A California sex 'cult' became a Netflix hit. This new book unpacks even darker secrets
Book Review Empire of Orgasm: Sex, Power, and the Downfall of a Wellness Cult By Ellen HuetMCD: 432 pages, $30If you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission from Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookstores. Even at its most promising, well-publicized peak, the San Francisco-based company OneTaste wasn’t exactly a G-rated enterprise. Its principal activity involved the clitoral stroking of partially nude women — in most cases by entirely clothed men, often in groups or before a paying audience.OneTaste gave the practice, designed to occur in 15-minute increments, an inviting, wellness-focused name: orgasmic meditation, or OM (pronounced “ohm,” like the yoga mantra). The company’s charismatic founder, Nicole Daedone, borrowed the technique from other cult-like groups. But she branded and marketed it with gusto, spawning media accolades, celebrity acolytes, controversy — and a recent federal conviction for forced-labor conspiracy.The emphasis on female sexual pleasure was, at least arguably, progressive, even if the voyeurism involved always seemed suspect. But, as Bloomberg News reporter Ellen Huet details in her riveting and intimate book, “Empire of Orgasm,” far darker activities were afoot behind the scenes. Huet describes a community where leaders played damaging psychological games, promiscuity and conformity were celebrated, and members were pressured to use sex to please an important investor and sell expensive OneTaste classes to recruits.Huet’s groundbreaking 2018 investigative reporting for Bloomberg Businessweek revealed the exploitative aspects of OneTaste. A 2022 Netflix documentary, Sarah Gibson’s “Orgasm Inc: The Story of OneTaste,” leans on Huet’s commentary, as well as painful testimonials from former members.In June, both Daedone and OneTaste’s former head of sales, Rachel Cherwitz, were convicted on one count each of forced labor conspiracy. They face up to 20 years in prison. After the verdict, Joseph Nocella Jr., U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, called them “grifters who play on vulnerable victims by making empty promises of sexual empowerment and wellness.”Huet’s take, based on interviews with more than 125 sources, is more nuanced. She situates the rise of OneTaste in the context of the wellness and self-help industries, “lean-in” feminism and the start-up culture of Silicon Valley, and she pays homage to its founding ideals. “Many of the key teachings from OneTaste teetered between helping and harming the student,” she writes. “History is littered with bad ideas that are simply good ideas taken too far.” Author Ellen Huet (Bree Rossi) Readers may be less kind. The anecdotes that Huet presents are deeply troubling, all the more so because of OneTaste members’ vulnerability and longing for connection and community. They reported that “OneTaste ruined them financially, coerced them sexually, caused unspeakable trauma in their lives, scrambled their minds, and suffocated their sense of self,” Huet writes.As an example, Huet cites the notion of “skillful violation,” which gave permission to men to override women’s stated sexual limits and surmise instead what their partners actually wanted. Women (and less frequently, men) were pressured into sex with partners they found undesirable as part of an “aversion practice” that would supposedly liberate their sexuality. (One man widely viewed as unattractive was devastated to discover that he was being used in that practice.) Employees utilized high-pressure sales tactics to persuade customers to spend tens of thousands of dollars on classes they couldn’t afford.Huet’s reporting is thorough and complemented by her narrative skills. Graphic scenes unspool in hot tubs, dormitory-like bedrooms and other locales, as OneTaste members conduct regular OMs and engage in sex, kinky and otherwise, with a seemingly random series of “research partners.” Huet was never able to interview Daedone herself (though they finally meet briefly, and memorably, during the federal trial), but she had access to numerous videos of her OneTaste presentations.In Huet’s account, Daedone’s childhood was difficult, possibly including sexual abuse by her father. She later worked as a stripper and sex worker and contemplated becoming a Buddhist nun. Daedone learned a version of OM from a member of a sexual commune, Morehouse, where it was called Deliberate Orgasm, and also participated in a spin-off called the Welcomed Consensus. Both groups had powerful male leaders.Daedone, in 2004, added the notion of female wellness and empowerment, styling OM as “a simple hack to happiness, sexual fulfillment, and connection,” Huet writes. Daedone de-emphasized orgasm itself during OM, instead defining the entire state of arousal (and concomitant sexual energy) as orgasmic. Climaxing during the practice could even be viewed as something of a failure. (No wonder all of those aroused women were so easily cajoled into near-constant sex.)Huet credits Daedone with good intentions gone awry. “Nicole envisioned a future where the study of female orgasm was as widespread and as celebrated as yoga and meditation, a future where all women had access to pleasure via the practice,” she writes. “In her mind, OM would one day be popular enough that OneTaste could fill a football stadium with thousands of strokers and strokees for a simultaneous group OM.”As OneTaste grew, it courted publicity — including a mostly favorable 2009 New York Times article, headlined “The Pleasure Principle.” The company established outposts in Los Angeles, New York, Austin, London and elsewhere, and at one point may have counted as many as 300,000 practitioners. It also gained celebrity cred. Gwyneth Paltrow showcased Daedone at a wellness summit, and David Schwimmer, Brian Cox and Orlando Bloom attended presentations.Meanwhile, Daedone, who married and divorced, “burned through friends, lovers and partners at an alarming rate,” according to a mentor. In 2017, she sold the company, pocketing about $12 million, but her vision continued to animate OneTaste.Huet declines to label OneTaste a cult, but she makes clear that its ethos involved control and manipulation. Its leaders used cult-like tactics such as “love-bombing” and social ostracism to push people beyond their comfort zones, and to isolate and punish dissenters. “We’re all susceptible to the sweet rush of approval, the desperate fear of disapproval, and the yearning for purpose and community,” Huet writes. How much worse, then, that Daedone and her enablers “wielded these desires powerfully and destructively.”Klein is a cultural reporter and critic in Philadelphia.
