Playing on the Edge: Sadomasochism, Risk, and Intimacy

Sadomasochism is often portrayed in popular media as either criminal activity or pornographic fantasy. In this book, ethnographer Staci Newmahr examines consensual sadomasochism by studying a public, pansexual SM community directly. Drawing on four years of participant observation, she combines her fieldwork experiences with accounts from community members to create a detailed picture of SM as a social space where experiences of violence and eroticism intersect. Newmahr demonstrates that SM functions as a recreational and gendered form of risk-taking through which participants establish boundaries between chaos and order. The book questions common assumptions about sadomasochism, sexuality, eroticism, and emotional experience, and examines what intimacy means and how people achieve it.