Although the Femdom scene is about women dominating men, it was men who created it. Because of this, most of its rituals are very masculine in character. For instance, men go to a Dominatrix to be whipped, spanked or tortured, which is a very macho form of domination. Men have been whipping and beating slaves, children and women for centuries, to assert their power over them. So is this behaviour appropriate for women?
Up until the 20th century, it was commonplace for parents and schools to beat children. The justification of this was that, “if you spare the rod, you spoil the child." Child rearing was cruel in other ways. Male child experts in the early 20th century were advising mothers that picking up crying babies only encouraged them to cry more. They even advised mothers to lock a baby in a room on its own, if it cried too much. Mothers followed this advice, even though it went against their natural instincts to comfort and care for babies.
Fortunately, one male child expert, Dr Spock, broke ranks and in 1946 published a book called, "The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care," this book encouraged mothers to follow their natural maternal instincts in caring for their children. As the result, his book became a international best-seller and changed the way children were brought up in Western countries. Then, with the rise of Feminism in the 1960s, mothers questioned violence against children. As women became empowered and had rights to bring up children in the way they wanted, they rejected all forms of physical punishment. They even had the cane banned in schools.
We see a similar pattern in animal training. Again, up until the 20th century, animals were trained by punishment, but as women became empowered, and got involved in animal training, they questioned the use of punishment. This led to a more humane form of animal training, in recent years, where animals are far less beaten or hurt. Though animal training was also influenced by Behaviourism which discovered that rewards were more effective than punishment in training animals and people.
In 2005, BBC TV produced a show called, "Bring Your Husband To Heel," it was about a dog trainer called Annie Claydon who showed wives how to train their husbands, using animal training methods. Although it was suppose to be a comical program many people didn’t get the joke. There was so many complaints about the show that the BBC cancelled it. The biggest complaint was that people thought that it demeaning for men to be trained like an animal. But there is another way of looking at this.
It has been recognized that dogs can be dangerous animals and for this reason it is recommended that dog-owners should train their dogs, so they have control over them. This is because a properly trained dog is far less likely to attack people or children, than an untrained or badly trained dog. But men are far, far more dangerous than dogs, as men are far more likely to attack their wives and family than any dog and do far more harm. Men are far more likely to kill their wives and children than the family pet. This is why it is important that women learn how to train and control men, for their own self-protection.
Now, training men like dogs is a common Femdom fantasy, but Femdom uses old fashion methods in training men, by beating them. While Annie Claydon, in her show, used more humane, up-to-date methods. Although using animal training on people is not a new idea, it has been employed by Behaviour Psychologists since the end of the 19th century. Behaviour Psychology has been the result of the criticism of psychology. Which many scientists claim is not a true science as it is only based on theories, speculations, opinions and guesswork, so it has no hard science in it. For this reason psychology can be harmful because psychologists can make diagnosis on mental patients, but people are not aware that this diagnosis can be based on guesswork and opinions.
For instance they can diagnose people as schizophrenic or paranoid with little regard for the harm, a wrong diagnosis can do to the patient. They can get away with this, because once a person is diagnosis with a mental illness, people will no longer will take what they say, seriously. This means they can find their basic human rights taken from them. Another problem is that criminals can get out of jail by telling a psychologists what he wants to hear and be free to commit more crimes. Which can be a big problem if the criminal is a murderer.
For this reason Behaviourism only uses observable facts. They began with animal studies, like the famous Ivan Pavlov experiments on dogs demonstrating classical conditioning. Pavlov managed to make a dog salivate by ringing a bell by associating the sound of the bell with food. Then animal studies were used on humans. Like the infamous "Little Albert experiment," by John B. Watson, which today would not be allowed, as it would be seen as child abuse.
Watson experimented on a 9 month baby called Albert. He showed Albert a white rat and he had no fear of it. So then Watson showed him the white rat again but at the same time made a loud noise by hitting a metal pipe with a hammer. Because of the loud noise the baby cried but then associated the white rat with the loud noise and after that he cried whenever he saw the white rat. This type of experiment gave Behaviourism a bad name. Then John B. Watson was to make an extraordinary claim, which frightened many people, as he made it sounded like Behaviour Psychology, was simply brainwashing. He wrote. -
"Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I'll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select – doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief and, yes, even beggar-man and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors."
