red vinyl, opposite the counter. At the booth closest to us, he reached
over the piles of coats and bags into the corner, and fished out his back canvas toy
bag. He unzipped a side pocket, retrieved a pair of black leather gloves, and handed
them to me. They were supple and incredibly soft, and strangely solid-feeling.
“Wow—lead-lined?” I asked. He nodded excitedly. I put the right one on. It was
warm on my hand, and heavy. I punched my left palm with it a couple of times.
“Oooh. That’s really nice!” I complimented him. High-quality lead-lined gloves
were expensive, and not a lot of people in the scene had them.
“Wanna try them out?”
“Sure!” I handed them back to him and we looked around for an open play space.

S. Newmahr (*)
Department of Sociology, Buffalo State College, 1300 Elmwood Avenue, Buffalo, NY 14222, USA
e-mail: [email protected]
314 Qual Sociol (2010) 33:313–331

Jacob spied one first and began to walk towards the other room. Russ and Faye
were standing at the threshold between the rooms, talking quietly and watching a
flogging scene. We hugged our hellos.
“You guys going to play?” Russ asked. I nodded.
“Lead-lined gloves!” Jacob and I said in unison.
“Cool!” said Russ. To me, he added, “Let me know how you like them.”
The back corner, across from the wall with the built-in steel cage, was free. On the
table beside the corner, Liam was rolling a Wartenberg wheel1 across Rebecca’s bare
back. Opposite them, Adam stood watching a single-tail2 scene with two men I did
not know. The top cracked the whip loudly through the air, and the bottom cried out
as it sliced across his shoulders. I walked toward the empty corner and Jacob
followed.
“Back and chest okay?” he asked as he set his bag down near Adam, who turned
around to watch us as we set up to play. Leah, who had been watching Liam and
Rebecca, walked over and began talking to Adam. A moment later, Jordan and
Marcus joined them.
“Yep,” I replied. I removed my shirt as Jacob put the right glove on.
“New gloves?” Marcus asked.
“Yep,” said Jacob. “Got them today. They’re leaded.”
“Whoa…nice! Can I see the other one?”
Jacob handed the left glove to Marcus. I stepped backwards to stand against the
wall, but the concrete was cold and I moved away from it. The first few notes of Orff’s
“O Fortuna” floated over the club’s sound system.
“Oh, perfect!” Jacob shouted. “Give me the glove!”
Marcus handed him the glove and Jacob put it on quickly. He placed his left hand
behind my upper back for support. With his right fist, he landed a slow punch on the
left side of my chest. The glove was heavy and the impact seemed to reverberate
through me after his hand was gone.
As the tempo picked up, he hit my chest harder and faster. The blows on my
chest made me feel off-balance. I stepped back and stood against the wall. With
both hands free, he hit both sides rapidly, alternating fists with the rhythm of the
song and punching especially hard at the crescendos. My back scraped against the
wall behind me, and my teeth rattled, threatening to bite my tongue each time his
fist landed.
Consensual sadomasochism (SM) is a complex and poorly-understood social phenomenon.
In popular culture, it is commonly represented and understood as either harmless bedroom
“kink” or a side sexual interest of serial killers in crime thrillers. Although many SM
participants do frame their “play” as having an erotic aspect, the conceptualization of SM as
“kinky sex” has obscured a more nuanced understanding of this community and their
activities. Unlike most sexual activity, participation in public SM relies on particular public
spaces and involves an appreciable learning curve, financial expenditures and a social
network. It can be more fully understood as a serious leisure (Stebbins 1982) pursuit,
alongside other serious leisure hobbies such as kayaking and mountain climbing.

1
A Wartenberg wheel is a handheld stainless steel instrument. The handle is approximately six inches long,
at the end of which sits a sharply spiked wheel (akin to a pizza cutter with longer spikes). Originally designed
to test neurological responses on skin, the effect ranges from very ticklish to very painful.
2
A single-tail is a long whip with one lash.
Qual Sociol (2010) 33:313–331 315

Method

The narrative that prefaces this paper is a description of an SM interaction (“play”) in an

urban SM community. In 2002, I began fieldwork in an urban SM community (“Caeden”)
in the Northeast of the United States. At the time, there were at least five different SM-
related formal organizations in Caeden, three public play spaces, several private
“dungeons” in which play parties were held, several informal SM-related social
organizations, and a vast number of Internet discussion lists.
For most people in the Caeden community, SM play is not feasible at home. Clubs
provide not only a place to socialize, but also adequate space, equipment, soundproofing
and privacy for SM play. Two of the three clubs in Caeden closed shortly after I began my
fieldwork, leaving the other as the main play space for the Caeden community.
I attended these events (which occurred between four and five times a week, on
average), and paid admission fees and/or yearly membership dues to SM organizations and
clubs. I disclosed my identity as a researcher upon introductions. I participated fully in all
SM events, including play parties, informational lectures, demonstrations and workshops,
social lunches and dinners, organizational planning meetings, and fundraising benefits.
I participated in these facets of community life for 4 years (2002–2006). The first year of
fieldwork was especially immersive; events ran very late on weeknights and into the
following days on weekends, and I maintained almost-constant communication with
community members through email, telephone, web blogging, and instant messaging.
During this time, nearly all of my waking hours were spent in the field in one capacity or
another, often amounting to over one hundred hours per week.
After I was well-established in the field, I began conducting interviews that focused
equally on life histories and thematic questions regarding SM interest, practice, and
activities. Because of the scope of the interviews and a strong rapport with most
respondents, the average duration was 6 ½ hours long. (The shortest interview was 4 hours
and the longest was 11.) Interview conversation flowed reciprocally, and as has been noted
elsewhere (Berger 2001) I found that my own disclosure and self-reflection often enhanced
the interview relationship. I transcribed the interviews and coded the transcripts and my
field notes using qualitative software (Atlas.ti).
My analysis is based on ethnographic and interview data collected over the course of the
four years. I had initially hoped that my sample would be inclusive across sexual identity,
SM identity and race, but this was not possible. Despite the fact that Caeden is located in a
racially and ethnically diverse city, it is disproportionately white and largely Jewish.
Additionally, people of color are so rare in the community that if my interview sample were
racially diverse, this disclosure would compromise confidentiality.
It should be noted also that this SM community is rather distinct from the swinger
community in Caeden. My sense is that this varies by city, and in Caeden, while there are
many members of both communities, swingers and SM participants often maintain careful
distinctions of identities, space, language, etiquette and objectives. Public swing parties, for
example, may involve “light SM,” but are not likely to involve heavier play, and public SM
parties do not involve anal, vaginal or oral intercourse. (Practices at private parties in both
groups are dictated by the hosts.)
Like most alternative or subcultural communities, the SM “scene” in Caeden shares a
perhaps-esoteric vocabulary. Throughout this paper, “SM” refers to activities that involve
the mutually consensual and conscious use, among two or more people, of pain, power,
perceptions about power, or any combination thereof, for sensory or erotic pleasure, in the
context of a public community. “Play” is used as both a noun and a verb to describe SM
316 Qual Sociol (2010) 33:313–331

