(Since Tumblr glitched out and deleted my old blog as I was deleting old side blogs, I decided to remake some of my old radfem posts)



I’m going to preface this by saying I worked as a professional dog/animal trainer and handler for 7 years. After becoming a radical feminist, I began noticing a lot of similarities between concepts and methods of animal training and how femininity is reenforced in society. Before I get in to what I’ve observed, I’m going to briefly cover 3 types of conditioning; classical, operant, and physical.

Most everyone knows the basics of classical conditioning, as it was made famous by pavlov and his dogs. A neutral stimulus (the bell) was added to a situation (mealtime) in which the subject (dogs) already had a response (slobber). Over time the situation (mealtime) was removed and we’re left with a natural response (slobber) to the previously neutral stimuli (bell).

Operant conditioning is what is most commonly used in animal training. This is your standard reward/punishment based training, eg: command (sit!) *ass hits the ground* reward (good boy! / *treat*). I’m not going to get into Skinner’s model because in order to get the concept of operant conditioning for this post, all you need to know is that the subject is actively being rewarded or punished based on their action.

A good way to remember the difference between classical and operant conditioning is that in the case of classical conditioning the subject doesn’t know it’s learning, whereas in operant condition the subject is aware that it is learning or being trained.

Physical conditioning is a different ball of wax and usually in animal training it’s exactly what you’d think it is; getting the animal physically fit enough to be healthy and perform the tasks you ask of them. A good example of this is making sure a search and rescue dog is physically able to safely climb rocky mountain slopes, spend extended time in cold weather, or jump from a hovering helicopter into a body of water. These are all examples of positive physical conditioning, but the concept of physical conditioning can be used for very negative things as well. An example of this would be keeping a large animal under-muscled to make them easier to handle.

So what do these have to do with femininity? Lets go through one at a time.

Classical conditioning

Everyone has those mornings where they know they have things to do around the house, but they just don’t want to get out of bed. There are a few ways to get yourself going on mornings like this; some people put on a pot of coffee, listen to music, or do some yoga. I, like many other women, have another method of making myself feel in a more productive mood: I put on a bra.

Like most women I started wearing a bra in my tween years, so it’s been *ahem* a very long time since I started wearing them. Like most women, I put on a bra when I get ready to go to work, when I get ready to run errands, meet people, go out for the night, and to go to school. All of these things are associated with productivity. Now, at nearly 27, I’ve been classically conditioned to feel more productive when I wear a bra.

A neutral stimulus (the bra) was added to a situation (leaving the house to do things) in which the subject (me) already had a response (feeling productive). Now the situation (leaving the house to do things) can be completely removed and we’re left with the response (feeling productive) triggered by the previously neutral stimuli (the bra).

And bras aren’t the only thing that can be classically conditioned in this way. If you wear makeup whenever you leave the house, you’d probably find it has the same effect.

Operant Conditioning

This is very straight forward when it comes to femininity and starts pretty much from birth. Lets run through a scenario:

It’s this little girl’s first Easter and she’s given a pretty dress

Adorable, no? Everyone at the Easter gathering thinks so, too. Everyone coos over her and tells her how pretty she is, how beautiful her dress is, etc. This is a positive reward for being feminine. Now lets say she gets ahold of some chocolate and of course gets it all over her dress. Everyone says ‘oh no! your pretty dress!’ and scrambles to get the chocolate away from her. This is both positive and negative punishment for not being feminine (positive here meaning the addition of their disparaging voices, negative here meaning the subtraction of something she likes; the chocolate). This type of scenario plays out year after year in all sorts of circumstances and the little girls are trained to be more feminine in order to get positive responses from those around them.

This occurs in adult women, too. We’re constantly praised and given compliments for looking more feminine and ridiculed for being unfeminine. Think of some of the go-to insults directed at women: “ugly” “fat” “hairy” “bad makeup/hair”. The extent of the conditioning isn’t just social: women who are more traditionally feminine tend to be given more opportunities for career advancement and tend to be considered more intelligent by peers.

Physical Conditioning

This is a more extreme form of training femininity, but it does occur.

This is something I’ve personally experienced. From about 15-16 I wore almost nothing but heels. High heeled shoes, wedge sandals, boots with heel, you name it. Then around 17 I noticed that it was actually becoming very uncomfortable for me to wear flat shoes, or even to walk around my home with no shoes on. I’d been physically conditioned to be dependent on high heeled shoes to be physically comfortable when walking.

And as extreme as this may seem, it’s not as uncommon as one might think. Of course, the obvious solution is to ditch the heels and work on repairing the damage done to your body, but for many women the solution is to just continue buying more heels than flat shoes.

Another more extreme example is crash dieting. In this case I’m not even talking about the physical effect of losing weight. I’m talking about how women physically condition themselves to ignore hunger signals, and often to become physically dependent on non-food substances to get them through the day, be it nicotine, diet pills, or caffeine. Too often women who attempt to ditch diet culture and eat more intuitively don’t realize that they can no longer accurately interpret the signals their bodies are trying to give them. My aunt is a good example of this. After decades of crash dieting, when she feels hunger, she craves a cigarette and a diet soda, rather than actual food.

Unlearning all of these is incredibly difficult, as anyone who’s tried to do so (or who has tried to train a dog out of something) knows. But it isn’t impossible and the first step is to identify which of your physical and/or mental responses are a result of this conditioning. Surrounding yourself with women who have either unlearned or avoided this conditioning is wonderfully effective, too. Even if you don’t decide to unlearn the conditioning, being aware of it is always food for thought.