When Training Turns into Gilead: What The Handmaid’s Tale Teaches Us About Punishment
Recently I decided to rewatch all of The Handmaid’s Tale from the beginning, since I missed the final two seasons. Praise P. 😉
If you’ve ever watched The Handmaid’s Tale, you know it’s not exactly a feel-good show. It’s a world ruled by fear, punishment, and control — and while that might sound like a far cry from dog training, the psychological principles at play are eerily similar.
In both Gilead and in punishment-based training, fear might get results in the short term. But it comes at a devastating cost — and over time, it always requires escalation to maintain control.
Fear Works… Until It Doesn’t
In The Handmaid’s Tale, the regime controls behavior through escalating punishment. A woman who disobeys might first lose access to privileges. Then she might be beaten. Then mutilated. The punishments intensify not because people become worse, but because the original threats lose their power.
Fear has diminishing returns. Once someone has survived one punishment, they develop a tolerance for it. To keep control, those in power have to up the ante.
Dog training rooted in pain or intimidation follows the same pattern. A leash pop that once stopped pulling doesn’t work anymore, so the corrections get harder. A verbal “no” turns into yelling. A collar becomes a prong, then a shock. What started as a “quick correction” becomes a cycle of escalation — because fear, like all forms of punishment, fades.
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Suppression Isn’t Learning
When June (Offred) is punished, she doesn’t believe in Gilead’s rules — she learns how to survive them. Her outward compliance is strategic, not heartfelt.
That’s exactly what happens to dogs trained with pain or intimidation. They may comply, but it’s not because they’ve learned what to do — they’ve just learned what not to do.
A dog who’s been corrected for barking isn’t suddenly calm and relaxed. They’re just too afraid to make noise. The barking is gone, but so is trust, curiosity, and communication. The behavior has been suppressed, not changed.
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Escalation Is Inevitable
There’s a reason Gilead’s punishments become more brutal with time: what shocks and terrifies once loses its sting with repetition. To maintain obedience, the punishment must grow.
In dog training, we see the same arc:
A small leash jerk works for a week.
Then it doesn’t, so you add a prong collar.
Then that fades, so you add a shock.
The dog learns not just the behavior, but the cycle: fear, correction, submission.
Each escalation deepens fear and damages the relationship — and the trainer or owner becomes trapped in a system that depends on making things worse to keep them “working.”
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The Emotional Fallout
The Handmaid’s Tale shows the toll of living under constant threat — hypervigilance, emotional shutdown, rebellion, or total collapse. The same emotional states show up in dogs trained through pain or intimidation:
Hypervigilance: always watching for signs of danger from their handler.
Suppression: shutting down, offering no behavior at all for fear of being wrong.
Reactivity: lashing out when the pressure becomes too much.
These aren’t signs of a “well-trained” dog. They’re signs of an emotionally conflicted one — the canine equivalent of a character trying to survive Gilead.
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Control Isn’t the Same as Cooperation
The regime in The Handmaid’s Tale doesn’t create loyal followers; it creates broken survivors. When you train a dog through fear, you don’t earn respect — you force compliance.
Control is a fragile illusion. True cooperation comes from trust and understanding, not intimidation.
Positive reinforcement builds that trust. It gives your dog agency, clarity, and confidence. Instead of avoiding pain, they learn how to earn rewards. Instead of working against you, they start working with you.
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The Better Way: Teaching, Not Threatening
If the goal of punishment-based training is to stop behavior, the goal of positive reinforcement is to teach one that’s better.
When a dog jumps, we don’t correct them — we teach them that keeping four paws on the floor makes people greet them faster.
When a dog pulls, we don’t yank — we teach them that walking with a loose leash keeps the world moving.
These lessons build habits, not fear. Over time, the dog doesn’t just behave — they understand why, and more importantly, are indipendant thinkers
Praise P!
In Gilead, fear keeps people quiet, but never safe. The same is true for dogs trained under pain or punishment: the silence, the stillness, the “obedience” are just survival strategies.
The most dangerous myth in both worlds is that fear equals respect. It doesn’t. It just means someone is afraid to make a mistake.
Real respect, real learning, and real partnership come from understanding — not fear.
So when you’re training your dog, choose to be their teacher, not their Aunt Lydia.
Sara Sokol is owner of Mr. Dog Training in Brunswick Maine; A positive reinforcement dog training facility, offering both virtual and in person classes, that has been voted best training in Maine.
