about OneTaste, the San Francisco–based “orgasmic meditation” company that evolved into an abusive, cult-like organization and was ultimately brought down by civil actions and a federal criminal case. It is positioned as both true-crime and cultural critique: a cautionary story about how the wellness and startup worlds can fuse spiritual longing, female sexual liberation rhetoric, and Silicon Valley-style growth mania into a system that normalizes exploitation.bookbrowse+3
The book traces the rise of OneTaste, founded by Nicole Daedone, which promised women empowerment and healing through a structured practice of “orgasmic meditation” (OM) sold via pricey workshops, communal living spaces, and intensive trainings.kqed+1
Huet documents how this ostensibly therapeutic or spiritual practice became the centerpiece of a high-control community that blurred all boundaries between sex, work, and selfhood, ultimately leading to allegations of sexual coercion, financial exploitation, and forced labor—and, eventually, a federal forced-labor conspiracy conviction connected to the enterprise.bookmarks+1
OneTaste marketed OM as a quasi-spiritual, almost scientific method to access female pleasure and emotional transformation, attracting a clientele that overlapped heavily with Bay Area tech and wellness circles.seattle.bibliocommons+1
Participants were encouraged to see OM as both healing and entrepreneurial: they were drawn into ever more expensive programs, communal houses, and quasi-monastic commitments that centered their lives around the practice and the company’s ideology.citylightsnc+1
As Huet reconstructs it, the organization’s internal culture mixed New Age spirituality, self-help jargon, and Silicon Valley “disruption” rhetoric with the authoritarian dynamics typical of cultic groups.howe.evergreencatalog+1
Members, especially staff and live-in “students,” reported intense social pressure to comply with sexual expectations, work grueling unpaid or underpaid hours, and surrender financial independence, all under the promise of enlightenment, community, and success.kqed+1
Over time, former insiders and clients went public with stories of being pushed into sexual encounters they did not truly consent to, pressured into taking on large debts to pay for courses, and compelled to provide labor under threat of ostracism or psychological abuse.bookmarks+1
These accounts fed media investigations and, eventually, government action; Huet’s narrative moves through the unraveling of OneTaste’s public image and the culmination in federal charges for forced labor conspiracy, framing the legal case as recognition of how exploitation can hide behind “consensual” sex and wellness branding.seattle.bibliocommons+1
Reviewers describe the book as a “riveting and intimate” work of investigative journalism that is careful not to sensationalize sexual detail; instead, it treats the testimonies as “grim medicine,” foregrounding the psychological and structural mechanisms that made the abuse possible.lareviewofbooks+1
Thematically, the book interrogates how a cultural hunger for sexual liberation, trauma healing, and community can be manipulated within late-capitalist wellness culture, turning ideas of empowerment and consent into tools of control—making the story not just about one cultish company but a broader indictment of tech-age utopianism and self-help industries.citylightsnc+1