Brother Husbands?

   There is a "reality" show on T.V. these days called "Sister Wives". It revolves around the day-to-day struggles in a one man-four women marriage. Theirs is obviously a polygamous union and it falls under the auspices of the Mormon church. The man's name is Kody Brown and his wives are Janelle, Robyn, Meri and Christine. Between them, there are seventeen children. As a group they are all quite likable. Somehow or other they make the unlikely arrangement work, at least the part of it you see on T.V. There are issues, of  course, one of them being jealousy as you can imagine.
   The show also makes me quite angry, pretty well every time I watch it.

   The source of my anger stems from man-centricity of it. I'm not even sure that "man-centricity" is a word but I am going to use it anyway. Kody is a very well-spoken man who comes off as being quite charismatic. He seems to try his best at being a good father and husband to all his wives and children. When it comes right down to it, though, he runs the show. He seems quite willing to listen to all arguments but whatever he ultimately decides should happen, does. He says that the reason the relationships work is because they are based on genuine love.
   The kicker for me, though, is that I don't believe Kody Brown would even consider a relationship which was perhaps woman-centric. I cannot see him being one of four Brother Husbands, as an example. I cannot see him waiting his turn while his wife is off spending time with one of her other husbands. I do not see him likely bonding with the other husbands. I just can't, and this is the source of my anger.
   In totality, this show represents to me an essential problem with society today--men controlling women. It is not hard to look around in your everyday life and see examples of women being controlled by men. I find it especially galling that, on this one T.V. show, you have one man controlling four women at the same time.
   Whether any of the Sister Wives believe she is being controlled or not is hard to guess. In their own ways they seem like pretty strong women. They also seem to have done a pretty good job of bonding between the four of them. It's almost as if they were survivors on a life raft after a plane crash. All of the sudden you are in the same boat with strangers, nothing's going to change anytime soon, so you better learn how to get along and flourish as much as possible.
   The other part of all this which bothers me is the part the church plays. The Browns are Mormons and plural marriages are a practice condoned, at least in part, by this church. There is nothing much more man-centric than most religions and Mormonism is a leading example. In other blogs I have stated some of my concerns about organized religion and its historical place in society. One of my other concerns is the position of power it places most men in, even in these enlightened days.

"Brother Husbands"?

   So, all in all, it's a little hard to sit there and watch four intelligent women engage in a relationship I'm pretty sure the man would have no part of. Quite frankly, if one of them upped and "divorced" him it would kind of make my day.
   I put the word "divorced" in quotation marks because my understanding is that Kody is only legally married to Meri, his first wife, and that the other three women are only married to him "spiritually". The legal authorities, however, tend to think of "spiritual" as being akin to "common law", in which case what the Browns are up to would be considered illegal. As a family, they have already found it necessary to leave Utah and move to Las Vegas, to escape possible legal ramifications.
   So whether Kody gets dumped by a wife or wives or gets thrown in jail matters little to me. If, however, somehow or other there was a reality show called "Brother Husbands" and he was on it, I'd sit down faithfully and watch, every single week!