ABSTRACT
In interviewing young men and women in the club and rave scenes, we found a stark difference in their descriptions of the culture and experiences of clubs and raves. They often described clubs as being alcohol-fueled meat markets, in which clothing styles and dancing styles are highly sexualized. Furthermore, gendered expectations are heavily enforced, and interactions with others often have a tinge of aggression (or sometimes outright fights and violence). Raves, on the other hand, are described as dominated by the drug ecstasy, by warmth and friendliness, and, while normative behavior encourages touching and feeling of friends and strangers, blatant sexual displays or expectations are frowned upon and more flexible gender dynamics are encouraged. These are the two stereotypical pictures of raves and clubs that most commonly emerge in our interviews. For many of the ravers, the specter of the club seems to operate as the “other” against which they define themselves, much like Thornton’s (1996) clubbers’ utilization of the opposition between underground and mainstream.However, the boundaries between the categories of rave and club, ecstasy and alcohol, sociability and sexuality are not necessarily nearly as neat as many of the descriptions initially seem to indicate. We find ecstasy and alcohol (among other substances) being consumed at or around both types of events, the opposition between ecstasy and sexuality that some youngmen andwomen described is far fromuniversal in our sample, and while perhaps more open or flexible than clubs, many young men and women described continued enforcement of gendered norms at raves as well. In this chapter we will examine some of the dynamics of gender and sexuality as they operate in the rave scene,with particular emphasis on the connections betweengender, sexuality, and ecstasy. In the next chapter we will examine the role of alcohol in these scenes, and key differences with the club (versus rave) scene, and the importance of context in shaping the experiences with substances, with gender, and with sexuality, in both scenes.
