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and therefore of SM, in the lives of members.
    The second part of this book focuses on the varieties, structure, meanings, and social implications of SM play. In chapter 3, I explore the common under- standings of SM as sex and as role play, in the context of the complex issue of power performances. I analyze the structure of SM scenes and examine the various strategies employed toward the achievement and maintenance of power-imbalanced experiences. Chapter 4 frames SM as “serious leisure” (Steb- bins 1982) and illustrates the benefits and rewards of engaging in play in this community. Chapter 5 provides an analysis of gender performance and sym- bolism in play, in the context of the many ways in which gender is performed and lived in the community.
    The last part of this book grapples with some of the larger theoretical chal- lenges that SM poses and inspires. In chapter 6 I examine and demonstrate the usefulness of SM in understanding and exploring relationships between eroticism and violence, and the role of pain and discourses of pain in making sense of these relationships. In chapter 7, I argue that SM is edgework (Lyng 1990), first through an exploration of particular activities that are intended to transgress or transcend more extreme physical, emotional, or psychological boundaries. Second, I offer a feminist expansion of the edgework perspective. Chapter 8 draws on this analysis to explore broader issues surrounding the con- struction of intimacy, the erotic and the violent, and gendered negotiations of risk. In chapter 8, I frame SM as the engagement in intimate edgework, through which intimate experience is constructed through the transgression of personal boundaries. Finally, the conclusion provides insight into the ways in which this ethnographic text was shaped by particular decisions I made in the field.

    Defiance 21

    Part 1. People
    22 People

    Defiance 23

    Chapter 1

    Defiance
    Bodies, Minds, and Marginality
    It was the last committee meeting. Tomorrow was the big event. We had rented three floors of a large hotel. One floor was going to be devoted to educational classes throughout the weekend. One floor was going to be devoted to vendors of SM and fetish products, and one floor was to be the dungeon. It was being designed and set up by a man who owned an SM club in another city. I had heard very good things about his work.
    It had taken seven months of almost weekly meetings, several hours each. And the IMs and the emails. God, the emails. Seven months of general snippiness and petty arguments. Seven months of asking Noah to relax and imploring Amy to be nice, and trying very hard not to tell everyone to stop acting like the rise and fall of civilization was entirely wrapped up in this event.
    The communication was abominable. At each and every meeting lately, I found myself wondering why everyone was so snotty. Was I the only one who noticed? How did they get away with talking to people like this? All of it was driving me nuts: the tension, the drama . . . the body odor.
    Wearily, I looked around the room.
    Maggie is cross-eyed, and her hair looks as if she never washes it. Jacob weighs over 350 pounds. Dottie is a six-foot-four woman who weighs nearly as much, and Robert has both of them beat by about a hundred pounds. Liam has a severe overbite, and twenty-seven-year-old Malcolm is five-foot-one. Adam cuts off the sleeves of his T-shirts—so that they’re what we once called “muscle shirts”—and wears the collar of his jacket turned up. Ellis rocks back and forth when he talks. Trey talks with his eyes closed much of the time. Ronny practices tae kwon do moves whenever he’s standing. He smiles a lot at no one in particular.

    23
    I started to sigh, but instead I laughed midway through. I couldn’t help myself.
    Sometimes it all seemed surreal.
    And really, this event was a big deal. It was a four-day, nationally publicized SM gala, the first for the organization in several years. Though