I have a history being interested in cults and cult-like behaviors, so when Read Harder included a task to read a book about cults, I was excited. I’ve already read The Quiet Damage this year and have a couple others lined up, including Empire of Orgasm: Sex, Power, and the Downfall of a Wellness Cult by Ellen Huet.
Let’s start with the headline – I did not enjoy this book. I am an outlier in that regard.
This is not about the content; this is an incredibly well researched work from someone who has been reporting on the One Taste cult for years and in many ways broke the story that has proliferated through other media. My problem was with the way in which Huet structured the narrative, because I was bored.
I don’t think I was bored because I knew too much – I do know a fair amount about how cults work and some broad history of the cult boom of the 1970s. I appreciated that Huet made sure to place Nicole Daedone and how she came to create One Taste within the history of cults, both sex-based and wellness-based ones. But, in the way of San Francisco in the 2000s Daedone didn’t just create a cult; she created a wellness start-up based on a clitoral stroking meditative practice. What it turned into though was a pyramid scheme that exploited its members and employees for its leaders’ power, sexually and otherwise.
While reading I kept thinking to myself that I wished I were listening to a podcast instead of reading and I went to see if I could find the audiobook, which I couldn’t get through my library. Eventually, I DNF’d the book because I just couldn’t convince myself to pick it back up (I stopped at the 2/3rd mark) because it just lacked forward momentum as it worked through the timeline of One Taste. After deciding I was pulling the plug on the book, I did go back and watch the Sounds Like a Cult episode with Ellen Huet as a guest talking about One Taste and its predatory behavior. It was a better bite for me. I might also go back and listen to the BBC Radio 4 investigative podcast The Orgasm Cult that detailed allegations of emotional, financial and sexual abuse by former workers of the company (it is now 9 parts due to a legal complaint brought against the podcast by Daedone and One Taste). I also have further interest in the federal investigation and forced labor case and convictions this year, but I’ll have to get that information elsewhere, partly because the convictions happened after the publication of the book.
