Different Strokes

Empire of Orgasm: Sex, Power, and the Downfall of a Wellness Cult by Ellen Huet. MCD, 432 pages. 2025.

If you orgasm in public, can you reach a higher plane of spiritual bliss? Perhaps—or at least that was the promise of OneTaste, a wellness start-up that promulgated the practice of “orgasmic meditation.”

For those who paid for a course at one of the company’s centers, orgasm became something more than just getting off. As journalist Ellen Huet notes in her new book Empire of Orgasm, OneTaste redefined the Orgasm—capital O—as “the whole experience around the moment of release: the peaks and valleys of arousal,” with an eye toward building “connective resonance” between the “stroker” (usually male) and “strokee” (usually female). OneTaste members believed that, as Huet writes, “meditation became a way to achieve more and climb higher: more happiness, sharper focus, and a shrewder intuition.” While an orgasm can be electrifying, most journalists don’t usually spend their careers exploring how it shapes lives. However, when a pro-orgasmic organization is linked to sex trafficking, prostitution, and labor law violations, the interest becomes more than prurient.

Building on her Bloomberg Businessweek exposé “The Dark Side of the Orgasmic Meditation Company,” Huet’s thoroughly researched book recounts the history of OneTaste and details how allegations of abuse tarnished the group’s reputation, leading to an FBI investigation and the eventual conviction of former CEO Nicole Daedone and CFO Rachel Cherwitz in July of this year on forced labor conspiracy charges. By dint of the NSFW nature of its offerings, OneTaste’s rise and fall may appear like a fringe oddity—but its packaging of coercion and immiseration as optimization and liberation place it right alongside most of Silicon Valley’s hazardous exports. Need a date? Check Tinder. Want a ride to the airport? Use Uber. Craving an orgasm? Why not try genital stimulation?

Like much of what passes for “innovation,” Daedone’s original idea for orgasmic meditation wasn’t all that groundbreaking. In 2002, Daedone cofounded Theater of the Mind, a series of courses designed to help people rewrite their life stories. The organization was inspired by nineteenth-century psychologist William James’s experiments on the power of belief—and NXIVM, a self-improvement cult that offered seminars on “rational inquiry.” With theatrical performance at its core, Daedone, her colleagues, and their students would reenact scenarios, which sometimes included being confined in a torture chamber and shrieking with ecstasy or fear. The group claimed this could enable students to reach their highest potential. Eventually, the group broadened its program. Daedone consulted with Ray Vetterlein about expanding Theater of the Mind’s programming to include clitoral stimulation. According to Huet, Daedone borrowed the Deliberate Orgasm method from Morehouse, a Bay Area commune founded in 1968, and dubbed it “orgasmic meditation.” 

The company rebranded, taking its new name from philosopher Ken Wilber’s book One Taste, a series of reflections on “integral spirituality.” In the summer of 2003, Daedone and Erwan Davon (another leader in sexuality and spirituality) held their first demonstration at the home of a seventy-six-year-old sex enthusiast in Brisbane, California, a suburb between San Francisco and Palo Alto. While groups like Morehouse offered three-hour-long genital stimulation, Daedone limited sessions to fifteen minutes. With support from investors, OneTaste soon rented a two-story building in San Francisco’s South of Market neighborhood to bring orgasmic meditation to the masses.

As the company expanded from San Francisco to Los Angeles, New York City, and London, executives pitched OMing as an extension of somatic therapy, capable of healing past wounds. Members of OneTaste insisted that although orgasmic meditation involved genital stroking, it was not just simple copulation—it was a sacred reverie. Like the Hindu mantra “ohm,” some followers claimed they reached spiritual enlightenment through its homophone cousin. Huet explains why some people were drawn to Daedone and harbored a steadfast outlook for the group: “Nicole cultivated a reputation for ‘seeing’ things about her followers that they couldn’t see themselves. Students happily bought into the premise.” (Indeed, some were going into debt in order to pay for courses that could run as much as $16,000—or $20,000 if you wanted to become a “certified” stroke through a ten-month Coaching Program.) By 2016, the company was worth $10 million and had received endorsements from the likes of Academy Award-winning actress and Goop founder Gwyneth Paltrow.

Huet avoids pandering or mocking the organization’s followers, who were drawn in by OneTaste’s straightforward ethos of “connection, intimacy, belonging, and purpose,” but she does not shy away from how the sexual utopia quickly turned into a workplace nightmare. To appear both successful and trendy, OneTaste constantly recruited young, attractive people to participate in social events and orgasmic meditation sessions. These workers were then often pressured to compromise themselves to impress investors with sexual acts. According to their own accounts in the chapter “Dirty Laundry,” executives encouraged some of their women employees to have sex with new men attending classes if they had the financial resources to invest in the company.

