If you center a man's desires and needs over your own, you are complicit in male supremacy.

On polyamory, tradwives, and the actual "natural" model of family (spoiler- it's matriarchy)

This is a post about relationships. It is inspired by two very public case studies that have been widely debated online. I have watched these situations as a spectator. Both situations carry an element of complexity and nuance, making them ripe for a juicy comment section. I have read some of the comments, at times shaking my head and at times also nodding my head.

Both situations involve a thread of motherhood. Specifically, both situations involve the man leading, dominating and narrating the direction of motherhood for the family ecosystem, disguised under “God’s plan,” or “The voice of Isis.” And in both situations, the women center and follow the man’s will.

And this is why I feel called to speak on this topic, not because I’m a relationship expert (far from it), but because it is my sacred duty to protect and defend motherhood. And to ensure the future expression of motherhood is lead and narrated by us, the mothers.

The first case study is the one of Hannah Neeleman, known as Ballerina Farm. There is a lot that has already been said about her. She’s been in the public eye for pumping out babies while baking sourdough and winning beauty competitions while postpartum. I look at her the way most people look at top athletes. I just don’t understand how this is physically possible. It’s supernatural and also intriguing. Does she set unreasonable standards? Yes. Does she also seem to be a sweet and caring person with incredible physique? Also yes. Does that bread look incredible? Absolutely.

The family is very religious, and she gave up a ballerina career to be a wife and mother. There’s a widely shared anecdote about how Hannah is sometimes so worn out from the kids and work that she can’t get out of bed. And yet, he keeps impregnating her (which in the end, he fully controls), and they just had another baby. She is being treated (and treats herself) like a human industrial farm to make more and more babies, which is something we often see with tradwives. Family domination, legacy expansion, fast growth, all at an unnatural pace and without the proper support. It’s the capitalist version of motherhood.

Their model of relationship is often promoted as “natural” and “divinely ordained.” One man, one woman, under God, become one. And yet, one couple with so many kids and no ecosystem is not natural at all. We have never seen anything like it in history. They are exploiting and sacrificing her, in a way large corporations exploit and sacrifice the earth.

The second case study is of Aubrey and Vylana Marcus. They are public figures in the spiritual community, and recently came under a lot of scrutiny for disclosing they opened up their marriage to a second (much younger) woman. This happened after Aubrey loudly ran messaging that they were in “sacred union” and that their container was closed. In fact, Vylany initially did not want polyamory, yet in an effort to love and accept him, she relented. This story usually would not bother or concern me, except, there is a motherhood aspect at play that must be named and called out.

On their podcast, Aubrey shared that they visited an Isis (the primordial Goddess) temple in Egypt, and that Isis told him to impregnate both women. He then told his wife, who was - of course- deeply upset (and still seems to be, based on her demeanor), yet ended up accepting the “sacred message.”

This story is offensive to the mothers. First because her man is leading her motherhood experience, and then trying to sell it to her as Divine will. There is no way “the Goddess” would speak to this dude over the actual women with wombs about what should be happening to their wombs.

Secondly, forcing his desires and needs as the dominant narrative removes her agency to initiate and direct her own motherhood experience. A woman needs to feel safe in this agency, without feeling controlled or coerced, for her to fully embrace and embody motherhood.

They are defending themselves by saying she is also free to choose other partners (and she has) and that they are living “in truth and integrity.” They are also arguing this is the “natural” way, as children are best raised in community. However, this is not just ordinary polyamory. This is reproductive control. He’s claiming two wombs to dominate the lineage.

He told her she could leave if she didn’t accept the new arrangement (i.e. lose his attention and affection.) He spent a lot of time lauding the new girlfriend’s “purity” but rarely spoke as glowingly about his wife (likely because she’s too “messy” aka has natural instincts).

It is exceptionally insulting to the mothers as Vylana is at the later stage of her fertility window, and the younger girlfriend is not. (The man is also trying to recover from infertility due to too many T shots, so he is pushing her further to the edge of her window. Accordingly, the man is actually a poor candidate for fatherhood.)

True equality would mean Vylana would be encouraged to find other men to father (some of) her children, especially while she’s waiting for his fertility to return. But she’s clearly not the one leading her own motherhood experience. He’s the one who wants to father children by both women, and she’s the one doing the “the inner work” and “moving through her fears” to accept his ever-expanding needs. At one point, she said that she’s died a thousands deaths. And you can see that, she’s killed off her wild instincts to accommodate him.

To which I say:

You are complicit in male supremacy if you agree to center a man’s desires and needs over your own- especially if it concerns motherhood. The menfolk do not and never will understand what it’s like to carry the portal of life, and our motherhood desires should arise from our own wombs, without pressure from the man.

When you agree to sacrifice your own desires and needs to please and keep the man, you are subjecting and subjugating yourself to the man.

