Playing on the Edge: Sadomasochism, Risk, and Intimacy (25 page)

Me:
If it hurts—?

Bobby:
Yeah, the pain, the reaction—or the pleasure of being in pain. That’s what has to be there.

Me:
It has to look like pleasure . . . ?

Bobby:
Oh, she can be grimacing and yelping and so forth, but I will also check and make sure that’s something that she wants. But I have a young lady who’s playing with me, and she’s hanging up naked by her ankles on the front stage of the Playground. [ . . . ] My favorite place is to be holding her head in my hand. And watching her and headspacing her. But she’s under control; it’s a male control, while the body is being [makes snap- ping sound] by an expert if the pain is being inflicted on the other side. But that’s my favorite place to be is in her face, watching the eyes.

Me:
But if it just looks like it hurts, then it doesn’t do anything for you?

Bobby:
Not—that’s fantasy, yes, but in real life, no. In real life, no.

Although Bobby is interested in power-imbalanced experiences, this particular construction of imbalance is uncomfortable for him. In the transformed pain dis- course, “hurt” is a negative word, and an undesirable experience for all involved. This perspective reflects a wider cultural understanding of the desire to hurt or be hurt as ethically problematic and/or individually pathological. Thus it draws a binary distinction between the active and intimate “hurting,” on one side, and the abstract, nebulous, and passive provision of “the sensation of pain” on the other.

This recasting of pain as transformed frames the pain in accordance with the hegemonic views of pain, but modifies the pain (and the narrative) by turn- ing it into
not
pain. The participant who modifies pain is actively changing the sensation, working to claim it and process it differently, toward an eventual understanding of the pain
as
pleasure.

In a definitive contrast, pain is framed as undesirable sensation that
remains
an undesirable sensation throughout (as in, for example, punishment and dis- cipline). In this conceptual move, pain does not transform into pleasurable sensation. Pain is, and must remain,
suffering,
for the suffering is a sacrifice on the part of the bottom. This sacrifice is conceptualized as being for the benefit or desires of the top. Pain hurts, and the bottom derives no pleasure from it. It is a gift in the other direction; the bottom gives her experience of pain will- ingly, a token to the top of her affection or devotion. Still, then, for people who draw on this discourse, the pain is not an indicator of violence.

This is significantly distinct from transformed pain; when pain is cast as pleasurable, bottoms do not view themselves as victims and tops do not view themselves as victimizing, in scene space.

In Caeden, the discourse of sacrificial pain is more commonly deployed by women who bottom, particularly those who identify as “submissive,” than by other participants. The authenticity is bolstered in part through the identity of the “submissive,” distinguishing it from role play by its emphasis on the “real- ness” of the hierarchical relationship between players.

Interestingly, the transformed pain discourse is also sometimes given voice within the larger frame of sacrificial pain. Here the bottom is understood as pain-averse because she or he (usually she) does not have the “ability” to transform pain into pleasure. This at times mimics a deeply gendered fairy-tale narrative; the bottom lacks the ability until a particular moment in a particular scene in which the connection between play partners bestows this transforma- tive power on the bottom.

Although there are exceptions, transformed and sacrificial pain discourses tend to be more commonly utilized among people who engage in D/s. D/s play- ers participate also in performances of power outside of the space of SM play itself. The emphasis on dominance and submission also helps these participants navigate this challenging moral territory. By imbuing SM play with significance above and beyond the realm of the physical, SM participants shift the focus of the activity from both eroticism and violence to power, thereby sidestepping

the conflation of the erotic with the violent. The discursive role of dominance and submission in the community facilitates not only the experience of scenes in this context, but also the reading of SM scenes in this context by spectators. It thereby reinforces the sublimation of the sensory experience to the psycho- emotional context of the scene. While this provides a context that renders the sensory experiences less important, it does not resolve the dissonance between eroticism and violence for them.

