OneTaste felt like an ‘orgasm cult’ — this is how I escaped
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One summer’s evening in 2003, my partner Bill and I attended a workshop at a house just south of San Francisco. The event was designed to help you tap into your true, instinctive sexual desire.
It was there that I first saw her, sitting on the couch with her long legs crossed. Her name was Nicole Daedone and I was utterly mesmerised. She exuded confidence and charisma without having to say anything. Everyone wanted to please her.
A year later, Nicole would launch OneTaste, a sexuality business focused on teaching Deliberate Orgasm, also called a “DO date”. This is when one person (usually a woman) lies down with her pants off. Another person (usually a man) strokes the most sensitive spot on her genitals with his index finger.
In a move of canny marketing, Nicole changed the name from “DO date” to “orgasmic meditation”. Et voilà! What was historically a sexual technique was turned into a “spiritual practice”, the perfect way to attract droves of seekers in the San Francisco Bay Area. Tech bros, academics, therapists, creatives and entrepreneurs were soon drawn in.
The group opened “houses’ — communes for its most devoted followers — in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Paris. New members could attend workshops with increasing price points, depending on how “qualified” they wanted to become.
OneTaste grew to be a multimillion-dollar business with star appeal, garnering praise from the likes of Gwyneth Paltrow and Khloé Kardashian. Nicole’s Ted talk, Orgasm: The Cure for Hunger in the Western Woman, went viral and has now been viewed 2.3 million times. And the company was covered widely in the press due to its focus on female pleasure.
This month allegations about a darker side of OneTaste will be explored in a New York courtroom. Nicole, 57, has been indicted by the FBI and will face a federal trial on charges of forced labour conspiracy.
According to the indictment, OneTaste is accused of “subjecting volunteers and employees to economic, sexual, emotional and psychological abuse, surveillance, indoctrination, and intimidation”. One aspect of its “forced labour scheme” was allegedly recruiting and grooming members “to engage in sexual acts with OneTaste’s current and prospective investors, clients, employees and beneficiaries, for the financial benefit of OneTaste”. Nicole and her former colleague Rachel Cherwitz, also indicted, have consistently denied all the allegations.
So how did a wildly popular wellness company become better known as the “orgasm cult”? And how could its charismatic leader, if found guilty, end up spending 20 years in jail?
Like many women, I’d spent decades accommodating others and dissociating from my desires. I took it upon myself to be a good girl, never a burden. I graduated magna cum laude from university, married a man with whom I felt zero chemistry and worked as a banker.
At 33, living in San Francisco, I started the Hakomi method, a form of mindfulness-centred psychotherapy. It gave me a glimpse of what life looked like away from what I “should” be doing. I left my marriage and leapt into a world of sensuality and sex.
At one “pleasure course” I met Bill, a man who set my pheromones on fire. He became my research partner and, later, my husband.
Together we met Nicole. She soon made it clear she wanted to build her own group to bring her brand of orgasm into the world. To make it happen, she and a few of her early followers moved into a house owned by one of her devotees. This would become OneTaste.
Content retrieved from: https://www.thetimes.com/life-style/sex-relationships/article/onetaste-orgasm-cult-nicole-daedone-n5sxbv9tn.
