Marking

What is marking?

Marking is deliberately leaving a visible trace on someone else’s skin: a bruise, a welt, a hickey, a bite print. It differs from ordinary impact play in that the point is not the act but the outcome. What is still there three days later is what it was about.

What marking looks like in practice

The conversation is about spots, not about tools.

Take the usual case. Two people agree that marks are welcome, with one limit: nothing above the collar, nothing on the forearms. That is not prudishness but scheduling. There is a meeting on Monday.

That pattern shows up in the research too. Michelle Drouin and colleagues asked 513 American adults about the biggest mark they had ever picked up, and published it in Sexual Medicine. The words most strongly tied to deliberate marks were body parts that clothing covers: buttocks, breast, chest. For the marks that came about by accident, those were the face and cheek instead, and they were described with heavier words, like blood and “big mark”.

Anyone who marks on purpose chooses the spot. Anyone who doesn’t lets the spot choose itself.

Where the word marking comes from

From boundary-drawing, by way of French.

The Etymologisch Woordenboek van het Nederlands records the Dutch markeren as “to indicate with marks”, with marqueren “to draw, to mark” in Meijer in 1669 as the oldest citation. Borrowed from the French marquer, perhaps via the German markieren, and that French word comes from Norman French merc “mark”, from Old Norse merki: mark, boundary marker. To mark someone is, linguistically, to set a boundary post.

The execution is less poetic. Capillaries tear, blood runs under the skin, and the color you see is a breakdown product. What people think they can read from it is rarely right. Sabine Maguire and colleagues went through all the available studies in Archives of Disease in Childhood and found that doctors dated a bruise correctly to within 24 hours in fewer than 40 percent of cases; estimating age from color, they said, has “no scientific basis”. Their material was about children, so don’t just carry it over to adult skin.

Why people want to mark

Because a scene ends and a mark does not.

An evening is over the moment the clothes go back on, but a mark on your hip is still there on Wednesday, and every time you sit down there is a small something. Drouin and colleagues describe how marks work, for some people in the kink community, as a sign of pride or achievement, especially among masochists, and how they sometimes serve to prompt aftercare.

• For the one wearing the mark, marking stretches the scene far into the working week, without anyone having to be there.
• For the one making it, the mark is the only honest feedback on their own dosing. You only see the next day what you actually did yesterday.
• For a couple, an agreed spot is a private language that carries on through a birthday at the in-laws’.

The limit on it: a mark proves nothing about how well a scene went, and unlike almost everything in BDSM, marking cannot be undone the moment someone changes their mind.

How people do marking in practice

Usually with what is happening anyway, and with an agreement around it.

There are roughly three routes. The strike, which produces bruises and welts in spanking or caning. The mouth, meaning hickeys and bite prints, which land most often on the neck and shoulder and are therefore the hardest to hide. And the permanent route of branding and cutting, which does not belong on one checklist with the first two.

Careful or sloppy is not in the severity, but in whether both the spot and the duration were named beforehand. “Marks are allowed” is not an agreement; “marks are allowed, nothing above the collar, and next week I’m at the physio” is. That is the hard limit people forget to say out loud because they take it for granted.

Misconceptions about marking

“A big mark means it went too far.” With Drouin the opposite held: the deliberate marks were on covered spots and sounded mild, the unintended ones were on face and cheek and sounded worse.

“You can tell how old a mark is from the color.” Maguire’s review found the opposite: any color can appear on a fresh, half-old and old mark, and agreement between raters was poor.

“A mark is private.” Not the moment it’s visible. Drouin and colleagues state that with no mark can an outsider determine whether it came from a consensual situation. Kate Jansen and colleagues surveyed 301 BDSM practitioners for The Journal of Sexual Medicine: nearly 40 percent had faced discrimination in healthcare at least once over their kink, and more than 20 percent had wanted to raise something kink-related with their doctor and didn’t.

What I see myself

I’m Victor, a gigolo, twenty-five years in BDSM and trained as a psychotherapist. With marking the question often comes in the other way around: people don’t ask whether they can have a mark, they ask whether it will be gone by Thursday.

Almost no one says the duration out loud, while everyone has a number in mind. The spot is fine, the length of time is not, and that conversation comes three days later anyway. So I ask about the week after as standard. Gym, sauna, holiday, a child watching while they change.

My own limit sits hard here: permanent damage I don’t do. Anything that leaves a scar is on my list of no-gos.