In contrast, the investment pain discourse draws heavily on hyper-masculine narratives of pain (“No pain, no gain”). This discourse frames pain as an un- pleasant stimulus that promises future rewards. Not surprisingly, men, whether bottoming or topping, frame pain this way more often than women do.

Sociologists of sport find that pain is often framed as an investment toward a greater reward. Pain is understood not merely as an unfortunate byproduct, but as a means to a particular end. While the hurting is not the goal, in and of itself, it is rewarding for both what it evidences and what it produces. Greg Downey finds, for example, that participants in no-holds-barred fighting “must steel their wills against pain so that they can venture further and further into suffering without dissolution . . . fighters must learn from pain and, in some sense, are legitimated by it” (Downey 2007, 217). Because this suffering is not for the sake of another, it is uniquely masculine. It is competitive—a challenge to the self—an investment given of free will, and, more importantly, framed as such.

Describing a hook-suspension scene, Kyle, for example, did not romanticize the pain itself, but wanted it for what it could provide him, physiologically:

After I got over the pain of it, and I was—you know, with any sort of play in the scene, there’s a time early on where it just hurts. And then after awhile, the endorphins kinda build up and it doesn’t hurt anymore. That’s kinda how this was too. Once I got past the pain of it and I could really pull back, and really pull, and have the hooks pull forward . . . at one point, early on, when that happened, I stopped caring about the pain of it and just wanted the experience.

Pain is not sought, appreciated, or eroticized. Its infliction is a means to an end, its value derived from and located in the body of the bottom. It is imper- sonal, experienced not as an assault but as a desired catalyst toward another end. The violence of its infliction disappears in the higher value of its physi- ological provisions.

These three discourses maintain and reproduce the conceptualization of pain as aversive. Most people in the Caeden SM community draw on one or more of these discourses, in which pain is something to be withstood, endured, altered, or conquered. To be able to do so provides rewards, but pain is still, in and of itself, negative. The infliction of pain, however, is not violent; a complex set of strategies ensures the experience of infliction as not violence. Most importantly, SM play is understood, at least to some extent, as erotic experience. This dis- course provides SM participants with permission to find SM erotic precisely
because
it is not violent. It is not violent because the pain is either a gift, an investment, or ultimately pleasure rather than pain.

In contrast, the terms “sadist” and “masochist” are used to describe people who frame their relationships to pain in positive terms. These identity labels are somewhat stigmatic in the community. In some instances, these are self- identifications. They are also attributed to people who do not appear to rely on strategies to achieve authentic experiences of power imbalance. Participants who transform or provide pain, for example, distinguish themselves from mas- ochists, who they believe “like the pain,” and also from sadists, who “like to hurt people.” Interestingly, the only discourse in the SM community in which pain appears as an (almost) unqualified “good” thing is the least common.

The foundation of this discourse is fairly simple for those who draw on it: the pain hurts, but the hurt also feels good. Participants who frame pain this way have an extraordinarily difficult time articulating their experience of pain. They generally distinguish between kinds of pain that they do like and kinds of pain that they do not like; the particular kind of pain, rather than the context, determines whether the response is favorable.

At times, the autotelic pain discourse is also used publicly to represent pain as positive. For example, during an educational presentation on the use of canes, the following occurred:

At some point a woman in the audience . . . asked what to do if you’re play- ing with someone who can’t leave with marks. Jamie talked a bit about how to avoid marks even with a cane, but then someone in the audience else offered an alternative solution: there’s something in Chinese-herbal type stores to get rid of bruises. He said that it needs to be rubbed in and he warned that it was “exceedingly painful—more painful than the scene.”

Chelsea, who was sitting beside him, said, very loudly, “That’s not a bad thing . . . how is that a bad thing??!” Everyone laughed.

The idea that the pain would be welcome even after the scene suggests that the “play” context is not necessary for the enjoyment of pain. The pain is its own end. Kevin, for example, said that he sought the SM community after pledging a fraternity in college. The twelve-week hazing period included physi- cal beatings of various degrees. Kevin said that when the hazing was over, he “realized that there was some part of me that found it pleasurable.”