interactions, and “scene” refers to an instance of play as well as to the broader SM

community.
While space constraints preclude a thorough discussion of SM identities and
identifications (top, bottom, submissive, dominant, switch, sadist, masochist, to name a
few), a note on my usage of these terms is in order. Because this paper is concerned with
SM as serious leisure, individual identifications within this framework are of less
immediate concern, as would be the difference between a belayer and a climber is a
discussion of rock-climbing as serious leisure. This paper views SM play as a social
situation, and as such, in any given moment, one person is topping and one person is
bottoming. I use “top” and “bottom” to describe people who engage in topping and
bottoming, respectively, rather than as social identity markers. When used as nouns, these
words should not be understood as fixed social identities, but as shorthand for “people who
top” or “people who bottom” (most of whom, in Caeden, over time, are the same people).
Finally, because there exists so little work on SM and its participants, it is crucial to note
that my discussion of “the scene” or “the community” is not synonymous with “people who
enjoy kinky bedroom games.” The SM community is a social network of people organized
around SM, who practice and observe SM in particular public spaces and attend
informational and educational meetings. My observations and analysis of this community
cannot be assumed to relevant for people who may practice SM privately.

SM as sexual kink

Our contemporary understanding of SM is indebted to various works by de Sade (1965),

Sacher von Masoch (1870) and early psychologists and sexologists (Ellis 1927, 1938;
Freud 1905; Kraft-Ebbing 1886, Freud 1938). Early depictions of what we continue to
consider SM frequently involved the eroticization of non-consensual relations. Later, SM
entered both mainstream consciousness and academic literature through the gay and lesbian
communities (at a time when homosexuality was also assumed to be unequivocally about
sex), further ensconcing SM in discourses of sexuality. This view of SM persisted despite
evidence to the contrary: in their pioneering definition of SM, Weinberg, Williams and
Moser (1984) considered a sexual perspective of SM to be a criterion for inclusion in their
sample: “Some people engaged in SM-type activities but did not give them sexual meaning
and thus were not considered to be ‘into SM.’”
The perspective that SM is “about sex” persists despite widespread acknowledgement
that at least some SM community members reject this framing. Research reveals that many
SM participants do not understand their activities as an alternative or a prelude to, sexual
interaction (Dancer, Kleinplatz and Moser 2006; Weiss 2006b). In a special-issue volume of
the Journal of Sexuality, Moser and Kleinplatz maintain that defining SM is a difficult
undertaking (Moser and Kleinplatz 2006) and Thomas Weinberg’s comprehensive literature
review considers SM is a “complex social phenomenon” (2006, p. 37).
Yet in the same volume, in order to determine whether virtual (online) sadomasochists
were comparable to real-life sadomasochists, Cross and Matheson’s study “sought to
establish that the sexual tastes of real life and virtual sadomasochists are in fact similar….”
(Cross and Matheson 2006, p. 139), as if “sexual taste” is a defining characteristic of
sadomasochists. Rebecca Plante’s research on “sexual spankers” (2006) finds that sexual
spankers differentiate themselves from the broader SM community. (In the community I
studied, spankers are demographically different from SM participants.) Proceeding from the
assumption that spanking and SM share a sexualized context, the study neglects the
Qual Sociol (2010) 33:313–331 317

theoretically important possibility that spanking is better understood as a sexual activity

than is SM.
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 sexualities or sexual practices as SM…
it was to be their preferred means of sexual arousal….” (Taylor and Ussher 2001, p. 296).
Not surprisingly, given the exclusion of all SM-identified people who define their
enjoyment differently, all of their 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 2005, 2006 p. 380).
However, few people have actually studied SM communities—SM as it happens
and where it happens, or as Robert Zussman phrases it, “people in places” (2004).
Empirical work on SM has focused on self-report psychological profiles (Donnelly and
Fraser 1998; Sandbabba et al. 1999; Nordling et al. 2006; Nordling and Sandbabba
2006), which approach SM from a very different paradigm than one that would explore
people in places. Much of the current qualitative work on SM draws respondents from
websites and chat rooms (Cross and Matheson 2006; Langdridge and Butt 2004; Taylor
1997), where SM is arguably more likely to be framed as sex and “participants” are less
likely to have engaged in SM at all. Studies of SM respondents on the Internet are fraught
with the highly problematic assumption that people on the internet who say that they
engage in SM actually engage in SM as face-to-face interaction. SM “wannabes”—
people who sexualize the discourse of SM on pornographic websites or in chatrooms, but
who do not participate in SM—are notorious in public SM communities. People who
present as if they are members of the SM community but have never engaged in actual
SM activities (“play”) may serve as informants for Internet researchers, and may well
(despite Cross and Matheson’s findings regarding similar sexual proclivities) be a vastly
and importantly different group.
There have been a few participant observation studies of actual SM communities, but
most are not recent (Kamel 1980; Moser 1998; Scott 1983; Weinberg 1978, 1983; Weinberg
and Falk 1980). The notion of SM as leisure appears in one notable exception to this
(Williams 2006, 2009), and another (Weiss 2006b) provides a more complex portrait of a
rich and vibrant SM community. Still, however, we have little information about the
experiences of people who participate in SM contemporary communities, and SM has not
been theorized outside of the paradigm of sexuality.
The legacy of early thinking about SM, along with mainstream representations
(including those that occur in chat rooms), is a narrow and limiting perspective on
contemporary SM. In the post-Internet world, SM is something quite different than what it
was when it was studied by sex-research pioneers. A quick search on the web results in
links to dozens of established, above-ground, tax-paying SM organizations, which host play
parties, educational events and “vanilla” (unrelated to SM or SM participants) social
functions.
In the public SM community I studied, SM was neither a precursor to conventional
sexual activity, nor a replacement for it, but an end unto itself. Activities ranged from light
spanking to back whipping, cutting and breath play. Among community members who
view SM as erotic or as sexual, many have difficulty articulating their erotic experience. In
318 Qual Sociol (2010) 33:313–331

this community, at least one person in any given SM interaction (also called a “scene”) was
usually dressed. Kissing during play was rare, and genital play was much less common than
other kinds of play (such as back-flogging). Participants often played with people they did
not find sexually attractive and with whom they were not interested in being sexual. After
play, participants normally went out to eat or home to sleep.
Yet the appropriation of SM iconography in popular fashion styles and mainstream
media (see Weiss 2006a), the discourses of power and powerlessness in chat rooms, couples
who experiment with light bondage in the bedroom, and real-life educational workshops on
how to safely punch a play partner in the face are all glossed into the same literature.
Having been socially constructed within and for a discourse of sex, in a pre-information-age
historical context, the ongoing characterization of SM ought to be engaged both critically
and theoretically.

