Would it matter if I were? 
I agree… got a good answer?
Furiosa.
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a brief web foray-- always dangerous when researching sexual practices-- lead me to this semirecent article.
(Are you intrigued yet?)
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Maybe… I’m a bit all over the place right now but this might help. Apologies in advance for the less than structured response. I’m no writer nor an expert on this. 
I will also add that as this is a sexual behavior topic, I’ll declare my cis-het privilege right now.
There’s an assumption that pain is more than just signalling along nerves. There’s the way we react to it, which should be taken into account as well. And biochemistry, with all the endorphins and such.
I enjoy eating the sort of chiles that could best be described as cruel and unusual. They’re painful, but also delicious. Capsaicin triggers pain receptors but the pain is only part of the reason, it’s a combination of flavour, pain, endorphins and yeah, maybe a little machismo. Is this sexy? No, but like most food and phsyical pleasure, it’s a close cousin. And food or other psychical pleasures may even be identical, dependent on fetish.
Is pain sexy? It can be. Hypersensitivity is a by-product of arousal and the endorphin rush caused by orgasm is, again, close to the rush from pain. Meditative and disociative states caused by extended endorphin release from sexual activity (AKA sub-space). And any number of more mainstream mildly kinky stuff, such as being scratched by a fingernail. There’s probably been a lot of books published on this.
Is it then, still pain? Yes.
The signals are identical. The biochemistry is close… Even the perception is near. And there are very definitely practices that are both painful and pleasurable, you don’t even need to look too far to find them. Fetish couture and culture saturates the everyday ( and there’s a probably whole other discussion on this, feminism and sexuality that I’d love to read.).
And no. It’s not still pain.
It’s enjoyment, it’s pleasure. It’s been transformed though our perception and the context and setting in which it’s being administered. Something that is painful in one setting can be intensely pleasurable in another. And that varies from individual to individual and even day to day.
So, maybe it is something else, but what, I don’t know. Degree seems to be the only indicator of what is and what’s not pain, and even that can vary the same way a definition of what’s considered sexy can vary.
Shakespeare got it on the money, I reckon. I’ll drop in the first half of the more famous quotation about what is and isn’t when it comes to words.
'Tis but thy name that is my enemy;
Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
What’s Montague? it is nor hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!
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Much like how, in one context vividly hallucinating and believing it’s absolutely real is beautiful in a dream, but terrifying and dangerous in schizophrenia.
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Absolutely. And it can also just be a really good night out in if you’re into your hallucinogens. Context, innit. 
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All of that I agree with, and understand. You get similar phenomena in psychedelics, in music, in whisky; once you get far enough into something, the nature of the sensation becomes less important than the intensity of it.
That explains the masochistic side of SM. But it doesn’t explain the S side. That, I don’t get.
(note: incomprehending, not condemning)
I kinda do, but I’m like, pretty much the worst person to explain it.
There is a certain amount of context to things, true. For once, I’m trying to limit the amount of TMI here, but there are many things that we’ll do in the context of “play time” that if someone did to me randomly, I would not enjoy them one bit! (First consideration: is this someone with which I agreed to play? Go from there …) Yeah, I’m a masochistic under the right circumstances, but I don’t get turned on if I stub my toe.
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Exactly. Pain is an experience. Nociception is merely the signaling elicited by adverse or harmful stimuli (according to evolutionary standards, that is).
For those not wired to enjoy the ‘M’ part of SM but wanting to know how pain can be pleasurable, here’s a simple question: do you enjoy fizzy drinks and sparkling water? Because that wonderful bubbly sensation of a thousand little lightning strikes on your tongue is mediated by your nociceptive system. And you love it. You crave it. Okay, I crave it.
I don’t get SM myself but I probably drink more sparkling beverages than still ones during the summer months.
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There is a small problem with the horny teenage boy being the big pot-o-gold for the VGame business. Specifically it is no longer the truth. Check out this PDF from theesa.com:
http://www.theesa.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/ESA-Essential-Facts-2015.pdf
Quick overview, average game player is 35yo while 44% are women. The average number of years they have been playing VGames is 13 years. Which sort of passes them little twits up in a hurry. A search for specific data on mobile games tends to show higher percentages for women. Although I haven’t found the updated value.
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A thread on kink would probably be very enlightening to us vanilla people. Someone who is, uh, qualified should get on that.
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Anytime you can quote Shakespeare in a discussion about S&M and make an incredibly valid point, I’m there. It’s a failure of vocabulary, but it’s deeper than that. Our communal definitions of words fall prey to that great middle of the bell curve. So, I’m a librarian and there’s a growing movement to examine what subject terms we use to describe all types of content because there’s a heteronormative bias (and I’m talking stuff a bit more subtle than flesh-colored peach crayons).
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Is it actually Stiletto Throatpuncher?
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Well, where were you when we were brainstorming baby names? I could have used the input. In all seriousness, I wanted to name her Tuesday Valentine because she was due on a Tuesday that happened to be Valentine’s Day. That suggestion got the ax quickly due to some specious reasoning that it sounded like “a stripper name.”
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There’s worse stripper names than “Tuesday Valentine” and there’s plenty worse things to be than a stripper.
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Asking for a friend?
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I’m a pint of Madagascar vanilla ice cream with specks. I am far, far from qualified to initiate—oh wait, right, the target audience is vanilla. Good point.
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