This extrication of pain from the context of the cordoned-off SM interac- tion is a slippery slope. The widely held and passionately defended position (to outsiders, for it is not usually challenged within the community) is that SM participants simply would not enjoy pain in a nonconsensual situation.

Autotelic pain is experienced, valued, and appreciated as pain. Bottoms who frame pain this way say that it hurts and that they like it
anyway.
Unlike those who frame pain as transformed, those who view pain as autotelic do not feel that they engage in a conversion process; the hurting itself feels good, instantly and without work. For tops, this discourse casts them as villainous, drawing on a romantic, Sadean concept of the seductive evildoer. Tops who frame pain this way are often desired as play partners precisely because of their sadism; the stronger the belief that the top enjoys the actual infliction of pain, the more authentic the scene becomes for bottoms.

Tops and bottoms who identify as wanting pain, for its own sake and to its own ends, are in the minority in the community. The autotelic pain discourse rejects conventional conceptualizations of pain as undesirable and, by exten- sion, pain-seeking as pathological. Most SM participants actively employ strate- gies to disavow, minimize, or rationalize their engagement with pain, perhaps precisely to avoid understanding their activities in the pathological terms of sadism and masochism.

Ultimately, this discourse appears to disentangle the enjoyment of pain from the understanding of pain as bad. While the end result of transformed pain is pleasure, it becomes, post-transformation, pleasure
instead
of pain. Autotelic pain begins as pain, ends as pain, and is enjoyable nonetheless. However, the overarch- ing context must remain one of inflictor/inflictee. Sadists and masochists, self- defined and other-identified, do not appear to enjoy pain in other, solo contexts (such as medical pain, accidental harm, or self-injury). Nonetheless they claim to enjoy pain in and of itself, extricated from contexts of power and control.

Yet among these participants,
eroticism
is often denied or recast. Most of the people who say they like to hurt or be hurt also say that SM is not sexual for them. And those who do use the word “hurt” draw their line between “hurt” and “harm,” with the distinction being largely temporal; harm is lasting. In this

case, pain becomes symbolic not of violence but of power. Power and violence are thus extricated from one another, allowing for the eroticization of power, so long as violence has been excluded from the equation. This dualism mirrors the scholarship on pain, which is heavily concentrated in medical literature and the sociology of sport. In the former, pain is an involuntary condition of life, and in the latter it is a byproduct of a recreational or professional pursuit. In both cases, pain is experienced as not having been an intended outcome; in the case of med- icine, there is no actor to inflict the pain, and in sport, when there is, the actor has inflicted pain toward another end, such as the securing of the ball. In either case, the pain itself is not the primary experience, objective, or tool; it is not pro- cessed or perceived as a provision unto itself. Theoretically interesting questions focus on the impact of cultural, social, psychological, and emotional conditions on pain (Zborowski 1969; Aldrich and Eccleston 2000). Activities in which pain might be viewed as an end—boxing and fight clubs, for example—have not been explored with a focus on the bodily experience of pain. Where the experience of
inflicted
pain might be observed—such as in studies of victims of violent crime, abuse, and torture—the focus is on psychological and emotional rather than sensory experience. There are few spaces in which to understand the infliction of pain, and the social contexts of infliction are therefore often ignored.

Unofficially, then, a criterion for the consideration of pain as such is its undesirability. Any instances of its reconceptualization, recasting, or enjoyment simply cease to be painful, much as consensual violence ceases to be violence. The issue in both is intent. If pain is not deliberate, then there is no cause to consider the pain as a positive experience. If is inflicted, it is either undesirable or not really pain. It is mired in the same dualism as sex and violence, and its relationship to violence is tautological: pain is undesirable because it evidences violence, and violence is undesirable because its consequences are painful.