The serious leisure framework

Within the SM community, the euphemism for SM interactions, “what it is that we do,”
suggests that an adequate description of SM is elusive and complex. This paper seeks to
contribute to a more nuanced understanding of SM by exploring it as serious leisure—a
devotion to the pursuit of an activity that requires specialized skills and resources, and
provides particular benefits.
The understanding of a recreational activity as serious leisure exists in opposition
to “casual leisure,” which Stebbins defines as “an immediately, intrinsically
rewarding, relatively short-lived pleasurable core activity, requiring little or no
special training to enjoy it” (Stebbins 1992, 1997, 2006, 2008, p. 38). (From a leisure
perspective, most recreational sex might be understood as casual leisure.) Understanding
SM as a serious leisure pursuit expands the analytical framework beyond its “bedroom”
milieu, and, as others have argued (Weiss 2006b; Williams 2006), recognizes the
complexity and social richness of SM interaction.
Serious leisure has six qualities that distinguish it from casual leisure, all of which are
salient aspects of SM participation in Caeden. To briefly summarize and paraphrase
Stebbins, they are:
1. the need for perseverance—in the face of resistance, participants return to their leisure
pursuit
2. the leisure pursuit as a career
3. effort involving the acquisition of knowledge, training, experience and/or specialized
skills
4. durable benefits—personal and social-psychological benefits of engaging in the leisure
activity
5. unique ethos—the spirit of community
6. personal identification with the leisure activity
Because of space constraints, this analysis focuses primarily on the second, third and
fourth of Stebbins’ distinguishing characteristics of serious leisure (effort, leisure career and
durable benefits) as they relate to this community. I hope that these primary discussions will
illustrate also the remaining three characteristics (perseverance, unique ethos and personal
identification with SM). Other work has offered representations of SM communities in
which these characteristics are more fully illustrated (Newmahr 2008, 2011 forthcoming;
Weiss 2006b), but a brief exposition may be useful here.
Qual Sociol (2010) 33:313–331 319

Overview: Perseverance, unique ethos and personal identification

The SM community in Caeden functions as a close-knit, intimate safe space for community
members. Many participants structure their lives around community (“the scene”) activities,
relying on their web blogs, cell phones and discussion lists to maintain consistent contact. It
is not unusual for community members to have little everyday contact with outsiders. Some
participants also organize their work lives around their involvement in the scene, even
declining opportunities for income that would interfere with their participation in the scene.
Even among people with conventional work lives and contact with their families, many
report that their “vanilla” friendships have dwindled or disappeared since joining the
community.3
This level of immersion can lead to a “burnout” cycle, during which participants become
overwhelmed by the scene, often questioning their identity and their psychological well-
being, and temporarily leave the scene. Generally, they return a few weeks or months later,
and immerse themselves once again. This commitment to remain involved in the community
despite periods of diminishing returns is one example of what Stebbins calls “perseverance,”
and illustrates the centrality of SM identity for the members of this community.
Personal identification with SM, community spirit and perseverance are significant
aspects of community life, often to the exclusion of work, family and “vanilla” relationships.
Many people find a sense of belonging in this community that they have not found elsewhere;
participants frequently describe their discovery of the Caeden SM community as finding
“home.”

Effort: Learning to play

Like other serious leisure endeavors, participation in SM involves significant effort and a
fairly steep learning curve. Learning to play is an integral part of “becoming” a member of
this community, and this social process shapes and reshapes motivations and contributes to
identity formation. Even apart from participants’ general desires to avoid sustenance and
infliction of unintended injury themselves, the community as a whole shares responsibility
for recruitment, education and supervision of SM play.
Learning to play centers not only around safety techniques, but around a complex
discourse of safety. The question of safety (which includes emotional, physical and
psychological safety) is taken very seriously in Caeden. The community is organized around
this discourse, which distinguishes SM participants from criminals and the mentally ill, and
SM from assault. Most of the processes involved in learning to play link back to this
discourse.

Learning to top

Learning to “top” (that is, to participate in an SM scene as the person directing, and usually
performing, action upon a person who is “bottoming”) involves five distinct processes:
1. acquiring technical skills (learning to wield SM toys safely and in ways that bottoms
find satisfactory)
3
A thorough discussion of the ways in which this occurs, the role of the community in the lives of its
members, and the relationships between community and identity is unfortunately beyond the scope of this
paper, but insights into some of these issues appears elsewhere (Newmahr 2008).
320 Qual Sociol (2010) 33:313–331

2. understanding communication in play (learning to read body language and becoming

familiar with common strategies of communication in play)
3. learning basic safety information (recognizing dilated pupils, breathing changes, areas
of the body that can and cannot be hit safely, how to handle emergencies)
4. coming to terms with performing (and feeling) sadism and/or dominance, and
5. learning how to handle potential emotional and psychological reactions of the bottom.
All of these processes, however, can be understood as reflecting a community emphasis
on safety. As in many serious leisure pursuits, it is easy to get hurt, or to hurt someone, if a
person does not possess the necessary knowledge and skills to engage in it safely. Although
all participants are charged with playing safely, the responsibility for safe play falls
primarily to the person topping during the scene.

Acquisition of technical skills

Most people begin learning to top by acquiring technical skills. Community members learn
to use SM “toys” from other players. Through formal and informal mechanisms, more
experienced players demonstrate, for example, how to hold one’s arm when throwing a
whip laterally and how to tie a “predicament” knot that tightens when pulled. Other
participants also serve as tools for practicing these skills, providing information about the
effects of the top’s technique itself, as well as a sense of her strength, speed and range.
Safety in SM extends beyond the technical use of toys, and this learning frequently
occurs in formal settings. A demonstration on the use of a flogger4 includes a discussion of
where one can and cannot strike a person with a flogger without causing injury. Meetings
designed for newer participants include basic first aid information as well as more
specialized knowledge such as sensitivity to changes in breathing patterns, the dilation of a
bottom’s pupils, and how to handle emergencies.
I once attended a workshop on fire play conducted by Enjo, a well-established veteran
member of the scene. Her description of the materials needed for fire play included a
lengthy explanation of the differences between isopropyl and ethanol alcohols; apparently,
the temperatures at which alcohols burn vary, and ones that burn hotter and faster are safer.
She suggested keeping a spray bottle with water nearby, and said that she likes to keep one
hand free in case she needs to extinguish a flame quickly.
Enjo’s “demo bottom” was a boi5 named CJ who stood, naked and hairless, with his
hands clasped behind his back. Enjo informed us that she would not take questions during
the demonstration because she needed to devote her full attention to the scene. She lit a
birthday candle and placed it into a metal cup. Holding that cup in her right hand, she
picked up a second cup, which contained a blend of different alcohols. With her left hand,
she dipped a chunk of cotton into the alcohol and wiped it in the shape of a large V from
CJ’s navel to his shoulders. Quickly, she dipped her fingers into the alcohol up, swept them
over the candle to ignite them, and then touched her fingers to CJ’s navel. The flame blazed
up his torso in an orange-blue V. It lasted approximately two seconds.
Afterwards, Enjo patted down CJ’s skin, asked if we had questions, and began the
workshop. The workshop attendees paired off and practiced the preparatory steps with each
other (without the use of actual fire). Enjo then offered to demonstrate fire play on

