So I watched the Orgasm Cult Documentary
And I have a few questions
cw: discussion of child sexual abuse, sexual manipulation, and mentions of rape
Though it came out last year, I just got around to watching Orgasm Inc., the Netflix documentary about Nicole Daedone’s sexual wellness start-up that promised enlightenment and feminist empowerment through “orgasmic meditation” (OM). Though the subtitle is “The Story of OneTaste,” I didn’t learn all that much about the way the organization operated, or nearly enough about its methods of exploitation.1 Here are a few big questions the doc left unexplored:
Money
Part of understanding the mechanics of a MLM cult like OneTaste is learning about how the fees were structured and incentivized. How much does it cost to become a “Master Stroker”? Were the highest donors the ones chosen to be Priests of OM? Were members manipulated into bankrupting themselves in order to get more access to Nicole? Aside from a few shots of promotional materials (where seminars and retreats were advertised as costing in the tens of thousands of dollars), there was very little interest in where the money went, how much the company made, and whether Nicole herself was obtaining or using it illegally. Did OneTaste money fund her little investigation inspired getaway to Bali and Italy? Did she use it to hire a ghostwriter to work with her on her upcoming book on “cancel culture”? Unclear!
Franchising
How do you franchise a cult? This insightful question posed by my friend in a text convo about the doc sort of blew my mind. The documentary off-handedly mentions that OneTaste “centers” opened nationally and internationally and flashes a map with icons indicating their location, but how exactly did the “cult” remain centralized and have that kind of geographical reach? Was Nicole directly involved with the administration of these satellite centers? Did she train their leaders? Was the personal charisma that led to her invitation in 2011 to give a TEDx Talk in San Francisco2 and caught the attention of Gwyneth Paltrow and at least one Kardashian at all mediated by distance? “Cult of personality” is an expression for a reason. Did outsourcing her message also result in fewer instances of abuse and psychological manipulation? To all this, Orgasm Inc. offers a shrug emoji.
Biography
The documentary drops provocative information about Nicole Daedone’s personal life that is left unexplored and underdeveloped. Here are a few examples:
There are several video clips of Nicole revealing to a seminar audience that her father was a serial sex offender of children and that she was used as “bait.” She says her father was in jail but that she used orgasmic meditation to forgive him for his crimes and release her anger. Though presumably information about her father’s trial and conviction would be in the public record,3 there is no follow-up in the doc.
Nicole’s ex-husband is interviewed extensively, but the documentary doesn’t establish a timeline for their marriage. Was he with her at the height of OneTaste’s popularity? Before? Did he have any insight or knowledge into the financial and sexual abuse that was taking place? The filmmakers, somewhat shockingly, appear not to have asked.
An interview subject and former OneTaste member alleges Nicole was a “high-priced call girl.” There is no attempt to fact check this claim.
Of course, I don’t need to know about David Koresh’s or Keith Raniere’s psychobiography to understand the damage they caused, but if you’re going to casually include details like the above and not discuss their relevance to Nicole’s approach to sex therapy, that seems irresponsible.
Consent
To be fair, the film’s content largely consists of Nicole burying herself with her own words. She posits that rape is impossible if one surrenders to desire (and makes a joke about merchandising t-shirts that read: “I got raped and all I got was a victim story” and “I raped someone and all I got was a perpetrator story), and speaks frequently about women’s responsibility to accept and indulge men’s “beast,” which seems to be shorthand for sexual aggression and violence. There is upsetting video (with faces blurred) of a man aggressively groping a woman (context unexplained), and one woman in a physically abusive relationship shared in her interview that Nicole implied that the man was only searching for connection and it was her responsibility to accept and love “The Beast.” Jesus.
However, though the documentary includes these moments, along with interviews of former OneTaste members who felt they were coerced into public displays of sexual contact without their explicit consent, the style of the film leans so heavily on video footage of female members undergoing “demos” (women naked from the waist down being digitally manipulated to orgasm by male members in front of an audience4) that I couldn’t help but feel the documentary itself was engaging in sexualized manipulation to increase its views and downloads.5 The film’s visuals, aside from talking head style interviews, largely consist of promotional and amateur video of OneTaste members being sexually touched, with questionable consent, in front of an audience that, unavoidably, now includes anyone watching the documentary.
I think we’re entering a new era of true crime documentary filmmaking where creators need to thoughtfully consider what to do with the copious amounts of footage that predators and abusers have shot of themselves committing or admitting to crimes. The earliest example I can remember of a documentary that raised these sorts of questions was Capturing the Friedmans in 2003, but now that smartphone technology has made anyone into a potential filmmaker (or gatherer of evidence), I think we’re only going to see more and more raw and upsetting footage of mistreatment of vulnerable people
Because cult leaders tend to be unrepentant and oblivious narcissists, filming themselves seems to be an irresistible temptation.6 Keith Raniere of NXIVM and Larry Ray (of the Sarah Lawrence sex cult) both obsessively recorded themselves endlessly pontificating on their personal philosophies, but also abusing and manipulating the people around them. I believe it takes a deft hand to use such footage in a way that isn’t exploitative, and Orgasm Inc. misses the mark.
Since the documentary aired, there have been significant developments in the investigation into OneTaste and Nicole Daedone, including a June 2023 indictment in a federal forced labor case. I obviously don’t hold this film accountable for any revelations post-production, but I feel that the documentary suffered overall from a profound lack of curiosity.
Her talk has mysteriously disappeared from the TED site, but can still be found on YouTube.
And in fact casual googling on my part produced a story about her father’s conviction of molesting two girls, and a quote from Nicole that she was not directly victimized.
Though the film includes a clip of Nicole explaining that the mechanics of OM could include all sorts of gender “combinations,” and a few members discuss men on the receiving end of “stroking,” the only version shown or discussed in the documentary places women prone and half-naked with fully dressed men crouched over them.
Even the title is a little bit more salacious than it has to be, no?
The release this week of Manson Family member Leslie Van Houten made me think about how into filming himself Charles Manson would have been.