My current reading project: Staci Newmahr's "Playing On The Edge"

I am very excited.   This morning, an Amazon package landed on my doormat, containing my copy of Staci Newmahr's Playing On The Edge: Sadomasochism, Risk and Intimacy.   I am very likely to spend a lot of my time over the next week or so ploughing through this book and will, without a doubt, have something to say about it either here or at And You Thought I Was Sweet (or both) once I have finished.   I already feel I have stuff to say, and I'm only on page 10, but I intend to finish the book and see if my mind changes as I go along about what I want to say.


I was not actually going to buy the book, but I thought I would make my final decision on whether or not to do so, after finally reading through the PDF file I had been sent about 2 years ago of Newmahr's paper "Becoming a Sadomasochist: Integrating Self and Other in Ethnographic Analysis", which was published in the Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Volume 37 Number 5, October 2008. That paper appears to be a summary of the same research that Newmahr is covering in more extended form in this book. Basically, I thought that if the main points were covered in the paper and I did not see anything about which I wanted to read more of her thoughts, then I could happily save my money and leave my knowledge of the work at the level covered by the Journal of Contemporary Ethnography paper.

Obviously, since I decided to buy the book, there were things about which I wished to read more. (And it's not because the scene descriptions in the paper turned me on hugely, although they did!)

There was a huge "click" moment when I started reading, at which I thought "OMG she's writing about me!" She gets it!"

Then there came a sort of "reverse click" moment at which I realised that there were big differences between my lived experience and the reported findings that Newmahr presented. Newmahr spent years involved directly with the community she studied, so her experiences have to be considered as having some solid basis for interpretation, so I realised that I wanted to find out why I felt such a big difference between my interpretations of my lived experience, and her reported interpretation of her findings.

The most obvious possible explanations seem to be: 1/. simply that the US scene is different from the UK scene, and 2/. that I do not get involved in much public play so that it is not central to my experience of BDSM community the way it is to the community in Newmahr's research. On the first, I would dearly love to see similar research carried out in the UK, and in particular in different types of community - for instance, I expect there are huge differences between the London scene and the more dispersed "semi-rural" scene across my region, which is in a way peripheral to the London scene in that there is some overlap where members of this scene go to some of the major events such as fetish fairs and markets in London. There may also be differences between London and some of the other cities that have thriving communities.

On the second, I note that Newmahr, in a footnote to the JCE paper, says:

Following consideration that is beyond the scope of this paper, I am comfortable using the traditional “SM” rather than the newer term “BDSM” (Bondage/Discipline/Dominance/Submission/Sadism/Masochism) to refer to the public scene, as well as to all activities subsumed under it—that is, those that involve the consensual and conscious use of: pain, power, and/or perceptions of pain or power for mutual enjoyment.

[ETA: On page 14, Newmahr writes:

Because there is so little contemporary work on SM and its participants, it is crucial to note that my discussion of 'the scene' is not intended to be synonymous with 'people who like SM'. The scene in Caeden is a public, social network of people who observe and engage in SM in designated public spaces.

...

This book is not, on the whole, about SM as it happens in bedrooms or during private parties.

...

This analysis should not, therefore, be understood as applicable to other SM communities in a quotidian sense.

It remains to be seen whether I think this is the reason for my feeling, and whether there is mention of people who are peripheral to the "play" scene (i.e. who do not attend public play events, but do attend other gatherings).]

I notice the "public scene" is to be the focus of her research. (I am very curious to see if the book explains why "SM" was preferred to "BDSM"; because a huge part of my identification is D/s rather than SM, I am troubled by the apparent erasure implied here, even though the D/s element is acknowledged in the footnote).

As I say, I am only on page 10 (14 after the ETA above) (still in the introduction) and already have found statements and interpretations about which I wish to comment. No doubt the alert reader will have guessed that these are things that I find problematic as regards to how they relate to my identity and experience. However, if Newmahr develops the concepts and adds more nuance then it may be that my doubts will be answered directly by further comments in the book, so I will hold my tongue until I finish the book, and then say what I feel.