4
A flogger is a whip, usually but not always made of leather, consisting of one handle to which multiple flat
strands (“falls”) are attached.
5
“Boi” here refers to an FTM transgendered person with an identity and presentation as an adolescent boy.
Qual Sociol (2010) 33:313–331 321

interested audience members. Nearly everyone in the room accepted her offer, and she
moved from arm to arm, setting each ablaze for a second or two.
These workshops are a typical and central component of the SM community in Caeden.
They serve not only to pass along technical information, but to provide a network; an
interested attendee who did not previously know a veteran skilled in fire play would later be
able to contact Enjo herself or the organizers of the workshop, for further mentorship.

Understanding communication in-scene

While physical safety is the most obvious, and often most serious, concern in SM, safe play
also requires that the top understand sometimes-unconventional modes of communication
during SM play, which are not necessarily clear or consistent from one scene to the next.
Because direct communication is undesirable to many SM players, tops must learn to
decode communication strategies in play and to recognize signals that the bottom may or
may not intend to send. A general tendency among bottoms to safeword only as a last resort
makes this an even more important skill. Tops must often decipher ambiguous, conflicting
or barely-visible signals in order to avoid causing real damage to play partners, and to
remain desirable as play partners. This is most effectively learned through playing and
discussing the scenes with play partners afterwards, though participants offer insight and
advice about these matters while watching other scenes or publicly reflecting on their own.

Understanding and handling emotional and psychological responses

Emotional and psychological safety are also salient concerns in the Caeden SM community.
SM play involves actions that are processed differently in other contexts, and tops in
particular must be prepared for unanticipated emotional and psychological responses. Part
of education about topping involves learning about the effects SM play could have on any
given player while bottoming.
In addition to handling sometimes-unexpected responses from the bottom, tops must
learn to navigate their own emotional responses to topping. At some point, most people
who top find themselves wrestling with their performances (and feelings) of sadism and/or
dominance, often grappling with feelings of guilt, shame and fear. This coming-to-terms is
usually an informal process; demonstrations on the topic occur only occasionally. More
commonly, tops process these feelings with their friends in the scene, and turn to other
people who top for reassurance and support. Generally, however, most tops are regarded as
safer when they are believed to be articulate and introspective about these issues.
These five learning processes—acquiring technical skills, learning about basic safety,
understanding modes of scene communication, and understanding and handling emotional
and psychological impacts on others and on self—are necessary in order for tops to acquire,
engage in, and secure future play. For those who wish to top, the engagement in SM in a
public community is extremely difficult, if not impossible, without these skills. Because the
SM community is insular and protective, even at the national level, unskilled or unsafe tops
who do manage to play in public rarely get a second opportunity to do so, without further
SM education.

Learning to bottom

All SM participants must acquire specialized information and learn challenging skills, but
the processes of learning to bottom are less obvious. Because tops are charged more fully
322 Qual Sociol (2010) 33:313–331

with maintaining safety in scene, classes and demonstrations focus more frequently on
learning how to top. Instructive classes for bottoms tend to focus on submission6 and
service—examples include how to handle the tensions between submission and agency,
how to reconcile (female) submission with feminism, and the challenges of submission as a
characteristic of a relationship (outside of play). There are few classes specifically for
bottoms, though safety information directed at bottoms is a standard component of novice-
and safety-oriented meetings.
Most often, learning to bottom involves learning to negotiate the tension between
accountability for one’s own safety and satisfaction, on the one hand, and the
maintenance and preservation of a power imbalance on the other. Thus sometimes
bottoms (particularly those who identify as “submissives”) learn to give themselves
“permission” to recognize and understand their likes, dislikes and limits, as well as how
to communicate those things in scene and out of scene. Further, bottoms learn how to
evaluate their limits—“hard” limits that should be left alone, or “soft” limits that should
be “pushed” by the top.
Bottoms also learn criteria for playing safely, though these lessons center on choosing a
play partner wisely and disclosing concerns, issues and health problems. Like tops, many
bottoms also wrestle with reconciling their submission/masochism with identities and
senses of self. Finally, bottoms “learn” how to process, navigate and negotiate pain or
unpleasant sensation. Unlike the formalized, technical learning process in becoming a top,
this is a meaning-making process.

Durable benefits of SM

Stebbins’ fourth criterion for the consideration of an activity as serious leisure is that
participants reap particular kinds of benefits from their activities. These “durable benefits”
of leisure activities include the following eight:

▪ development of skills, abilities and knowledge (self-actualization)

▪ the expression of same (self-expression)
▪ feelings of accomplishment
▪ regeneration or renewal of self
▪ recognition of serious leisure participation by others (self-image)
▪ social interaction and social attraction
▪ a sense of belonging
▪ lasting physical products

Self-actualization and self-expression

The development of specialized skills allows for both self-actualization and self-expression
through SM play. Not easily acquired, these skills require practice, dexterity and dedication
to their improvement. This effort thus provides a backdrop for feelings of technical,

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.
Qual Sociol (2010) 33:313–331 323

psychological, and emotional competence through play. These are common experiences for
all SM players. Seth captures it well from both “sides” of the SM interaction:
Topping feeds very much on my need for competency. We’ve talked about this
before. When a scene is going very well, then there’s a great deal of—I would say
pride, in that fact, in skill well-executed. (Interview excerpt, Seth)
Because SM play is about doing and being asked to do, it provides opportunities to feel
competent on all “sides” of the interaction. Most bottoms describe feelings of competence
and success through bottoming, particularly through service.
There’s a mode I get into which is very cooperative and service-oriented when I’m
subbing. Cooperative and it’s extraordinarily competent and strong. Like, just give
me anything that you want me to do—and it will fucking get done. (Interview
excerpt, Seth)
Additionally, both topping and bottoming provide players with opportunities to revel in
their physical strength. Feelings of physical strength come from delivering or withstanding
pain or intense sensation. This can be especially salient for people who bottom. Faye, a
retired military officer, said that she prefers to stand free during intense scenes, that she
“likes having to control [her]self while giving up control.” (Field notes, January 2003)