What you can do yourself

• Agree on the spot before you agree on the act. “Anything a T-shirt covers” is a usable limit; “a bit of marking” is not.
• Add a duration and check next week’s calendar. Ask about swimming lessons, physio, the beach and the in-laws before there is a mark, not after.
• Work out together what you’ll say if someone asks. Anyone who only thinks of it at the coffee machine invents something that doesn’t hold up later.
• Tell a doctor what happened if you need care. More than one in five practitioners leaves something kink-related unsaid with the doctor, and someone who doesn’t know looks in the wrong place.
• Keep the permanent versions out of this. Marking with bruises and marking with a scar are two separate decisions.

More on marking

Within this glossary, bruising is about the bruise itself and how it heals, and hard limit is about how “nothing above the collar” becomes an agreement that holds. On the blog, safety in the BDSM context sets out how such agreements fit into a session.

Beyond that, the study in Sexual Medicine is open; the tables show, per kind of mark, how often people allow it and how often they rule it out. Why color says so little is in the review by Maguire and colleagues.

Where this fits on this site

If you want to try out what it’s like to keep marks from an evening, without having to work out yourself where they may go and how long they stay, that belongs with a BDSM date. That page also sets out how we lay that down beforehand.

Sources

• An exploration of marks/injuries related to BDSM sexual experiences. Michelle Drouin, Ellis Hernandez, Anthony Machette, Justin R. Garcia & Ryan L. Boyd, Sexual Medicine 11(3), qfad020, 2023. Peer-reviewed study of 513 American adults and the only one that systematically maps marks from BDSM. Gives the finding that the most allowed and inflicted marks are bruises, cuts and abrasions, sore joints, welts and inflammation; that deliberate marks are linguistically tied to normally covered body parts (buttocks, breast, chest) and unintended ones to face and cheek and to heavier words like blood and big mark; that marks serve for some members of the community as a sign of pride or achievement and sometimes to prompt aftercare; and the finding that for outsiders it would in all cases be hard to tell whether a mark came from a consensual or non-consensual experience.
• Can you age bruises accurately in children? A systematic review. Sabine Maguire, Mala K. Mann, John Sibert & Alison Kemp, Archives of Disease in Childhood 90(2), 187–189, 2005. Systematic review of 167 studies reviewed, and the authoritative answer to whether you can estimate the age of a bruise. Gives the finding that any color can appear on fresh, half-old and old marks, that doctors dated a mark correctly to within 24 hours in fewer than 40 percent of cases, that agreement within and between raters was poor, and the conclusion that estimating the age of a bruise from color has “no scientific basis”. The study is about children.
• Mistrust and missed opportunities: BDSM practitioner experiences in healthcare. Kate L. Jansen, Adam L. Fried, Christianna Goetz & Saleenjit Kang, The Journal of Sexual Medicine 21(11), 1047–1053, 2024. Survey of 301 people who count themselves part of the BDSM community, focused on what happens to injury once a doctor is involved. Gives the figures that nearly 40 percent had at least one experience of discrimination in healthcare over membership of the kink community, that more than 20 percent had wanted to discuss kink-related topics with the doctor and did not, and that those who concealed injury scored higher on mistrust of doctors and had more experience of discrimination.
• markeren. Etymologiebank, hosted by the Instituut voor de Nederlandse Taal, with the entry from the Etymologisch Woordenboek van het Nederlands (Philippa et al., 2003-2009). The national etymological authority for Dutch. Gives the meaning “to indicate with marks”, the oldest citation marqueren “to draw, to mark” in Meijer in 1669, the borrowing from French marquer and possibly via German markieren, and the origin of that French word from Norman French merc “mark” and ultimately Old Norse merki “mark, boundary marker”.

Related terms

Marking is the intended outcome of impact play, and the only part of it that still makes decisions for you the next morning.

• Bruising. The bruise itself: how it forms, how long the color stays and what you leave alone.
• Impact play. The family of acts most marks come out of.
• Biting. The marking that needs only a mouth, and that lands most often on the neck.
• Abrasion. Skin work where the trace stays shallow and is usually gone within a few days.
• Branding. The other extreme: a trace meant as a scar, and so a completely different decision.
• Hard limit. Where “nothing above the collar” belongs, and why that is said out loud beforehand.
• Nawa-ato. The trace rope leaves behind, and the Japanese word with a second meaning under it.
• Aftercare. What should happen afterward, including the conversation about what stays.
• Shaving. The opposite movement: not leaving a trace but taking something away.