Scarification

What is scarification?

Scarification is deliberately damaging the skin with the intent that a permanent scar remains. It is the collective name for cutting, burning, abrading, and etching: the means differ, the goal is the same. Within BDSM it is known above all as a mark of ownership or a memory, and it is irreversible.

The four ways a scar is made

They differ in tools, not in intent.

With cutting a sterile blade goes shallowly through the upper skin layers. With branding heat does the same work: heated metal, a cautery pen, or current. The third route is abrading, where the epidermis is taken off; on this site that is at abrasion, which usually is not meant to be permanent. The fourth is etching with a caustic substance, and that I almost never come across in the Netherlands.

What comes after that no one chooses. The design you think up is an intention; what is there in a year is decided by your skin.

Why the wound has to stay open

Here is the difference with everything else on this site.

Everywhere else it holds: the faster a wound is closed, the less scar you keep. Here that is exactly what you do not want. Vincent Gabriel and colleagues note it dryly in the journal Burns: anyone who has aesthetic scarification is instructed not to treat the wound to promote closing, but to keep the open wound going, so that the chance of a scar increases.

The whole practice thereby reverses the advice every doctor gives. That is not carelessness on the part of the people who do it, it is the method. And everything that comes with an open wound (infection, blood contact, weeks of extra healing) is here not a mishap but the price the play asks.

That is why “is this safe to do” has no sensible answer with scarification. The question that counts is whether you still want to carry the outcome in ten years.

Where the word comes from

It has been in Dutch since 1597 and meant the same then: incision of the skin.

It runs through the Latin scarificatio, “the scratching open”, from scarificare. Behind that lies the Greek skariphaomai, “I scratch in”, by skariphos: a drawing stylus. That word is related to the Latin scribere, to write.

Not a factoid, but the core of the concept: the word comes from the tool you scratch with to record something. People who want this almost always say the same thing: something has to be set down.

What happens in the months after

Not what you expect. The pain is manageable, the itching is not.

Gabriel and colleagues followed five adults who had themselves branded in a studio with a stamp of 140 to 179 degrees, and asked them at set moments how it felt. An hour afterward everyone gave the pain a 0 on a scale of 10; a week later the highest score stood at 3.

The itching did the opposite. It was not there yet after an hour, rose to a 7 and a 10 in two people after a month, and in three of the five stood at a 4 after three months. Thuisarts.nl describes the same picture for scars in general: pain, itching, and a stinging or pulling feeling, sometimes long after the wound is closed.

There is another lesson in that study: for burn researchers, those five were the only available model of a fresh, deliberate burn in a healthy person.

What the law does with it

The answer is uncomfortable and does not fit in one sentence.

In Dutch criminal law, consent beforehand is not a ground that rules out punishment; that story is on the page about PRICK, with article 300 alongside it. On top of that comes the question of how heavily the injury weighs. The Supreme Court laid that out in 2018 in a summary ruling: the code gives no definition of grievous bodily harm, and the court looks at the nature of the injury, any need for and nature of medical intervention, and the prospect of full recovery.

Two things from that same ruling bear directly on scarification. Article 82 counts under grievous bodily harm the illness that leaves no prospect of complete recovery, and from the legislative history the Supreme Court derives that disfigurement falls under it too. A permanent scar you ordered yourself is legally not automatically something other than a permanent scar inflicted on you.

That there is prosecution is not stated; with consensual play that rarely happens. What is stated: your agreement settles nothing further.

Misconceptions about scarification

“If it is done neatly, it heals fast.” Fast healing is here not a success but a failure, because then too little is left. Anyone who wants it sharp keeps the wound open longer and deliberately takes more risk.

“It is a tattoo without ink.” No. A tattoo puts in pigment and is predictable. Scarification puts in tissue damage and lets your skin make something of it itself.

“I barely feel it anyway.” For the hour after, that is often true. The month after is underrated: the itching ran to a 10, on the one spot you are not allowed to touch.

What I see myself

I am Victor, a gigolo, twenty-five years active in BDSM and trained as a psychotherapist. Scarification is among the handful of things I do not do. Anyone who does want it hears no sermon from me.