Behaviourists hadn't discovered anything new. Religions have known how to brainwash people for thousands of years. The only thing shocking about Behaviourism is that it brings this out into the open. It also claims that you can train people with the same methods you train animals. All the Behaviourists did was to observe and test what type of training was most effective, using scientific methods. The way people are trained is through reward and punishment, and it has to be said that men generally like to use punishment, while women prefer rewards.
Both punishment and reward was first used in early Behaviourism but later on, B. F. Skinner demonstrated that rewards were far more effective for training animals and people than punishment. His ideas were used by the military, advertisers and animal trainers. The reason why rewards are better than punishment is not hard to work out. Because if you only motivate people through punishment to do work, then what you have is slavery which causes a lot of resentment.
But even low rewards can cause problems. In sweatshops where people are overworked and underpaid, the standard of workmanship is generally poor, simply because people feel exploited and unappreciated and therefore have no interest or pride in their work. Another example of this was in the British army in World War 1 where it was discovered that private soldiers were deliberately acting if they were stupid because they also felt unappreciated.
The soldiers gave their officers a hard time by pretending they didn't understand or misunderstood, what they were being ordered to do. Therefore, the officers would get frustrated by spending a long time trying to explain what he wanted. This was because there was class snobbishness, where the British upper-class thought working people were stupid and the working class resented this. So they used this prejudice to punished the upper class officers by pretending to be really stupid. This led to a military discipline offence called, 'dumb insolence,' which is just another term for passive aggression.
Animal trainers used Skinner's work because they found that rewards were the only way they could train dolphins and small whales. Also, this was a far safer way of training large animals like big cats or elephants. Upsetting a large animal by punishing them, is a dangerous thing to do, as these animals have been known to seek revenge and kill trainers when given the chance.
So it suggests that if femdom was created by women they wouldn’t use punishment as a means to control and train men. But because it is about men’s fantasies, in the minds of many femdom men a dominatrix tying up a man and whipping him is symbolic of her dominating him. Though it is not in reality as he is paying her to do this to him. Whereas true dominance in the real world is when a man always does what a women tell him to do.
We can see in the case of Annie Claydon, she far preferred to use rewards to train both dogs and men. But men prefer punishment because force and aggression are masculine characteristics. But another reason is that it is simple and direct and so easy to understand. While training through rewards can be a lot more complicated. Because it involves keen observation and understanding of how the person or animal you are attempting to train, thinks and feels. Observation and empathy are generally feminine qualities.
So, modern training methods is the study of human and animal behaviour and trying to understand why animals and men behave they way they do. Then to encourage, the behaviour you want through rewards, like food, petting and praise. Modern trainers also have the attitude that if a trained animal does something wrong, then it is the trainer’s fault and not the animals. Therefore, there is no reason why a trainer should want to punish an animal.
So how does this work out in practise? For something simple would be to train a dog to sit on command. The trainer holds up a dog treat above the dog's head, which gets the dogs attention. She then slightly moves forward, to cause the dog to retreat just enough to sit down. While at the same time, she gives the command, "sit" just before the dog's bottom hits the ground. She then rewards the dog with the treat and with petting and praise. So in the dog's mind, is the association between the word "sit", it sitting down and then getting food. This then is repeated many times until the dog will automatically sit on command, without having to be tricked into sitting, or given a treat.
Annie Claydon in one of her BBC shows got a woman to train a man to do the washing up. The women phrased the man and said nice things to him. She even petted him like a dog by stroking his back as he did the washing up and even gave him a tip-bit though a biscuit for humans, rather than a dog biscuit. So she made washing up a pleasant experience which means he will more that likely want to do it again.
Women can get men to do other things and can observe his behaviour and praise him, whenever he does something she wants him to do. Or if he tends to be obedient she can re-enforce this by when she order him to do something and then praise him when he obeys her. Repetition is another part of training, if she gets the man to do as he is told a number of times, it became automatic for him to obey her. The military uses this method to train soldiers by giving them an enormous number of orders until obeying orders come second nature to soldiers. Likewise, the more times a man obeys orders from a woman, the more habitual it becomes for him, to obey her.
