Op-ed: The distance between harm and help is not just a law problem. It's a belief problem

What we can learn from the Polygamist on Netflix

What made calling the police feel impossible, unavailable, or costly enough that even domestic violence and marital rape went unreported? That is the question Netflix’s The Polygamist left me asking, and the one this piece sets out to answer.

The show depicts the life of Jonasi Gomora, a construction mogul, and his relationships and affairs with women. It is set in South Africa, but the themes it depicts apply to women in homes all over the world. There is no question that the women in The Polygamist experience real harm, much of it punishable by law. And yet, almost without exception, that harm goes unreported.

Let's get comfortable with the word “crime”

It's clear from the reactions to The Polygamist that Jonasi Gomora is hated. Reviewers call him selfish, vile, spineless, a man obsessed with conquest who treats the women in his life as acquisitions rather than people. The internet has, correctly, decided he is a bad man.

But “bad man” is a moral judgment, not a legal one. Somewhere between “he’s obsessed with sex” and “he’s a terrible husband,” the actual content of what happened on screen gets lost. Jonasi raped his wife. He inflicted violence on the women in his household. He concealed a marriage for twenty years. He emotionally and psychologically abused his wives. These are not character flaws. They are crimes, with names, statutes, and legal remedies.

The show has been discussed almost entirely in the register of character: Jonasi is a cad, a philanderer, a man who “couldn’t keep it in his pants.” That framing is incomplete. Describing criminal harm as bad personal conduct is itself a cultural narrative doing distancing work. It lets viewers feel the appropriate outrage without having to sit with the fact that what they watched was, repeatedly, a crime scene.

Here are some of the crimes we witnessed in the show.

Marital rape

After Jonasi is discharged from the hospital, and Joyce refuses to cater to his demands, he physically assaults and rapes her. According to South African law, a husband can be criminally charged for raping his wife under the Criminal Law (Sexual Offences and Related Matters) Amendment Act, which defines rape without exception for marital status. This isn't a uniquely South African position. The international human rights framework arrived at the same conclusion. CEDAW's General Recommendation 35 defines marital rape the same way South African law does: as rape, on the basis of a lack of freely given consent, regardless of who the perpetrator is. There is no exception carved out for husbands, because international law doesn't recognize marriage as a form of pre-given consent.

Domestic Violence or assault

Matipa was brutally beaten by Jonasi. This is a criminal offense under South African common law, independent of any statute. Because Jonasi was her husband, this also falls within the scope of the Domestic Violence Act, which entitles her to a protection order and confirms that a criminal charge for assault can be laid alongside it.

Fraud in polygamy: Essie's marriage

Jonasi married Essie behind his wife's Joyce back. He married Essie in a customary marriage, meaning his family was aware as they conducted the negotiations. South Africa's Constitutional Court, in Mayelane v Ngwenyama, ruled that a husband must obtain his existing wife's consent before entering into a further customary marriage. Jonasi did not seek Joyce's consent. He did not inform her the marriage existed at all. The Constitutional Court didn't invent this right in Mayelane. In international law, CEDAW Article 16 guarantees women the same right as men to freely choose a spouse, and to enter into marriage only with their free and full consent. Concealing a second marriage from an existing wife isn't just a violation of customary law procedure. It's a breach of the same consent principle South Africa agreed to uphold at the international level, decades before Jonasi ever met Essie.

Psychological and emotional abuse

Throughout the show, we see Jonasi displaying emotionally abusive and controlling behavior. The Domestic Violence Act of South Africa prohibits physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional, verbal and psychological abuse, economic abuse, intimidation, harassment, spiritual abuse, damage to property, elder abuse, coercive behavior, controlling behavior, exposing or subjecting children to any of the above, and any other controlling or abusive behavior towards a complainant where such behavior harms, or may cause harm to the safety, health or wellbeing of the complainant. International law treats this the same way. CEDAW's General Recommendation 19 names harm inflicted on women's physical or mental health within the family as a form of discrimination against women, the same legal category that governs pay inequity and hiring bias. That reclassification means what Jonasi did to his wives isn't separate from the question of whether women are treated as equals. It's the same question.

