Inspection

What is inspection?

Inspection is a ritual within a D/s relationship where the submissive undresses, takes an agreed posture and lets herself be looked at and judged. Nothing is done and nothing is asked. The whole charge sits in the looking, and in the judgment that follows it.

What an inspection looks like in practice

Like a few minutes in which strikingly little happens.

A typical run. A posture is agreed beforehand: upright, feet apart, hands behind the neck, gaze down. On the agreed signal she undresses, stands and waits. Then comes the looking, and that lasts longer than is comfortable. Sometimes a correction is given on the posture itself, a shoulder that should go back, a chin that may come up. At the end a judgment falls: approved, or not yet, along with what should be different next time.

That judgment is the hinge of the whole scene. Make a punishment of it and you turn the part into discipline. Make a compliment of it and you turn it into praise. Both are possible, but it’s a different scene and it belongs in the talk beforehand.

An inspection rarely stands on its own. In practice it’s the opening ritual of an evening: it marks the moment ordinary interaction stops and the agreed form begins.

Where inspection comes from and why looking lands so hard

The word is older than the scene, the mechanism is universal.

Inspectie has been in Dutch since 1544, by way of the French inspection and the Latin inspectio, from inspicere: to look at, to examine. Literally, then, “to look into”. The form BDSM gave it comes from the military. According to the encyclopedia entry on the leather culture, the early leather scene is described as a closed community that arranged its ranking on a military model, complete with initiation and the demand for excellence. The muster, the line, the inspection: those forms were taken over directly.

Why a gaze lands so hard has been measured outside BDSM. Sally Dickerson and Margaret Kemeny laid 208 laboratory studies of acute stress side by side in Psychological Bulletin. Their result: tasks only provoke a cortisol response when they are uncontrollable or contain social-evaluative threat, which they describe as the possibility that your performance is judged negatively by others. Tasks that combined those two gave the largest cortisol rise and the longest recovery time.

An inspection combines exactly those two. You can steer none of it, and you’re being judged. That makes the odd feeling explainable, that standing still weighs heavier than being busy. Brad Sagarin and colleagues measured saliva around the scenes of fifty-eight BDSM practitioners and found that cortisol rose in those who were bound, received stimulation and followed instructions, and not in those who gave those instructions. The wave sits on the side that is being looked at.

What an inspection delivers

Doing something can distract. Standing still can’t, and that’s the gain.

• For the one being inspected, there’s no task to hide behind. What’s left is attention on your own body, and for many people that’s exactly the arousal: being seen while you’re not allowed to move.
• For the one inspecting, it yields information you don’t get later in the evening. Where someone holds tension, where she looks away, which remark lands.
• For the two of you together, it’s a clear threshold. Before the inspection you’re two people talking; afterward the agreement holds.

The same study that explains why it works also says where it pinches. Social-evaluative threat gave the largest reaction and the longest recovery time. A judgment about your body fades more slowly than the tension of a blow, and it can stay with you for days after. Anyone with a difficult relationship to her mirror image is not choosing the easiest form of play here.

What inspection is not

“Inspection is just humiliation.” It needn’t be. The judgment can just as well turn out approving, and many people ask for it precisely for that reason. Humiliation is one possible filling of the judgment, not the definition of the ritual.

“Nothing happens, so it’s light.” That’s the most commonly made estimate and it’s wrong. The research on acute stress shows the opposite: that not being in control and being judged together give the strongest reaction. A three-minute inspection can land heavier than half an hour of spanking.

“It’s the same as a check-up at the doctor’s.” No, and that distinction is the point. A medical exam looks for something; an inspection is there for the looking itself. Anyone who wants the medical form is playing medical play, and that’s its own scenario with its own arrangements.

What I see myself

I’m Victor, a gigolo, over twenty-five years in BDSM and trained as a psychotherapist. With an inspection I always ask one question beforehand: where do you want me to look, and where would you rather I didn’t.