It is claimed that in dog training it is important to establish who is the alpha leader. The old-fashion way was by the cruel method of tying a dog to a post and then beating it to establish who is the boss. Modern trainers have realised that such extreme methods are not needed. A dog can be trained into total obedience without needing to hurt or punish it.
A lot of dog training was influenced by observations of wolves in zoos, where a wolf pack was dominated by a alpha male and female. But that all changed when wolf packs were observed in the wild and it was discovered that wolf packs were family groups. The so-called alpha male and female were simply the parents of their grown up cubs. Whereas wolves in zoos were just captured wolves who weren’t related to each other and just thrown together in a cage. So their behaviour would be very different to that of wolves in the wild, because wolves in zoos were far more aggressive to each other.
Animal trainers are taught a lot about body language. This is because animals don't speak, but communicate with each other through body language and so animals better understand this, than what we do. This means, animal trainers have to be aware of their body language, to know how to communicate with animals. Because humans are generally not conscious of their own body language. Though it can be read by other people but mostly on the unconscious level.
Although there can be a differences of opinion about this subject. For instance body language experts tell politicians in Britain that if they stand with their legs wide apart it shows they are a dominant person who is in charge. The problem is that in the gay scene a man who stands with his legs wide apart is signalling he wants a prick up his arse. Which I don’t think is the message politicians want to give to the public.
In the USA there was a argument between two dog-training experts, Cesar Millan and Victoria Stilwell. The disagreement is that Cesar Millan believes strongly that the dog-owner needs to take the alpha position and be the pack leader, to successfully in training dogs. While Victoria Stillwell disagrees and claims this is an old-fashion idea and trying to be an alpha leader is not required. This can be seen as the different ways men and women think about this. But although Victoria Stilwell doesn’t have to try to be a pack leader as it is her natural way of behaving.
In her films Victoria Stilwell can get instant obedience from unruly dogs that won’t obey their owners. So her body language and tone of her voice, clearly shows to dogs, that she is the boss. That is the reason why she finds training dogs so easy, she doesn't have to try to be the pack leader, because her normal body language tells dogs very clearly, that's what she is.
The real issue between them is that Cesar Millan believes that to establish the alpha position the owner needs to restrain the dog by holding it down. Which although is nowhere as bad as beating the dog, it is still too much for Victoria Stillwell. She claims that even this, is cruel to dogs. She campaigns against animal cruelty of all kinds, like her strong opposition to choke, prong and shock collars being used on dogs. Though she will recommend male dogs being castrated if they are too aggressive, and for dogs to be put-down if they make unprovoked attacks on children.
Because Victoria Stillwell is a woman, she focuses a lot on positive training methods, of rewards and observing dog behaviour to understanding what it thinks and feels. People can learn a lot from animal training in child-care. As some people can unwittingly train their children to be the opposite of what they want, through lack self-awareness. The classic and obvious example of this would be the father complaining about his son's bad language, when he grumbles. "My bloody kid swears all the fuckin time, I can't think where the fuck he gets it from."
When training through rewards, the trainer has to be aware of what the animal or person they are trying to train, thinks are rewards. An example of this, is again in child-care, when parents have a extravert child who want to be the centre of attention. If the parents, do not give the child attention when they are sensible, but give them a lot of attention, when they are disruptive, they can unwittingly, train their child, to be anti-social. This is because these type of children will prefer the negative attention where the parent is shouting at them or punish them, to getting no attention at all.
Parents who are more intelligent and self-aware, may realise that extravert children craves attention and use this to train them. So, all they do is ignore the children when they are misbehaving and only give them attention when they are acting sensibly. Which is the opposite to how most parent would react. They may go on to use the child’s need for attention as a reward, when teaching them. Though this may not work so well with introverted children, who may not want too much attention and prefers to be left alone. So what works for one child may not work for another.
This can cause problem with femdom couples. A woman might be encouraged to spank her husband when he misbehaves but if he likes being spanked by her, then it is not a punishment but a reward. So by spanking him she only encourages him to misbehave more. So what is reward or punishment for one person may be the exact opposite for another person.