So how does culture distance from naming the crime?

When I watched the show, my immediate reaction to many scenes would be "Call the police, this is abuse!". Yet that didn't happen on several occasions. What is it about the culture that removes the ability to recognize or report an experience or harm as a crime?

Here's the thing with patriarchal cultures. They rely on women having gone through an elaborate, belief-based emotional conditioning process right up to adolescence, such that they interpret men's behavior through an inward-looking lens, rather than naming the behavior and connecting it to a consequence. So when harm is experienced, the body's immediate response is an emotion (such as shame, guilt or fear), and a patriarchal belief that makes the woman look inward to explain her experience. She asks not what is he doing but what is wrong with me. This has nothing to do with the woman's IQ. It is simply a belief she has been given repeatedly, from early and from everywhere, until she has internalized it as her own thought process. The result is that the harm never gets named. And what doesn't get named doesn't get reported. The law becomes irrelevant not because she doesn't have access to it, but because nothing in her conditioning has equipped her to see what happened to her as something the law was designed to address.

The shame of leaving the marriage

When a woman is in a marriage that is abusive, she thinks " what will people say". She doesn't hear, call the police and get justice. She is hearing the belief she has already been given as a child. That a failed marriage is her failure. That her value is tied to her proximity to a man. What the community does is confirm that the cost of naming the harm outweighs the cost of enduring it, through shame. That is, the whispering behind her back, the invitations that stop coming, the friends who go quiet. It's a social tax levied the moment she speaks up. And so she stays, in accordance with her belief system. That's patriarchal conditioning working by design.

The economic cost of leaving

In the Polygamist, we see that Essie was given a house, Joyce had a mansion and Matipa was given a house and a job. Economic dependency confirms patriarchal conditioning by saying the man is the provider and that losing his economic provision means a diminished life, permanently. It limits women's ability to see that they can provide financially for themselves, and they can build businesses too. Most importantly, it makes them forget that they have a financial claim too in a divorce. So why don't women just leave when the marriage is not working? It is a belief that she can't afford the consequence of doing so.

The desire to be chosen

Patriarchal conditioning teaches women that being chosen is proof of worth. It doesn't require good treatment for a woman to feel chosen. It only requires presence. So even breadcrumbs are sufficient because at least he is present in some form. Essie was the most painful example of this. She stayed even after finding out he had a wife he couldn't leave. She stayed married and lied for 20 years that she was his brother's wife, when she could've exposed him. Not because she has calculated her options and concluded this is the best available arrangement. But because the conditioning set the bar so low that partial, secret, subordinate selection still registers as selection. That is enough to stop the harder question from forming: is this actually good for me? That question is the one the conditioning is specifically designed to prevent. Because when a woman’s nervous system is wired entirely around being chosen and keeping him, the harm he causes her stops being a wrong to name. It becomes an obstacle to manage. Something to absorb, to work around, to survive quietly so that he stays.

Reporting Jonasi would mean dissolving her marriage, which would mean she wouldn't be chosen anymore. So she stays silent.

What should you take away from this?

The next time you witness a woman experiencing harm and not naming it, or staying in a situation that is visibly destroying her, ask yourself, "What is she believing in this moment that is making this not register as a violation or crime?”And if some part of her does recognize it, ask yourself “what does she believe about the cost of naming this, that makes it feel higher than the cost of enduring it?" This lifts the blame off the woman, and onto the (patriarchal) system.

The other thing you can do is start to use more precise language. Not, he's a terrible man, but he assaulted her, or he raped her. Cultural narratives thrive on imprecise language because imprecision creates distance between the harm and its remedy. When we default to the language of character, we feel the appropriate outrage and do nothing useful with it. When we use accurate language, we make the harm visible. And when the harm is visible, the law that was designed to address it becomes visible alongside it.

The Polygamist gave us a lot to be angry about. The more useful response is to change how we see and how we speak.