Feelings of accomplishment: Empowerment and efficacy

In Stebbins’ work on serious leisure devotees, self-actualization refers to the acquisition of

particular skills, and self-expression refers to the opportunities to utilize those skills. In
Caeden, these two benefits are closely linked to feelings of accomplishment, and together
these are important and powerful rewards of SM participation for community members.
SM participants often identify a rather particular satisfaction that emerges from the
intersection of intentional action with effectualness. These particular feelings of
accomplishment (which I call efficacy) comprise experiences of both topping and
bottoming for many SM participants. Feelings of efficacy during topping come from
eliciting change in a person. These changes can be manifested physically, in skin color or
texture, or in tears or screams. On a very tactile level, topping can be about impacting the
body—watching skin yield to one’s hand, drawing blood or seeing the beginnings of a
bruise. Change can also manifest emotionally or psychologically, such as when a bottom
does something the top believes she would not have otherwise done.
Feelings of efficacy are not merely rewarding, but often an objective of play, especially
given the effort topping demands. Longtime community member Eric categorized one scene
as his worst because the effort he expended generated no observable change in the bottom:

And I started to flog this person. This person, as it turns out, that I didn’t know, is
known as basically “the wall.” In order to make her feel like you hit her, you had to—
I had to slam her so hard that the next day I could not feel my wrists. That’s how
numb I was. And I realized that I was set up, it was basically like these people wanted
to see me fail, basically. They were setting me up for a joke. She was perfectly happy
to go along with it. But it was the worst scene, because basically I had no reason to
play with this person. And then it became a matter of pride, you know, I gotta hit
them. And I killed myself doing it—I really didn’t have to, I could’ve said, “Lady, I
can’t do this.” Let’s put it this way, when I finally slammed her full force, she was
like “Are you doing anything?” She was not being very heavily affected.
324 Qual Sociol (2010) 33:313–331

Eric’s understanding of his “failure” here stems from the idea that success in topping is
measured by the observable effects on the bottom.
Among people who bottom, submission in particular is frequently experienced as a
source of efficacy. Submissive-identified participants, or bottoms who suddenly “feel
submissive” in scene sometimes cast their physical experience as being necessary for the
top. In this way they view themselves as effecting a change in the mental or emotional state
of the top. At a panel discussion entitled “The Mind of a Submissive: Why We Do What
We Do,” I was struck by this common theme. The panel members, five in all, couched the
appeal of submission in feelings of helpfulness, usefulness and effectiveness. Georgia said
she liked “feeling like you’ve done something right,” and Tony said that he submitted for
the same reason he had become a paramedic: “to help people.”
Casting a top’s demands as a need, a submissive can view her actions as the only or the
best way for the top to meet that need. The bottom in this case eliminates this perceived
deficit in the top, thereby drawing feelings of efficacy and empowerment from her
acquiescence. When bottoming does not involve submission specifically, players tend to
emphasize endurance and stamina, rather than efficacy, as feelings of accomplishment.

Regeneration or renewal of self

SM play generates a sense of self renewal on multiple levels. The burnout-rebirth process
described earlier, in which members withdraw from the scene and return weeks or months
later, functions as one source of self-renewal. Though the rejuvenation period occurs
outside of daily community life, the catalyst for the regeneration is SM involvement.
SM play can also be cathartic, as others have noted (Weiss 2006b), and this catharsis is
often experienced as self-renewal. Participants are aware of the potential for SM as a space
for emotional liberation (though some argue that “anger” is not included in the array of
permissible emotions with which to play).
Russ stood behind Janelle and swung the flogger as hard as I’d ever seen anyone
swing anything, and it landed on her back with a tremendous thwack. I thought she
was going to break in half. She screamed, loudly, and he hit her again. Over and over
he hit her that hard, breaking a serious sweat by the fifth swing. And over and over
again she screamed, until one—the last one—brought her to her knees. He turned her
around, played with her breasts and she dissolved into tears. Russ later told me that
this was a formula for them; Janelle’s goal was to cry. (Field notes, July 2002)
Regardless of whether catharsis is the objective of a given scene, the physical, emotional
and psychological intensity of SM combine with its marginalized status to generate intense
emotional responses that players often find it cathartic.
Even without catharsis, SM can be experienced as regenerating. The experience of play
often involves intense concentration, intense sensation, and intense psychological and
emotional stimulation. This results in an immersive and re-energizing experience that will
be explored more fully in the next section.
Finally, SM participants sometimes use play to overcome traumatic experience. For
Faye, the witnessing of a fatal flogging in an Asian country while on military duty had left
her deeply disturbed by the idea (and the imagery) of flogging. Through SM play, Faye was
consciously working toward becoming comfortable with a flogging scene, and thus
overcoming fear that she viewed as an obstacle to personal growth. Other common
examples of overcoming fear and trauma include playing with bondage to work through
fears of restraint and blindfolds and hoods to become more comfortable with darkness.
Qual Sociol (2010) 33:313–331 325

Self-image, social interaction and social attraction

The social benefits of participation in this serious leisure pursuit are perhaps clearest
through the extent of the immersive and insular qualities of the community, to the exclusion
of a social world in which many community members have never felt entirely comfortable.
This sense of belonging is intertwined with the benefits of community identity—what
Stebbins calls self-image—as well as social interaction and social attraction.

Lasting physical products

Participants in SM purchase, trade, create and sell physical products for the purpose of
engaging in SM play. These include SM toys, such as whips, floggers and canes, as well as
articles of leather clothing that symbolize community involvement, such as vests,
wristbands and corsets. In addition, Stebbins’ conceptualization of lasting physical products
might be extended to include “marks,” evidence of SM play left the body. Although some
players do seek to avoid marks for a variety of reasons, many bottoms look to achieve
marks. Welts, bruises, scratches and scars are enthusiastically displayed and verbally
appreciated, and many people photograph their marks in order to maintain an even more
lasting record of their SM play.

SM as leisure career

Another distinguishing characteristic of serious leisure is the leisure career, drawing from
Goffman’s concept of a moral career as the sequential set of changes that one undergoes
during a particular “social strand of any person’s course through life” (1959, p. 125). For
Stebbins, the basis of careers is not only temporal continuity, but the relationship of this
continuity to a trajectory of rewards and prestige: “Moreover, we are accustomed to
thinking of this continuity as progress along these lines from some starting point, even
though continuity may also include career retrogression” (Stebbins 2009, p. 68). The SM
career involves the acquisition of new skills and vocabulary, a competency in the
community discourse, and an experiential progression from “lighter” activities to “heavier”
ones.
The learning process of becoming a player discussed earlier illustrates the temporal
aspect of SM involvement in this community, and some of the rewards of SM have been
explored as well. The accumulation of prestige in the community is of course intertwined
with these skills and their expression, and is an important component of community life.
Social status within the Caeden SM community operates on multiple levels. Paths to
high status are varied and related to identification labels, and means of status achievement
in Caeden are clear to most participants. For example, as I alluded to in the story of Enjo’s
fire demonstration earlier, the emphasis on safety is a source of pride and of status. Safety is
part of SM identity in Caeden, and to contribute to the discourse of safety is to make a
statement that one belongs there. The commitment to safety is a part of public SM life in
Caeden. Newer players, fresh from SM books or novice groups, often seem eager to
demonstrate their knowledge of SM safety to bystanders (“That flogger’s a little too close to
her spine”), and veteran players generally avail themselves for impromptu lessons,
demonstrations, and safety information.
Many players—generally those who top—carry alcohol wipes for toys, and several also
carry rubber gloves and CPR masks. At the only SM club in Caeden, safety is generally the
326 Qual Sociol (2010) 33:313–331