Almost everyone then names a spot. A scar, a belly, a breast she has struggled with all her life. And then the same thing turns out every time: that she doesn’t want me to skip it, but that I know it’s there before I look at it. The difference between those two is the whole difference between a good scene and a wretched one.

The second thing that strikes me is the time. New participants think there has to be long looking and set aside five minutes for it. After a minute and a half someone is standing there trembling. I keep it short and say out loud when it’s done.

What you can do yourself

• Agree the posture beforehand, including where your hands are and whether you look down, because inventing something on the spot takes the form away at once.
• Say which spots are sensitive before you undress, and whether you want them named or skipped.
• Agree how the judgment sounds: approval only, or criticism too, and in what tone.
• Keep the first time short, two minutes is long enough to notice how it lands.
• Agree a signal that lets you out of the posture, separate from the safeword, in case your leg falls asleep rather than you wanting to stop.
• Take the aftercare seriously. Talk afterward about what was said and not only about how it felt; a line that stuck can still be set straight now.

Read more about inspection

On this site, high protocol lays out the evening form an inspection is usually the beginning of, the article on discipline and positions is about the postures themselves, and objectification in BDSM describes why being looked at as an object can feel freeing.

Beyond that, the meta-analysis by Dickerson and Kemeny is free to read and explains in twenty pages why being judged goes so deep.

Where this fits on my site

An inspection is one of the calmest ways to notice how an agreed form feels, without anything having to happen. On the page about the BDSM date you can read how we go over such a form beforehand.

Sources

• Acute Stressors and Cortisol Responses: A Theoretical Integration and Synthesis of Laboratory Research. Sally S. Dickerson & Margaret E. Kemeny, Psychological Bulletin 130(3), 355–391, 2004. Full text read. Supplies the meta-analysis of 208 laboratory studies, the finding that tasks only give a cortisol response when they are uncontrollable or contain social-evaluative threat (described as: the performance can be judged negatively by others), and that tasks with both features went together with the largest cortisol and ACTH rise and the longest recovery time. This is general stress research and is not about BDSM.
• Hormonal changes and couple bonding in consensual sadomasochistic activity. Sagarin, Cutler, Cutler, Lawler-Sagarin & Matuszewich, Archives of Sexual Behavior 38, 186–200, 2009. Supplies the measurement in 58 participants where cortisol rose in those who were bound, received stimulation and followed instructions, and not in those who gave the stimulation, instructions and structure.
• Inspectie. Etymologiebank, hosted by the Instituut voor de Nederlandse Taal, with the entry from Van Veen & Van der Sijs, Etymologisch woordenboek (Van Dale, 2nd edition 1997). Supplies the date 1544 and the derivation by way of French inspection from Latin inspectio, from inspicere (to look at, to examine), from in plus specere (to see, to look).
• Leather subculture. Wikipedia, chapter on the Old Guard. Supplies the description of the early leather scene as a hierarchical practice with high protocol on a military model, with initiation, brotherhood, discipline and the striving for excellence, plus the caveat that this image has been heavily romanticized in hindsight.

Related terms

• High protocol. The evening form an inspection is usually the opening ritual of.
• D/s. The relationship that gives an inspection its meaning.
• Discipline. What an inspection becomes as soon as the judgment carries consequences.
• Human furniture. The other side of being looked at, where not counting is exactly the point.
• Service-oriented submission. The broader field of rituals an inspection fits into.
• Exhibitionism. Being seen as arousal, but without judgment and without an agreed form.
• Corner time. The same standing still and waiting, but as punishment instead of inspection.
• Medical play. The same examining gaze, but with the dressing of the consulting room.
• Pinwheel. The instrument most often brought along to an inspection.
• Objectification. What an inspection turns into once the examining itself becomes the subject.
• Position training. The learning of the postures asked for in an inspection.
• Roleplay. The umbrella the inspection scene is one of the simplest scenarios of.

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