Women have one powerful tool in training men and that is nagging. Now, this may be a surprise to many women who have nagged their husbands for years and it hasn't worked. The reason is that most women use nagging in a negative way. The reason why nagging can be very effective in training men, is that it is exactly the same method used by religions, governments and advertiser to indoctrinate the people. All they do is to repeat the same idea over and over again, which is what nagging is. But to be effective, it has to about what you want and not what you don't want.
So if when a woman nags her husband and tells him repeatedly that he is a "no good, lazy, good-for-nothing." All she is doing is brainwashing him into believing this to be true and he becomes more lazy. If she nags him that, "You, never bring me flowers and always forget my birthday," she is unwittingly indoctrinating him to do that.
So nagging has to be positive. If a husband does something the wife wants him to keep on doing, then she needs to let him know and give some phrase for it. Some women may complain they do this anyway and it doesn't get results, and this is where knowledge of animal training is needed. Animal trainers have to learn self-awareness and when something is not working find out what it is, and may find something they are doing has confused the animal. It is very easy to give an animal or a man mixed messages, which can sabotage the training.
Some wives object to this, claiming that praising men, is pandering to their egos, which is what women have been doing for centuries. Also, some women complain that she has to praise men to get what she wants, but she doesn't get any praise in return. So she needs to reward him for giving her praise so she might have to praise him for praising her. Women have naturally used positive reinforcement on children for thousands of years. When women don't listen to old fashion male child experts, they normally praise children and give them rewards and encouragement, to train them to be better people. What works for children, but also works on men and animals.
Another objection, is that some people claim it is all about manipulating people, and yes, this is true. If you are a big and strong man, as portrayed by John Wayne or Clint Eastward and not afraid to use violence, you don't need to manipulate anyone, you just tell them, "do this, or else". But if you are not a big macho man, then you have to use more clever methods to get what you want. Positive reinforcement, is a far more humane method of training people, that force and intimidation.
However, it has to be admitted that many people do fear manipulation. What people like in the John Wayne approach, is that it is direct and easy to understand. Whereas people fear manipulation, as they may not understand what is being done to them. This is why many men prefer a woman who is obviously dominant and tell them directly what she wants him to do, because he knows what is going on. Rather that a manipulative woman who can completely confuse him. More so, if she is not very good at manipulation and gives him contradictory messages.
Another point is that men use negative reinforcement on each other and on women. In competitive games men try to undermine the confidence of the people he is playing against. Some players have discovered that extreme insults can get a opposing players so upset and so they won’t play so well. Or try to get their revenge and commit fouls on the insulting player which means they are penalised by the referee. So insulting the opposition can be a method of winning games.
Men even make a competitive game out of insulting each other. They call it 'banter' where the cleverest insult wins the game. Unfortunately, they also play this game with women and even children, to undermine their confidence. When challenge about this behaviour the response is always, "can't you take a joke?" But it is not about the joke because a person with no confidence is a lot easier to dominate and this is why men do this. Surely positive reinforcement used by women is far, far better than negative reinforcement used by men. Though admittedly, some women will also use insults to put other people down. There has been cases where bulling teenage girls have driven other teenage girls to suicide, through insulting and abusive behaviour.
Animal trainers can make animals do amazing things, but the act of training an animal requires time and patients. To get an animal to do a circus act, requires a trainer to break down the whole act into small pieces and then teach it, bit by bit. The same can be true for a woman training a man to do something he may not wish to do. For instance, a wife may have a husband who was never taught to do housework, and has no interest in learning. If she is a bossy woman and he is submissive, then it is not a problem, she can order her husband, to do it. However, if she hasn't this amount of control over him, she can use positive reinforcement.
She can start by asking her husband to help her do just small things for her. She then should try to make it a pleasant experience, for him, by being friendly and giving him praise and thanks for what he is doing. Over time, she can start to gradually give him more of the housework. But do it slowly so he doesn’t realise what is going on and still needs to ensure the housework is still a pleasant experience for him, so praise and little rewards are still needed. When he is used to doing this, she can ask him to do some of it on his own. Then start to sometimes help him but others times to leave him to do it by himself. Until finally she helps him less and less, until it becomes his job to do it all the time.
