ABSTRACT
This chapter offers an analysis of gender and sexuality in the context of young people's ecstasy use in the rave scene in San Francisco. It examines some of the dynamics of gender and sexuality as they operate in the rave scene, with particular emphasis on the connections between gender, sexuality, and ecstasy. Women drug users were portrayed as perpetual victims, their drug use treated as pathological, and notions of women's agency or pleasures were missing. Gender and sexuality should not be conflated they are distinct aspects of identity and social organization. The researches analysis of young men's and women's gender accomplishment in the rave scene and with ecstasy use highlights the continuing presence of gender accountability. Young women described ecstasy as giving them more confidence and self-acceptance and less fear of being a spectacle. This confidence, for some of the women, extended to greater sexual confidence and assertiveness.