domain of the owner, who prohibits blood play and advanced breath play, common
prohibitions in public SM clubs. He also regularly makes rounds throughout the club or
sends a trusted employee or associate to do safety checks; I once overheard him tell a staff
member to “Go make sure that scream was a good one.”
At private parties and large public events, hosts post “house safewords,” particular
words that, if uttered by the bottom, will end the scene at the hand of the hosts or “dungeon
monitors,” regardless of the top’s response. Dungeon monitors generally take these
assignments seriously, and have been known to interrupt scenes out of their own concern
for safety, even in the absence of the utterance of a safeword.
Before the start of a meeting one night, I overheard Trey talking to someone about the
sensation of a perforated eardrum, which he had apparently acquired in a recent fight scene.
In a strange coincidence, since this is not a common injury, I was experiencing similar
symptoms, due to a slap that had landed across my ear the previous night. Suddenly
concerned that my eardrum was perforated, I asked him to describe his symptoms. He did
so, and recommended his physician.
After the meeting, Russ approached me, having overheard the conversation. He was very
concerned—and slightly irritated—that I might have an injury, and he wanted to know with
whom I had played. Shortly thereafter, Shane approached me with similar concerns. By the
end of the evening, word had traveled and more than five people spoke with me privately,
wanting to ensure that I was only playing safely, publicly, and with people who “knew what
they were doing.”
The response of the community members to the idea that I might have been injured
during play emerges directly from the emphasis on safety in the community. I learned later
that Trey’s story had elicited responses as well, though because he was both a veteran
player and a top-identified man, the responses were couched in disapproval rather than in
protectiveness. Adam, with whom I had played the previous night, deeply regretted the
accident, and was worried about me. Aware that this reflected poorly on him, he was also
embarrassed, and at least a bit offended, by the suspicion it had aroused in his abilities.
In the SM community, safety, social status and community identity are closely
interrelated, in ways that occur in other serious leisure communities, and particularly
among other edgeworkers7 (Laurendeau and Van Brunschot 2005; Lois 2006), where the
consequences of ignorance or carelessness can be serious.
More specifically, the achievement and maintenance of a good reputation is specific to
bottoming and topping. People who bottom earn reputations as good bottoms in three
distinct ways: by responsive performances during SM scenes, by having a high pain
tolerance or interest, and by being willing to experiment with riskier play.
Because much of the appeal of topping is the sense of efficacy, the observable and
immediate response of a bottom contributes significantly to the enjoyment of play by tops.
Many people who top consider themselves “reaction junkies.” A bottom who moans, yelps,
screams, laughs, wriggles and writhes thus generally has a higher status than one who is
stoic during play, all else being equal.
Bottoms with a high pain tolerance allow for more creativity and less tentativeness on
the part of the top. This is often appreciated, even though not all tops play with pain, and
fewer tops play with heavy pain. Bottoms with a high pain tolerance are accorded a high

7
Adapting the term “edgework” from journalist Hunter S. Thompson, Stephen Lyng describes the
connection between edgework experience as those that “involve a clearly observable threat to one’s physical
or mental well-being or one’s sense of an ordered existence” (1990, p. 857).
Qual Sociol (2010) 33:313–331 327

status even by such players; the difference may be understood as an incompatibility, but the
bottom has a very definite elevated status nonetheless.
For the same reason, bottoms who have fewer limits provide their partners with more
possibilities, and often the opportunity to engage in play in which most others are
uninterested.
Because to top is fundamentally “to do” in SM play, tops attain status by doing what
they do well and safely, by community standards. Mastery (relative to other tops) of a
particular skill, such as throwing a single-tail or playing with fire, can confer status, as can
general proficiency in a wide range of skills.
People in Caeden are sensitive to, and generous regarding, issues of status and prestige.
The reinforcement of good reputations is considered good etiquette rather than poor taste.
Participants speak very highly of good players with such frequency that it seems obligatory
to do so. For example, although I did not ask questions about other members of the scene
during interviews, most respondents told volunteered lengthy stories about other people’s
scenes and complimented other players, with little provocation and little apparent relevance
to their own answers. Further, negative comments about the skills of others are rare; players
are very careful about reputation management and generally reserve unflattering remarks
for situations in which a concern for safety exists.

Discussion: “People who love SM, and people who do SM”

In 1991, psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi’s bestselling treatise on “the psychology of

optimal experience” identified optimal experience as autotelic, that which is an end in and
of itself, for its own sake. Csíkszentmihályi argued that this state of consciousness, which
he called “flow,” is the result of attention so intense and all-encompassing that one achieves
a sense of order in consciousness, against the default state of psychic entropy. Flow
involves challenge and the utilization of skills, intense concentration, an altered sense of
time, the loss of self-consciousness, goals, feedback and the conflation of action with
awareness. Elsewhere Csíkszentmihályi described the flow experience as one in which
“The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably
from the previous one…”8
This optimal experience, Csíkszentmihályi argues, can be generated in activities as
varied as playing a musical instrument, running, and performing manual labor. For
Stebbins, the flow experience can be a motivation for the undertaking of various kinds of
serious leisure, including mountain climbing, kayaking and snowboarding (2005).
Understanding the carnal experience of SM as flow helps to locate it as serious leisure,
and further complicates the view of SM as, necessarily, “sex.”
In SM play, flow is generated physically and/or psychologically, through topping or
bottoming. Bottoming is more likely to result in observable altered consciousness than
topping, but the community is also more highly motivated to recognize altered states in
bottoms than in tops. The flow experience for bottoms is most frequently called “subspace”
or “bottom space,” and has many other descriptors, including “loopy,” “flying,” and “fried.”
When the flow experience in topping is recognized discursively, these phrases include “in
the zone,” “grooving” or “in top space.”