As the result, the wife has trained her husband to do the housework without him being aware she did this. And she even may have brainwashed him to enjoy doing housework. Victoria Stillwell talks about, "setting the animal up for success," in other words making is as easy for the animal as possible . The same would be true of in training a man. Though the difference would be, the reason you take small steps with a man, is not to make it too obvious that he is being trained.
What a animal is feeling is generally fairly obvious to those who know a animal’s body language. Animal trainers can easy work out how dogs are feeling, by the action of their tails, ears and general body language. So they know the best way to reward it. It’s not so easy with human beings, because human can hide or disguise their emotions. This is true of many men brought up in a macho environment who have learnt, not to display any feelings. Men learn to act differently to what they actually feel, to survive in the macho world.
As a general rule if a woman says something that upsets a man she is unlikely to do that again. But in male company of a man gets upset by what some other man says, it is very likely other men will think it fun to use the same insult again to upset him. Then only exception to this is if he is a very violent man and upsetting him could result in him assaulting the person who is insulting him. So men who are not violent learn not to respond to any insults or show any weakness. This then can make it difficult for women to work out what men men are thinking and feeling. But not all men are the same.
Some men can respond positively when a woman shouts at him and acts like a sergeant major, but other men may hate this and display passive aggression. They have this problem in sport psychology. Coaches have found that you can strongly motivate some players by shouting insults at them, but with others, it has the opposite effect. So some players need praise and encouragement to perform at their best, while others just need, "a good kick up the backside." This means that keen observation, flexibility and an open mind are very important in training men.
Some woman may complain that they don't want to train men or play power games with them. Unfortunately, just because many women do not want to play games with men, it doesn't mean men won't play power games with women. Men are naturally competitive, this is why they like sport and even war. They also bring their competitive instincts into their relationships with women.
For instance, if woman is worried about her weight and tells a caring woman, she is likely to reassure her and tell her she has nothing to worry about. But if she tells a competitive man her fears about her weight he is likely to see this as a weakness he can exploit and tell her she is too fat. He might just see it as a game where he gains advantage over another person, but the end result she could end up in hospital or even die of anorexic, because she listen to the opinion of an idiot.
In the power game between the sexes, men have the advantage of size, strength, aggression and violence. This is how men have dominated women for thousands of years. Even if some men do not use violence, they can still use the threat of violence to intimidate women. So women have to be clever to deal with this, which is why, many dominant women are also very intelligent women. Lack of intelligence is not a problem when using masculine forms of domination, it is just “do this or else”. But intelligence is essential if women want to control men. If a woman doesn't use her natural feminine wiles properly, they can be ineffective and can achieve the opposite results to what was intended. As we have seen in the case of negative nagging.
Fortunately, for women, the methods women can use to win the battle of the sexes has now become a science. Academic women can study Behaviourist psychology and the works of B. F. Skinner, which is used to day by advertisers, political parties and the military to train soldiers. Less academic women also can use animal training from animal trainers like Victoria Stillwell.
There are even books on this as well. Like, "What Shamu Taught Me About Life, Love and Marriage," by Amy Sutherland, "How to Make Your Man Behave in 21 Days or Less Using the Secrets of Professional Dog Trainers," by Karen Salmansohn and "How to Train a Man," by Nancy Winters. All these books are written in a humorist style but that is only to try and make the subject matter acceptable to readers.
Amy Sutherland claims she trained her husband by praise and encouragement while ignoring any behaviour she didn't want. Karen Salmansohn received a lot of criticism for her book. One was called, "As A woman I am greatly offended by the ideas in this book." This critic went on to say.-
"I read this book after reading an article in News week discussing the authors views on behaviour modification for men. I do not write reviews, but I was very disappointed and upset while reading the damaging instructions that are given in this text. If you value yourself and the men in your life you will not perpetuate or endorse the outrageous thinking and behaviour this book employed. I am ashamed of myself for purchasing the book. I thought surely it would be written in fun and not as a manual to alter a man's character. It should not need to be said, but I feel it needs to be, women should treat men with respect and value who they are and not change them. Woman who feel justified in manipulating men to act a certain way are controlling and devalue the relationships between men and woman. The instructions detailed in this text are irresponsible and demeaning to both genders."
