Your guide to bratting in the bedroom

 

enerally speaking, when we refer to someone as a brat, it’s meant as an insult. See: “spoiled brat,” “selfish brat,” etc. But for kinksters who identify as self-proclaimed “brats” in the bedroom, brattiness is not just a point of pride, but a source of pleasure. In the BDSM world, a brat is a submissive who gets off on snarking back to their (usually) more dominant partner.

“Brats enjoy being mischievous, cheeky, sassy button-pushers who can toe the line with disobedience within power dynamics,” says kink educator Emerson Karsh. “Oftentimes, brats express their submission in a way that is amusing, consensual, and done for a reaction.”

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That last part, “done for a reaction,” is key. Brats aren’t bratty just for the sake of being annoying. They’re acting out (in a consensual, agreed-upon manner) to get their partner to respond with dominant actions. “Brats act, behave, or say things to their doms to create the opportunity for their doms to really express dominance,” says Karsh. “The reaction brats are soliciting is usually an agreed-upon punishment or action.” Sometimes a brat might be challenging their partner to “prove” their dominance, and sometimes they might just be after the thrill of pushing (again, agreed-upon) boundaries and being punished accordingly.

“Brats like being disobedient and receiving punishment,” says sociologist Julie Fennell, PhD, author of Please Scream Quietly: A Story of Kink. When they receive those punishments, brats “like to feel like they ‘earned it’ by being ‘bad,’” says Fennell, adding that many brats also enjoy feeling like they’ve been “put in their place” by their dominant partner.

Makes sense, yes? But there’s more to know about bratting in the bedroom. (Quick grammar lesson for ya: Fennell notes that kinksters commonly verb the term, thus, someone can “brat” or engage in “bratting.”) Here’s everything to know about being a BDSM brat.

What Does Being a Brat Mean?

In BDSM, a brat is defined as “someone who wants to be put in their place by a dom in the form of discipline because they’ve acted bratty, acted out, or misbehaved,” explains relationship coach Carmel Jones, sex expert at The Big Fling. While the brat is still a sub, the brat might push back or act demanding and shout orders to their dom in the hopes of triggering them to discipline them more harshly in a way that caters to their fantasy of being reprimanded in a sexual way, Jones adds.

As is true of all sexual identities and proclivities, there are various shades of brattiness—different ways one might experience and identify with the brat role. “Brats are typically submissives who are mischievously defiant,” says sexologist and host of American Sex Podcast, Sunny Megatron, Editor-in-Chief of kink-focused Zipper Magazine. “Although less common, dominant brats exist, too.”

To understand the brat spectrum, we must first understand the difference (and the relationship) between “tops,” “bottoms,” and “switches.”

“In BDSM terminology, there is a broad category called ‘bottoms,’ which refers to people who receive sensations or experiences, as opposed to ‘tops,’ which refers to people who give sensations or experiences,” Fennell explains. “‘Switches’ are people who move back and forth between these roles or who enjoy the half-way zone between them.”

While brats are often considered bottoms, most brats are, in Fennell’s opinion, best understood as “bottom-leaning switches.” While your standard submissives are “bottoms who actively enjoy being told what to do and doing it well,” Fennell explains, brats get off on rebelling against orders and toying with the power dynamic. But, as Karsh notes, this shift in the power dynamic is usually temporary, and done with the intention of the brat being “put back in their place.”

And while brats are usually considered submissives, submissiveness—and the intent of that submissiveness—can vary from brat to brat, and even from scene to scene. “The more submissive brats actively get off on feeling the exercise of someone else’s power to punish them; the brattier brats just really love pushing their top’s boundaries and seeing what they can get away with,” says Fennell.

How Does a Brat Act Out?

As for what bratting looks like in action—surprise, it varies. Brat behavior can take many forms, but generally speaking, brats gravitate toward “anything that is lighthearted, a bit mischievous, and, of course, bratty,” says Karsh. “For example, if given an order, the brat will do the exact, literal thing being ordered instead of what the dom was intending. Another bratty activity would be teasing or showing off to their dom in a setting where the dom couldn’t act.”

Again, the whole purpose of bratting is to get a dominant reaction, so brats might also frequently challenge their partners to up the ante when it comes to their punishments. Think: “Sarcastically saying things like, ‘Oh, I’m sorry, did you think you were hurting me?’ while someone is in the middle of hitting you in order to get them to hit you harder,” says Fennell.

 Other trademark brat phrases include things like, “Make me”, “That’s all?”, “You can do better than that”, “You can’t make me”, “Oh yeah? What’s the worst that can happen?”, etc. Essentially, “It’s dialogue that questions dominance and elicits a response, reaction, or action,” says Karsh.

For a picture-perfect display of bratting in pop culture, Fennell points to the 2002 BDSM rom-com, Secretary. That scene at the end when Maggie Gyllenhaal’s character carefully tidies the bed for her dom as he’s coming home, and then even more carefully places a dead bug on the pillow? Bratting at its finest.

What/Who TF Is a Brat Tamer?

The dominant counterpart for a brat is often called a “brat tamer,” says Karsh. Their job is to, you guessed it, tame the brat.

“A brat tamer is not afraid to put their foot down, is also rather cheeky, can carry out punishments, and enjoys the ‘cat-and-mouse’ play that is bratting and brat taming,” says Karsh. “A brat tamer is skilled in giving their brat space to be a brat and figuring out how to express and prove their dominance to their brat in response to their bratting—whether that be a punishment, orders, or something else.” A brat tamer’s role also involves putting a brat in their place, setting the tone of the play, establishing the rules, and, most importantly, ensuring their brat is consenting to the chosen punishment or type of play, Karsh adds.

Just as brats enjoy “earning” their punishment, a dominant brat tamer enjoys feeling like they “earned” a brat’s submission, rather than just having it handed to them, adds Fennell. Essentially, brat play is all about partners enjoying a back-and-forth game of dominance and submission.

Can You Be a Submissive in BDSM and Not Into Brat Play?

Yup! Brat play is just one of many different dynamics included under dom/sub play. If you don’t like the idea of talking back and you prefer a more submissive role, there are tons of other categories, including but not limited to: masochists, babies, victims, slaves, and good girls/good boys, explains Jones.

“Here’s a breakdown of those subcategories within the submissive archetypes of the BDSM world,” writes Jones:

• A masochist: someone who enjoys pain often to a degree of sexual gratification.
• A baby girl/baby boy: someone who is submissive while also exhibiting childlike characteristics like curiosity. They often need to be coddled.
• The victim: a form of consensual victim play. It’s typically reserved only for very experienced members of the BDSM community and always involves safe words to distinguish play from real life.
• A slave: someone who considers his/her body to be of sexual service to the demands of the dom, in a slave-like manner.
• A good girl/boy: a submissive who gets gratification from pleasing his/her/their dom counterpart. He/she/they are often rewarded with praise for being “good.”

SOURCE: COSMOPOLITAN