8
Excerpt from interview with John Geirland, (1996), “Go With The Flow.” Wired magazine, September,
Issue 4.09.
328 Qual Sociol (2010) 33:313–331

Tops achieve flow through mental focus, particularly when engaged in activities that
require intense concentration, such as knife play, needle play, and advanced bondage. Tops
can also experience flow through the physical act of topping; the physical and auditory
rhythm of flogging, juxtaposed with the concentration required to do so safely, can be
meditative. Eric describes his experience as being “in the zone:”
I feel very large. There’s an intense sense of space, of infinity, of pure control, of
being one with everything…I’m not here right now. I’ve hit that zone. In 30 minutes
I’ll come out of it and go wow, did I do all that? You know, I remember it but you’re
totally in the moment in that respect. (Interview excerpt, Eric)
When bottoming, players experience flow as a result of intense rhythmic sensation,
sensation or pain itself, unrelenting focus on a particular task or concentrated effort to
endure a sensation or circumstance. Lawrence said of the first time he experienced the
“endorphin rush” of SM play:
It was a very intense buzz. My body was very light, I didn’t feel the weight of my
body. I didn’t lose awareness of where I was, but my head cleared up completely
which was really wonderful because I’m always thinking. I have a very busy mind
and sometimes that gets the better of me. And it was wonderful just to be able to relax
and not have to force myself to relax…I’d describe it as more as a high than a buzz.
The closest thing I can say is that it’s like being drunk…so it was really amazing at
that moment to be—all that I was, was the sum of my five senses. That was the thing
that I most relished, being able to use my body to the utmost. (Interview excerpt,
Lawrence)
These “sharply exciting events and occasions” that are most memorable to serious
leisure participants are “thrills” for Stebbins, who considers them “exceptional instances of
the flow experience” (2007, p. 15). Stebbins found accounts of the importance of flow
among kayakers, mountain climbers and snowboarders. For members of the Caeden
community, the flow experience (though not articulated using Csíkszentmihályi’s term) is
an important component of SM play. This thrill-and-flow cycle combines levels of
enjoyment that seem alternatively superficial and deep, resulting in a holistic and multi-
layered sense of pleasure, rebirth and serenity. The view of SM as (simply) sex conflates the
ecstatic with the erotic, two conceptualizations that are often intertwined, but that warrant
more precise and critical treatment than the literature on SM has acknowledged.
SM participants speak of their play in terms of ecstatic experience, or what can be
understood as flow. They speak of weightlessness: of grooving and flying, of the
cessation of cognitive process and of the disappearance of the world around them.
Their discourse is not necessarily one of sexual arousal, erogenous zones or orgasms.
While sex and flow are not dichotomous constructs or experiences, the failure to
distinguish between SM as a social phenomenon, on the one hand, and private
sadomasochistic sex on the other, obscures the complexity of SM. Further, the
oversimplification of SM as being “about sex” reinforces the pathologized assumptions
about the nature of desire, arousal and eroticism.
While SM communities certainly include people who engage in sadomasochistic sex,
they are also sites of engagement in sadomasochistic activities that are not 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
Qual Sociol (2010) 33:313–331 329

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” (Interview excerpt, Sophie).
Further, even if SM is sexual, the assumption that it is “about sex” implies that sexuality
lies at the core of SM, and this is not so clear. Sam, a member of the community, shared his
perspective that “there is a difference between people who love SM, and people who do SM,”
in order to highlight precisely the distinction. From Sam’s perspective, people who do SM
engage in it as a means to a (sexual) end. People who “love SM,” by comparison, view
SM as an end in and of itself. It may or may not be sexual, and it may be erotic sometimes and
not others, but it is always SM. This distinguishes not only between SM participants and
people who are instead interested in sadomasochistic sex, but also between serious leisure
devotees and others; Sam’s distinction (which quickly took root in the general discourse of
the community) parallels the difference between SM as sex and SM as serious leisure.
This is not to disavow an erotic component in SM, for some or most or even all of its
participants. To the extent, for example, that eroticism is understood in relation to
adrenaline response (such as increased heart rate, heavy breathing, dilated pupils,
hypersensitivity to touch), SM is usually erotic for participants, along with a host of other
activities that generate flow (cello-playing, rock-climbing, dancing, for instances) which we
often do not recognize as erotic. All carnal experience contains within it elements typically
recognized as erotic. Flow closely parallels that which we recognize as erotic experience. If
all instances of flow are necessarily “about sex,” then sex as a hermeneutic device warrants
further exploration.
There are important reasons for SM participants to disengage sexuality from SM,
emerging from the sex/violence binary that has underlain the debates about SM since the
late seventies. To discount their voices is ultimately a dismissal of SM—of what it does and
does not involve, of how people experience it, and of all that it is other than sex. In an
ironic and unfortunate twist, this often-queer-friendly approach forces SM into a
heteronormative model of sexuality, the very same battlegrounds of the gay and lesbian
civil rights movement: a call for equal rights for kinky people. While kinky people, as all
people, should have “equal rights,” the distinction between SM and bedroom kink is
analytically important. If the argument is that what we understand as “sex” needs to expand
to include all activities that comprise an element of erotic experience (perhaps, as examples,
marathon running, ballroom dancing, motorcycle riding and homicide), then SM is sex, and
I would support such a conceptual shift. As we currently understand sex, however, SM in
real life is often very different, and sex-positive efforts are not helped by the insistence that
it is not.
Subsuming all SM under the heading “kinky sex,” even over the protests of community
members, is a political issue in another sense as well. To understand SM as something other
than sex is to come dangerously close to (re)casting SM as assault, potentially blurring the
important line between SM and domestic violence. For sex researchers, it may be that it is
not only explicit consent, but also the intellectual accessibility of erotic pleasure that
renders SM acceptable to discuss, to study, and ultimately, to defend.
In the public “SM community”9 that I studied, SM can best be understood as a serious
leisure endeavor. This community is a rich and complex social organization constructed
around an immersive recreational pursuit. It provides for members a safe space and strong
sense of belonging and identity, a place to learn and express highly specialized skills and

9
There are variations across the nation and within communities—such as the BDSM community, the leather
community and the kink community. The distinctions between these terms are contested, but the significance
to my argument is in the use of the word “community” rather than in these distinctions.
330 Qual Sociol (2010) 33:313–331

competence, and generates a deep and meaningful identification. SM participants also reap
the “durable benefits” Stebbins finds in serious leisure pursuits.
SM challenges us to reexamine what we mean when we call a thing sexual and when we
describe experience as erotic, and further to explore the implications of these conceptualizations.
Understanding SM as serious leisure allows for a fuller understanding of a growing social
phenomenon, and illustrates the constraints of theorizing sexuality more broadly.

Acknowledgements For their support and helpful comments on this work, I would like to thank Robert
Stebbins, three anonymous reviewers, and Javier Auyero.