From that background I see two very different wishes sitting under the same request. One is: I want something to stay behind. That is a wish to keep, and I understand it. The other is: I want to get rid of something, and this brings relief. That is a different question, and you do not solve it with a nicer pattern. If you recognize yourself in that second one, talk to your doctor about it first.

And then the practical part. Anyone who brings this up with me almost always does so on an evening when the feeling is running high. I then say the same thing: write the wish down with the date on it and pick it up again in three months. What is still there then is a decision. The rest was a feeling, and feelings you do not have to put in your skin.

What you can do yourself

• Give yourself months. A wish that is the same after half a year is something other than a wish from tonight.
• Find a professional and not a well-meaning partner, and only let sterile single-use material be used that no one else has touched.
• Ask beforehand what the aftercare looks like; here it differs from ordinary wound advice.
• Count on itching, not on pain, and work out how you will endure it without touching the wound.
• Choose the spot with your head: shoulders, sternum, and upper arms are known for thick scars.
• See a doctor for pus, increasing redness, or fever.

More on scarification

On this site the full risk story is at bloodplay, and safety in the BDSM context describes how you make choices like this without reassuring yourself. Beyond this site, the study by Gabriel and colleagues is free to read, and the Supreme Court’s summary ruling sets out in plain language what a court looks at.

Sources

• Response of human skin to esthetic scarification. Vincent A. Gabriel, Elizabeth A. McClellan & Richard H. Scheuermann, Burns 40(7), 1338–1344, 2014 (DOI 10.1016/j.burns.2014.01.005, checked against Crossref; the PMC version carries the title with aesthetic, the publisher version with esthetic). Five adults who had themselves branded in a studio, with skin samples beforehand and after an hour, a week, and one, two, and three months. Gives the instrument temperatures of 140 to 179 degrees, the pain scores of 0 an hour afterward and at most 3 after a week, the itch scores that rose to 10 after a month and in three of the five still stood at 4 after three months, and the finding that anyone who has aesthetic scarification is instructed not to treat the wound to promote closing but to keep the open wound going to increase the chance of a scar.
• Supreme Court 3 July 2018, ECLI:NL:HR:2018:1051. Summary ruling on grievous bodily harm, Criminal Division, case number S 17/01374. Gives the finding that the Dutch Criminal Code contains no definition of grievous bodily harm, the description in article 82 Sr under which the illness falls that leaves no prospect of complete recovery, the general viewpoints of the nature of the injury, any need for and nature of medical intervention, and the prospect of full recovery, and the derivation from the legislative history that loss of the use of a sense, disfigurement, and paralysis are also to be regarded as grievous bodily harm.
• Scarificatie. Etymologiebank (Instituut voor de Nederlandse Taal), with the entries from P.A.F. van Veen & N. van der Sijs, Etymologisch woordenboek, 2nd ed. 1997, and N. van der Sijs, Chronologisch woordenboek, 2001. Gives the dating of 1597 for the meaning “incision of the skin”, and the derivation via Latin scarificatio (“the scratching open”) and scarificare from Greek skariphaomai (“I scratch in”) by skariphos (“drawing stylus”), related to Latin scribere.
• Litteken dat klachten geeft. Thuisarts.nl (Dutch College of General Practitioners, Federation of Medical Specialists, and Patient Federation Netherlands). Gives that a scar that does not heal well can cause complaints such as pain, itching, and a stinging or pulling feeling, and the distinction between the thick red scar and the scar that grows larger than the original wound.

Related terms

• Cutting. The form with a blade, with the spots on the body that produce a thick scar.
• Branding and brandmerken. The form with heat, in English and in Dutch.
• Abrasion. Abrading the skin, usually without anything having to stay behind.
• Bloodplay. Where the whole story about working sterile and STI status is.
• Marking. The same need in temporary form, with a mark that fades on its own.
• Bruising. The bruise that stays for days instead of years.
• Edgeplay. The category scarification falls into.
• Knifeplay. The same tool, but with the skin kept closed.
• Needle play. Through the skin without anything staying behind, with the Dutch rules alongside.
• Play piercing. The piercing that goes away again after the scene.
• PRICK. The frame in which the question of personal responsibility and Dutch criminal law stand side by side.
• Hard limit. Where many people place this subject, myself included.