Playing on the Edge: Sadomasochism, Risk, and Intimacy by Staci Newmahr

she’s turned into one. You have to be open-minded to read sci-fi. The same way you have to be open-minded in the dungeon. You see somebody doing something extreme, that you would neevvvver do. And your first reaction might be repulsion, your second reaction should be observation, and your third reaction will prob- ably be acceptance. But if you can get to observation and then acceptance quicker, then you’re saving yourself a lot of self-battling, you’re saving yourself beating yourself up. And it’s easier to accept than reject; rejection takes more work, and is ultimately less helpful.
    Greg’s perspective posits science fiction as a virtual training ground for the tol- erance necessitated by SM participation. Yet the pragmatism of this perspective is not inconsistent with the romanticism of Seth’s. In both views the apprecia- tion of and attraction to science fiction and SM are fundamentally the same. They cultivate and require imaginativeness, creativity, and social acceptance.
    Kyle made the argument even more broadly:

    The people that are willing and courageous and able enough, and have the willpower and the strength to question themselves, and to question the way they were raised, and the way that they’re living—the people that have the courage to admit maybe we’re wrong about this and maybe we need to look elsewhere and get new information, new ideas, and maybe try some- thing new—those people have an affinity for one another. Whether they did that kind of questioning through sci-fi, through religion or spirituality, whether they did it through SM and alternative sexuality, whether they did it through really anything—it—once a person questions their basic tenets of existence, and questions them successfully, and says you know what,
    maybe—by successfully I mean they actually do admit to themselves may- be they’re wrong. They have one chance in hell to rebel against themselves. And if they can do that, and by doing so they can find a way of life that makes them happier, um . . . then they’re forever open-minded. And open- minded people have a great affinity for one another, because they don’t shut down when they’re talking to one another about their way of life.

    For Kyle, it might as well have just happened to be SM. Interestingly, he does not ask why people come to SM, but instead frames human behavior in terms of surrendering (or not) to social inhibitions. SM interest, in this view, is not at all rare, but pursuing it is; therefore, the scene consists of people who have the courage and, presumably, the impetus, to seek it out. From this perspective, people engage in SM, or science-fiction reading, or pagan religions, or vampir- ism, or a host of alternative activities, because they were open-minded enough to try new things. That some of them “stick” and some of them do not, for Kyle, amounts to little more than chance.
    Many members of this community believe that their own interest in SM is inborn. Kyle’s implication that an affinity for experimentation perhaps super- sedes the affinity for SM threatens the essentialist beliefs that permeate the community, and most certainly threatens the romanticism of the good/evil binary that provides the backdrop for much SM play.
    Regardless of whether SM exists as one of a multitude of new “flavors” of life one might (or might not) be inclined to try, or as a preexisting procliv- ity for the activities themselves, Kyle’s observation is consistent with the life stories of my respondents. Because outsiders find each other in the SM scene, immediately and easily, they cease to be outsiders just as quickly. If overlap between interests in alternative lifestyles exists because of dialectically expand- ing horizons among people prone to experimentation, this cements the bonds between community members; SM, therefore, is not the only interest they have in common. SM becomes, for them, the symbol of home—they are familiar, safe,