References

Berger, L. (2001). Inside out: Narrative autoethnography as a path toward rapport. Qualitative Inquiry, 7,
504–518.
Cross, P., & Matheson, K. (2006). Understanding sadomasochism: An empirical examination of four
perspectives. Journal of Homosexuality, 50, 133–166.
Csíkszentmihályi, M. (1991). Flow: The psychology of optimal experience. New York: Harper Collins.
Dancer, P., Kleinplatz, P., & Moser, C. (2006). 27/7 SM slavery. Journal of Homosexuality, 50, 81–102.
Donnelly, D., & Fraser, J. (1998). Gender differences in sado–masochistic arousal among college students.
Sex Roles, 39, 391–407.
Ellis, H. (1927). Studies in the psychology of sex, Volume 3 (of 6). Philadelphia: F. A. Davis.
Ellis, H. (1938). Sadism and masochism. In A. A. Brill (Ed.), Basic writings of Sigmund Freud. New York:
Modern Library.
Freud, S. (1938). Sadism and masochism. In A. A. Brill (Ed.), Basic writings of Sigmund Freud. New York:
Modern Library.
Freud, S. ([1953] 1905). Three essays on the theory of sexuality. 7 (trans: Strachey, J.). Reprint, London: Hogarth.
Geirland, J. (1996). Go with the Flow. Wired, September, issue 4.09.
Goffman, E. (1959). The moral career of the mental patient. Psychiatry: Journal for Studies of Interpersonal
Processes., 23, 123–135.
Kamel, G. W. L. (1980). Leathersex: Meaningful aspects of gay sadomasochism. Deviant Behaviour, 1, 171–91.
Krafft-Ebbing, R. ([1886] 1965). In F. S. Klaf (Ed.), Psychopathia sexualis. London: Staples Press.
Langdridge, D. (2006). Voices from the margins: Sadomasochism and sexual citizenship. Citizenship Studies,
10(4), 373–389.
Langdridge, D. (2005). The erotic construction of power exchange. Journal of Constructivist Psychology, 18,
65–73.
Langdridge, D., & Butt, T. (2004). A hermeneutic phenomenological investigation of the construction of
sadomasochistic identities. Sexualities, 7, 31–53.
Laurendeau, J., & Van Brunschot, E. G. (2005). Policing the edge: Risk and social control in skydiving.
Deviant Behavior, 27, 173–201.
Lois, J. (2006). Heroic efforts: The emotional culture of search-and-rescue volunteers. New York: New York
University Press.
Lyng, S. (1990). Edgework: A social psychological analysis of voluntary risk-taking. American Journal of
Sociology, 95(4), 851–886.
Moser, C. (1998). S/M (sadomasochistic) interactions in semi-public settings. Journal of Homosexuality, 36,
19–29.
Moser, C., & Kleinplatz, P. (2006). Introduction: The state of our knowledge on SM. Journal of
Homosexuality, 50, 1–15.
Newmahr, S. (2008). Becoming a sadomasochist: Integrating self and other in ethnographic analysis. Journal
of Contemporary Ethnography, 37, 619–641.
Newmahr, S. (2011). Playing on the edge: Risk, intimacy and sadomasochism. Bloomington: Indiana
University Press. (Forthcoming).
Nordling, N., Sandnabba, N. K., Santila, P., & Alison, L. (2006). Differences and similarities between gay
and straight individuals involved in the sadomasochistic subculture. Journal of Homosexuality, 50(2–3),
41–57.
Nordling, N., & Sandbabba, K. (2006). Differences and similarities between gay and straight individuals
involved in the sadomasochistic subculture. Journal of Homosexuality, 50, 41–57.
Qual Sociol (2010) 33:313–331 331

Plante, R. (2006). Sexual spanking, the self, and the construction of deviance. Journal of Homosexuality, 50,
59–79.
Sacher-Masoch, L. (1870). Venus in furs (trans: Neugroschel, J.). New York: Penguin, 2000.
Sade, D. (1965). The complete Justine, philosophy in the bedroom and other writings. New York: Grove.
Sandbabba, K., et al. (1999). Sexual behavior and social adaptation among sadomasochistically-oriented
males. Journal of Sex Research, 36, 273–82.
Scott, G. G. (1983). Erotic power: An exploration of dominance and submission. New Jersey: Citadel.
Stebbins, R. (1982). Serious leisure: A conceptual statement. The Pacific Sociological Review, 25, 251–272.
Stebbins, R. (1992). Amateurs, Professionals, and Serious Leisure. Montreal and kingston: McGill-Queen’s
University Press.
Stebbins, R. (1997). Exploratory Research as an Antidote to Theoretical Stagnation in Leisure Studies. Loisir
and Societe–Society and Leisure 20(2): 421–434.
Stebbins, R. (2005). Choice and experiential definitions of leisure. Leisure Sciences 27(4), 349–352.
Stebbins, R. (2006). Challenging mountain nature: Risk, motive, and lifestyle in three hobbyist sports.
Calgary: Detselig.
Stebbins, R. (2007). Serious leisure: A perspective for our time. New Jersey: Transaction.
Stebbins, R. (2008). Right Leisure: Serious, Casual, or Project-Based? Neurorehabilitation, 23(4): 335–341.
Stebbins, R. (2009). Personal Decisions in the Public Square: Beyond Problem Solving into a Positive
Sociology. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.
Taylor, G. (1997). The discursive construction and regulation of dissident sexualities: The case of SM. In J.
Ussher (Ed.), Body talk: The material and discursive regulation of sexuality, madness and reproduction.
London: Routledge.
Taylor, G., & Ussher, J. (2001). Making sense of S&M: A discourse analytic account. Sexualities, 4, 293–314.
Weinberg, T. (1978). Sadism and masochism: Sociological perspectives. The Bulletin of the American
Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, 6, 284–95.
Weinberg, T. (1983). In T. Weinberg (Ed.), Sociological and social psychological issues in the study of
sadomasochism. Buffalo: Prometheus Books.
Weinberg, T. (2006). Sadomasochism and the social sciences: A review of the sociological and social
psychological literature. Journal of Homosexuality, 50, 17–40.
Weinberg, T., & Falk, G. (1980). The social organisation of sadism and masochism. Deviant Behavior, 1,
379–93.
Weinberg, M., Williams, C. J., & Moser, C. (1984). The social constituents of sadomasochism. Social
Problems, 31, 379–93.
Weiss, M. (2006a). Mainstreaming kink: The politics of BDSM representation in U.S. popular media.
Journal of Homosexuality, 50, 103–132.
Weiss, M. (2006b). Working at play: BDSM sexuality in the San Francisco Bay area. Anthropologica, 8,
229–245.
Williams, D. J. (2006). Different (painful) strokes for different folks: A general overview of sexual
sadomasochism (SM) and its diversity. Sexual Addiction & Compulsivity, 13, 333–346.
Williams, D. J. (2009). Deviant leisure: Rethinking the good, the bad, and the ugly. Leisure Sciences, 31,
207–213.
Zussman, R. (2004). People in places. Qualitative Sociology, 27, 351–363.

Staci Newmahr is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Buffalo State College. Her first book, Playing on the
Edge: Risk, Intimacy and Sadomasochism, is forthcoming with Indiana University Press.