Cults: Sex, Power, and Exploitation (Part 1)

Infographic designed by Isabella Cuan,

Under the impression that she was joining a women’s empowerment movement, Sarah Edmondson found herself in a room, naked and lying down on a massage table with her shoulders and legs restrained by three people. “Master, please brand me, it would be an honor,” she heard herself say, having no control of the words which spilled out of her mouth. A fiery hiss and a couple of muffled screams later, a permanent 2-inch symbol was left etched on her hip (Meire, 2017).

This anecdote, which may sound a lot like the plot of the film Rosemary’s Baby, is the nightmarish reality of hundreds of female ex-members of the infamous cult NXIVM (Nex-ee-um). Currently, there are approximately 10,000 cults in the United States alone, and thousands more globally (Davies, 2021). NXIVM, known for its wire fraud, sex trafficking, forced labor, sexual coercion, and more, is not the only exploitive cult of this kind. 

Cults have been a constant part of my childhood. Art of Living, Isha Yoga, the Rajneesh movement, Brahma Kumaris: I grew up watching their videos and their books still plague my library back at home. As a young person, their thought process infected my mindset. In fact, I once attended an Isha Yoga event under the guise that it was going to be a yoga lesson; however, upon discovering I was actually being recruited to join the cult, I tried to leave and was stopped by three very huge men. It took me a long time– a year-long dive into Neitzche– to separate myself from many of their doctrines. While I don’t believe they harmed me physically or mentally, I do sometimes look back at my elementary school journal and can’t seem to recognize myself.  

Broadly, cults can be defined as a group with a shared extreme ideological system devoted to a single cause, including political reform, self-improvement, and religious worship (Shepard, 2007). It is a common misconception that only unstable and irrational people join cults; in reality, anybody and everybody is equally susceptible to joining a cult (Langone, 1993).

The term “cult” is a controversial one. Many scholars will condemn the use of this word mostly because of its negative connotations. After the fatal standoff between federal agents and the Branch Davidians at Waco, Texas, the definition of the term “cult” was shaken. Once a group is a labeled “cult,” they are more likely to be deemed to be illegitimate and dangerous. Many scholars would agree that the FBI’s raid was legitimized by using the term “cult” to describe the Branch Davidians. The term makes a group sound irrational, violent, and nonconsensual. Law enforcement agencies may then feel compelled to use excessive military action. Scholars instead urge for the use of the term “new religious movement.” The term “cult” is also often used as a derogatory term; when there is a new religion, an outsider will immediately refer to them as a cult. For example, According to Pew Research, non-Mormons in the U.S. are more likely to label Mormonism as a cult. The term carries heavy weight, however, there are some movements that are indeed incredibly dangerous and that participate in exploitative practices. For this reason, there has to be a distinction between the term “cult” and “new religious movement,” but they do not replace each other. They are simply different genres of social groups. The following essays will focus on the groups which manipulate and exploit people. For this reason, this series will use the term “cult.” 

While the experience for cult members is typically traumatizing, to say the least, the experience can differ between males and females. Given the fact that 90% of cult leaders are male and 70% of cult members are female, women are more affected by cults than men (Lalich, 1997). Cults are a unique social organization in the sense that their main goal is to exert total control over individuals. Many times, this control is expressed in the form of sexual exploitation (Lalich, 1997; Boeri, 2002; Dayan, 2018). This can be anything from arranged marriages to rape to sex-slave branding. Sexual abuse and violence are some of the most traumatizing aspects of cult life but are researched the least (Lalich, 1997; Boeri, 2002). As a woman myself and a potential recruit, this topic is close to me. Through the lens of various real-life destructive cults, this essay series will discuss the gendered experience of cults. Stay tuned for a deeper dive into the cults themselves, specifically NXIVM, Jonestown, and Nazi Germany, and the social psychology of a cult group.