Brat

What is a brat?

Brat (Dutch: deugniet) is a submissive who deliberately pushes back, teases and seeks out the edge to provoke a reaction. The pushing back is the surrender, not the opposite of it: a brat wants something to stand against their resistance. Everything happens within what was agreed beforehand.

How a brat behaves

A brat challenges with small things. Carrying out an order just a little too slowly, making a cheeky remark, hiding something that will be needed later, walking off the moment someone comes closer.

A typical run of things: a couple agrees that the evening’s play will be about obedience. One gives a simple order, the other looks at him and does the exact opposite. What happens next is the heart of the dynamic. The one giving the order can get strict, can laugh, or can pick up the challenge and grow the game. Where it goes wrong is when he takes it personally.

What a brat is not is someone who questions the agreements themselves. The line sits at the safeword: that word always works, even in the middle of the cheekiest moment. Without such an exit, pushing back stops being readable, because then no one can tell anymore whether “no” is play or serious.

Why a brat is submissive anyway

It seems contradictory, but it fits how power exchange works. The encyclopedia describes power exchange as the empowerment of the dominant through the submission of the submissive, and adds that it is the submissive who actually holds the underlying control. A brat makes that mechanism visible instead of hiding it.

There’s also a reason not every submissive thrives on obedience. In their interview study, Hébert and Weaver asked twelve submissives about the hard parts of their role. Among the things they named were following orders and accepting decisions. That is exactly where the brat sits: someone who wants the surrender, but not through the channel of dutifully doing what they’re told.

It’s fair to add that there is no scientific research on brats themselves. The word comes from the scene, not from the literature, and what you read about it comes from people who do it.

Why people like being a brat

The appeal is in the friction. A brat doesn’t want instruction, but attention that comes back with force, and that feeling gets more intense the longer it takes to arrive.

• For the brat it delivers a form of surrender that doesn’t ask you to leave your character at the door. Someone headstrong doesn’t have to pretend they’re not.
• For the other player it makes for an active evening instead of an executing one. There’s something to win, and for many dominants that’s more appealing than compliance.
• For a couple together the payoff is usually humor. Bratting is one of the few forms of BDSM where people laugh out loud, and that lowers the threshold to try something new.

A brat dynamic shortens a fuse. If there’s already irritation between two people outside the play, challenging behavior stops being a game and becomes fuel. Then this isn’t the form to start with.

Misconceptions about brats

“A brat doesn’t really want BDSM.” Wrong. A brat looks for the same surrender as any other submissive, only through resistance. The goal isn’t to win, but to have something stand against it.

“A brat is the same as someone who steers from the bottom.” No, and that’s the most important distinction. The encyclopedia describes topping from the bottom as agreeing to surrender and then trying to steer the scene in a way that goes against the agreed power balance. With a brat, the challenging is part of that agreement.

“A brat is difficult.” Outside the play, usually not. What brats more often have in common is that they want to know whether someone holds firm, and that’s a different thing from being unmanageable.

What I make of it myself

I’m Victor, a gigolo, more than twenty-five years into BDSM and with a background as a psychotherapist. On a BDSM date I often run into brats among people who are in charge in daily life and aren’t used to simply accepting something.

It goes wrong fast if you go along with it out of annoyance. Getting strict because the play calls for it works. Getting strict because you genuinely feel bothered, the other person feels that within two seconds. Calm matters more than harshness in this dynamic.

And what strikes me every time: brats ask for aftercare more often than they expect to. The challenging costs energy, and once the play is over it falls away harder than in a session where someone only received.

What you can do yourself

• Agree that resistance is play, and agree how you leave it. A safeword separate from the play isn’t a luxury in this dynamic but the foundation.
• Say beforehand what may stand against your resistance. Holding, waiting, punishment, or nothing at all: that differs per person and it shapes the whole evening.
• Start small. One order you deliberately don’t carry out is enough to notice whether the other person finds the challenge fun or annoying.
• Don’t do this on an evening when things already chafe outside the play. Challenging behavior makes existing irritation bigger, not smaller.
• Plan time for afterward. Even someone who was cheeky all evening needs calm and contact after.

More reading on brats

On this site, the article on the power of discipline and positions is about what happens when someone does obey, which makes a useful contrast. And the thrill of roughness describes how firm play feels without turning hard.

Off this site, the study by Hébert and Weaver is the best starting point if you want to understand what submissives themselves find hard about obeying. Nothing has been published on brats themselves yet. Anyone who wants to know more reads along with the scene, not with the science.

Sources

• Perks, problems, and the people who play: A qualitative exploration of dominant and submissive BDSM roles. Ali Hébert & Angela Weaver, The Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality 24(1), 49–62, 2015. Interviews with twelve submissives; provides the finding that following orders and accepting decisions are among the hard parts of the submissive role.
• Dominance and submission. Wikipedia. Provides the description of power exchange and the finding that the submissive holds the underlying control.
• Top, bottom, switch. Wikipedia. Provides the definition of topping from the bottom, which sets brat behavior apart.

Related terms

• Bratting. The behavior itself, apart from the person showing it.
• Brat tamer. The dominant who answers the challenge instead of punishing it out of frustration.
• Bottom. The receiving role, which a brat often but not always coincides with.
• BDSM test. The questionnaire that scores brat as its own archetype.
• Submissive. The parent term, and where brat behavior within that role comes from.
• Praise kink. The opposite engine: a brat is precisely not set in motion by praise.
• Sub. The label a brat usually also is one of.
• Switch. The distinction most often confused with bratting: pushing back isn’t switching sides.
• Topping from the bottom. Steering that was not agreed, and so exactly what a brat does not do.
• Relsub is the Dutch word for the same role, though you’ll rarely come across it in practice. Almost everyone just says brat.