What the author of this review is forgetting is that all over the world, millions of women are assaulted, raped and murdered, by men, every year. If women are not taking an active interest in indoctrinating men, then there are a lot of patriarchal religions and governments that are. Men are being brainwashed by the media and the general culture to be violent macho men and this violence is being used against women. When men are encouraged to be violent, women always suffer, because women are physically smaller, weaker and less aggressive than men. As the result, women are at a big disadvantage, in a patriarchal society when men brainwashed other men into violence.
Other people may object that if these methods can be used by women, to train men, then there is no reason why they can't be used by men, to train women. That is true, there is nothing to stop men doing this and it has been going on for thousands of years. Patriarchy has always been very active in indoctrinating women as well as men. The Roman Catholic have been very good at doing this, as St Ignatius Loyola the The founder of the Jesuit Brotherhood once said, “Give me a child till he is seven years old, and I will show you the man”. In other words if you can indoctrinate people from a very early age then the indoctrinated beliefs stay with them for the rest of their lives.
In Islamic countries they have horrific custom of clitoridectomy or genital mutilation. This is done by women on other women who have been brainwashed into believe that this is a good thing. The same was true of food binding in China where mothers did this to their daughters. It just demonstrates you can train and indoctrinate anyone to be or do whatever you want. We all have been indoctrinated to believe men are the natural dominant sex and women are naturally submissive. And so encouraging men to abuse women for that reason. Women need to be aware of all the brainwashing tricks that patriarchal governments and religions use.
Positive reinforcement has to be a far more humane method for training people, than force and intimidation. In addition, positive reinforcement methods are more likely to be used by women than men, because observation, empathy and social skills are more natural for women. Another point is that alpha men already use behaviourism. Governments, the military and advertisers, have used these methods for a long time.
Women need to be aware that advertisers use these methods, to sell their children unhealthy junk food. Or governments are encouraging male violence through, "shoot-them-up" films and violent video games. Patriarchal religions with anti-women agendas have been brainwashing people for centuries. The more women know about the secrets of brainwashing and indoctrination, the better they will be in defending themselves and their families against it. As well as using it to ensure there male partners and sons are trained in a way that supports women and not the interests of the few alpha men, that rule our world.
The point is, that if a woman was to have a pet lion or tiger and that pet was to kill her or her children. She would be condemned for being so irresponsible for having a dangerous pet in her house. Yet, as many women have found to their cost, that men can be as dangerous as any large wild animal. In Britain on average two women are killed by their male partners every week. A women who was to have a pet lion, would at least learn how to handle and control it, for her own self-protection. The same is true, when a woman chooses to live with a man.
The point about dog training is that a dog can be trained to be a loving and loyal pet or trained to be guide to blind people or even to be carers for disabled people. Yet at the same time, dogs can be trained to be killers. In the 16th century the Spanish used war-dogs in their conquest of central and South America. These were large gods, the Spanish put armour on them and trained them to kill and even eat humans. The Spanish even fed them live captured prisoners to help train them to kill.
The same is true of men. They too can be brought up and trained to be caring and loving human beings. But in times of war the military can take ordinary young men off the street put them into a uniform and train them to kill other men on the battle field. Young men can also be trained to commit crimes and even murder other people by street gangs. As people say too many times about young offenders, “he was a good boy but got in with the wrong crowd”. This shows us how malleable men are.
It is true women can also be trained and indoctrinated. But it is not so easy to train women to be killers as this goes against their natural instincts. This is why it would be far better for everyone if women were the rulers of our world as they would be more likely to train men to be loving and caring people, rather than be trained by men to be brutal killers.
Bibliography
Thou Shalt Not Be Aware: Society’s Betrayal of the Child – Alice Miller
The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care – Dr Benjamin Spock
About Behaviourism - B.F. Skinner
Train Your Dog Positively - Victoria Stilwell
Be the Pack Leader - Cesar Millan
What Shamu Taught Me About Life, Love and Marriage - Amy Sutherland
How to Make Your Man Behave in 21 Days or Less Using the Secrets of Professional Dog Trainers - Karen Salmansohn
How to Train a Man - Nancy Winters
Very well-said William
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