Table of Contents

Contents
Acknowledgments

Introduction

Part 1: People
1. Defiance: Bodies, Minds, and Marginality
2. Geeks and Freaks: Marginal Identity and Community

Part 2: Play
3. Tipping the Scales: Striving for Imbalance
4. Fringe Benefits: The Rewards of SM Play
5. Badasses, Servants, and Martyrs: Gender Performances

Part 3: Edges
6. Reconcilable Differences: Pain, Eroticism, and Violence
7. Collaborating the Edge: Feminism and Edgework
8. "What It Is That We Do": Intimate Edgework

Concluding Notes: Erotic Subjectivity and the Construction of the Field
Glossary
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Promotional Information

Constructing intimacy in SM play and beyond

About the Author

Staci Newmahr is an ethnographer. Her work plays with intersections of risk, eroticism, and gender. She is currently Assistant Professor of Sociology at Buffalo State College.

Reviews

"Newmahr's decisions to use passages of creative representation to convey 'felt' experiences, as well as to use her own body as an instrument of intellectual inquiry to such an extent, bring a sense of depth and presence to the book that is often sorely lacking in such work." Katherine Frank, author of G-Strings and Sympathy: Strip Club Regulars and Male Desire "A fascinating, well-written, carefully researched book that illuminates a subculture about which we know very little... Never before have we had research that is so close to the community, that allows us inside this community's behavior, rationalizations, understandings, and lived experiences." Patricia Adler, co-author of Constructions of Deviance: Social Power, Context, and Interaction "An important contribution to the fields of crime/deviance and sexuality." Leon Anderson, author of Deviance: Social Constructions and Blurred Boundaries