Embodied, mature women do not push through their fears or push themselves to their edges to keep a man. Suppressing your needs to keep a man is not love or sacred sacrifice. This is annihilating your own wildness. You are reducing yourself. You are being a compliant daughter of the patriarchy: accommodating men and sacrificing your needs and suppressing your natural instincts and rage- a necessary survival instinct that we must harness during these times.

This is cutting the claws off the big cat.

Mature women do not accept living with a constantly activated nervous system. They understand that a man living in truth and integrity is not enough. Only when our needs and desires are placed at the center of the ecosystem (and we stop having to advocate and fight for them) can we truly feel relaxed and safe, and it’s in this safety that our freedom lies.

Women orbiting men goes against natural law. Women are the life-givers, and real men understand that the woman- and her sense of safety- is at the center of life and supporting her and meeting her needs results in everyone being safe and free.

This is the model of MATRIARCHY. People often mistakenly assume matriarchy is the inverse of patriarchy, meaning that women want to control and oppress men like they have been controlled and oppressed by men. This is not matriarchy, and we do not want to relate to anyone, including men, in this way. We are not interested in treating a virus with another virus.

True matriarchy is a circle, with women and children at the center. We co-lead with men but motherhood is sacred and men cannot lead us in our motherhood decisions. They can only support us in motherhood while we make our own decisions from a place of safety and agency- safety and agency that originates from us feeling truly supported and held.

Matriarchy is the ancestral way, it’s how all human lineages started, and how most indigenous communities still live. It makes sense, as life originates from the mother, to place the mothers at the center. It’s how we all survive. Any other model is based on controlling women and their reproductive power.

Additionally, an overcorrection needs to be made by men, because women have ancestral wounds of being de-centered and marginalized and expected to contort themselves around men. Mature, initiated men understand that modern women are finally free to express their needs, and that supporting these women is how to restore balance in the world, because our bodies remember the ancestral howl of suppressing our needs for centuries.

Women of our generation are both starved and guarded. They are starved of hearing, “Of course I will accommodate your needs and desires. Say no more! I’ve got this. Go rest,” and they are guarded because men keep steamrolling through women’s instincts and rebranding female natural responses as “angry, low vibrations, projection, judgment, childhood wounds, shadow, sin, shame, or the Devil.” And this makes us so, so tired.

Starved and also guarded is an uncomfortable place to be, and it is an even more uncomfortable place to start your motherhood journey from. So the first thing to do is to make sure you are surrounded by people who are invested in making sure you feel accommodated and protected.

The question arises, do we have to respect a woman’s decision to subordinate herself to a man? The answer is yes. These women are adults and well-resourced. It’s not our task to fix or rescue them. It is also not a good idea to infantilize them and treat them like children who cannot make their own decisions (the implied message being “I know you better than you know you”). This method always backfires, and can sometimes feed the same narrative we are trying to release.

Yes, they are infected by the virus of male supremacy. Yes, they are conditioned, programmed, all the things. And is it our job to “heal” them? No. All we (who are on the other side) have to do is live our own liberation story. When they are ready to join us, they will come. The door is always open. Only life can heal the supremacy virus, and they need to have the willingness, the time, the safety, and the resources. Not everyone does.

More importantly, we’ve all centered men’s needs and desires over our own. It’s the oldest survival strategy. I’ve only just stopped doing it. This method is ingrained in us. It brings us comfort. Also, we love them. There’s no shame in this.

We all do this.

• We do this when we withhold our truth because we are scared about the man’s reaction or ability to handle our truth.

• We do this when we assume we are overreacting or “it’s all in our head” or we just need to “do more healing” to accept what we are actually just not okay with.

• We do this when we make a clear decision for ourselves and then need to “check with our husband” and then unmake the decision.

• We do this when we take a caretaking role towards our male bosses.

• We do this when we keep being gracious towards absent men because we do not want to upset them.

• We do this when we let ourselves be seduced by stories and manipulations and flattery all while the actions do not support the words.

So… it’s okay. We are all still learning to center ourselves, our needs, and our desires, and it is very hard to do this without also losing everything (including, in some extreme situations, access to the children). For many women, learning to center ourselves is like trying to use a muscle that has been in a cast her entire life. It’s worse than atrophy after a short period of muscle recovery. It’s learning to use a muscle she’s never been familiar with in the first place. And yet, this muscle is also the source of your true power.

Yes, there will always be tension, a push-and-pull, and a constant requirement to reevaluate how much centering we can actually embody. We will live with this tension for the rest of our lifetimes. That’s all part of modern motherhood too. We have one foot in the old paradigm and one foot in the new. We’re being stretched just by virtue of being mothers during these times.

My only ask to you, sis, is this:

Be the one who is orbited. Step into -or stay- at the center of your family ecosystem. Be a Matriarch. Stop retracting your claws. We need them.