In 2014—the same year OneTaste was listed as an Inc. 5000 fastest-growing company—one employee, Ayries Blanck, claimed she was pressured to have sex and faced “sexual harassment, a hostile work environment, and labor violations,” prompting her to take legal action against management. A year later, OneTaste settled with Blanck and paid her a six-figure settlement. Blanck was an exception because some disgruntled members left without pursuing a judicial case, while others didn’t see any harm in the organization’s methods since orgasmic meditation was presented as a form of therapy. But as Huet notes, “After leaving, former OneTaste members often grappled with the realization that they had been victims—and, at times, villains as well. Processing their involvement forced them to confront all the wreckage they might have caused while inside the group.” Huet details the scope of sexual abuse allegations and does so with a clinical objectivity that accepts the testimony of her former OneTaste informants. However, more could have been done to explore how self-interest, greed, and latent sexism in countercultural groups can intensify sexual exploitation. Despite OneTaste’s claim to be a source of liberation, it was, in the end, anything but.

After Huet published her 2018 exposé detailing allegations of sexual exploitation by former members and employees, she discovered that an FBI investigation into OneTaste had begun, involving charges of forced labor, which in turn led to an indictment. Meanwhile, OneTaste hired a law firm, closed its U.S. locations, and stopped offering in-person classes. The organization sued the BBC for libel and Blanck for allegedly violating a non-disclosure agreement. Executives claimed they were targets of cancel culture—and hired Juda Engelmayer, a crisis public relations manager who previously represented Harvey Weinstein. In 2022, they rebranded as the Institute of OM and undertook a campaign against former employees, asserting that OneTaste was a victim of “sex negative prudes” and “woke media.”

The hostility with which Daedone and other executives responded to accusations of sexual misconduct is especially troubling given that Daedone was herself the victim of sexual abuse—though she would dispute this framing, arguing that the “victim” label hinders a survivor from reaching their highest potential. Although Huet did not speak directly with Nicole about her history of sexual assault, Huet surmised that Nicole most likely engaged in intentional and overt practices that align with abuse victims trying to regain their agency through sexual acts, writing, “Now, [Daedone] wanted to overturn her followers’ assumptions about a topic as dark as child sexual abuse. To do so, she recast abuse as ardor and affection; instead of calling her father a criminal, she deemed him ‘expansive.’” For advocates of abolition and restorative justice, there is undoubtedly a tempting desire to accept a survivor at her word and admire her for forgiving her abuser. These moments make it difficult not to grapple with how Huet’s antiseptic perspective, which declines moral judgements, also unintentionally creates a space of discomfort. However, one cannot help but think that Daedone’s framing of her abuse might have been a way to justify her behavior within OneTaste. 

In June 2023, Daedone and Cherwitz were indicted by U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Eastern District of New York on conspiracy to commit forced labor, convicted the following year, and are now serving out their sentences in a Brooklyn jail. Perhaps unsurprisingly and conveniently, both women claimed they were victims of a perverted justice system—and have vowed to appeal their case.

Was OneTaste a cult—or just a pyramid scheme? The company definitely had most of the elements of the former: financial entrapment, zealous supporters, an ideological program demanding near-absolute commitment, and a charismatic leader. According to Steve Eidel, an international cult expert, there are probably ten thousand cults in the United States, but many—like the Manson Family or Heaven’s Gate—remain small and are run by men. Instead of staying separate or secluded, OneTaste executives aimed to grow and gain national and international attention through new members, locations, and celebrity endorsements. Huet, for one, is skeptical of the charge, arguing that “we lose something vital when we reduce an entire spectrum of experience into one binary of ‘cult or not.’ It creates a distracting polarization, where defenders and accusers get stuck wanting a tidy conclusion.”

Americans are obsessed with sex—whether it’s about having it, how often, or under what circumstances. While sex-positive advocates aim to create a society free from puritanical restrictions, the tensions between these groups aren’t the only issue. Within free love communities, there’s a dynamic where unfulfilled fantasies about sex lead to the belief that a more efficient and perfect society can be achieved—supported by an industry where sexual gratification can be bought, ritualized, and consumed in fifteen minutes or less. The sordid history of OneTaste shows that orgasms for purchase won’t solve loneliness or social problems just because it claims to be a panacean cure. We should hope everyone can achieve sexual pleasure while causing as little harm to others as possible (unless it’s part of the play). Still, the strange mix of capitalism, sex, and power might not always allow people to reach climax safely. Empire of Orgasm made me wonder how we can foster a space where orgasms happen without exploitation or abuse. While it’s not Huet’s job to answer that, I hope society can find creative ways for people to climax freely and with dignity.

Amid the backlash to #MeToo and the fallout from the convictions of two executives, OneTaste endures under its new name. They now have an Eros App, which offers orgasmic meditation courses. The Institute of OM claims to have “dedicated more than $2 million to support scientific research into the practice of OM, including the study of OM as a potential treatment for depression, anxiety, and trauma.” Just last fall, they opened a OneTaste Gallery in Harlem, a “modern sanctuary” for “creativity, connection . . . purposeful living”—and, of course, orgasmic meditation.