Chapter 1: What are orgasm cults and how did they originate in the U.S.?
Call zone media. Behind the Bastards! That's the podcast you're listening to right now. Worst people in all of history. We tell you all about them. All about them? This has been a rough year for a lot of us here at Behind the Bastards. We've talked about a lot of pedophiles. And I'm tired of talking about pedophiles.
There are pedophiles in this episode, but they're not the primary focus of the episode. Jamie Loftus, how are you doing today? I'm sorry for saying pedophiles right before introducing you.
My name was so close to pedophiles.
That didn't wind up working well. And today we're talking to the biggest one of them all. We landed the white whale. I just was like, oh, I wanted to go right into the title, but then I hadn't introduced you. And I was like, I should introduce Jamie before the title. But I also, part of me was like, should I introduce the title and then bring in Jamie? I don't know. I did it the wrong way.
I'm sure about that. I have one complaint at the start here. Robert, why are you not wearing a hat? I don't like hats. It's true. Where's your statement hat? I don't have a statement hat, but Jamie, you are wearing a Theranos hat right now. I am. A well-worn one. A well-worn one. Yeah, Theranos hat that's been around the block. It's kind of rusting.
Yeah, it looks like fucking Liz Holmes sweat through that thing while she was waiting to hear she was getting indicted.
Yeah, I actually contributed to her bail fund and she mailed this to me.
Iconic. I'm wearing a hat that feels very appropriate for today's episode. It says disappointment awaits.
Yeah. Yeah. You're both going to get what you want today because we are, Jamie, talking about a Silicon Valley cult led by a female grifter. And best of all, it's an orgasm cult. It's an orgasm cult, everybody.
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Chapter 2: Who is Nicole Daedone and what is OneTaste?
Yeah, we get Tim Ferriss. We don't get a Navy SEAL. I was bummed about that, Jamie. I was hoping one of those Navy SEALs who sells like energy bars would be in this picture. But no, tragically not. Oh, this is OK. So it's sex, but it's not sex. So it's more than sex. Yeah, it's way worse than sex and it's not supposed to be sexy by the end.
This does start with a bunch of dudes in like the 70s who it very much is about sex for. But before we get to the dudes in the 70s, we're going to have to have a little talk because it's very relevant about the patterns that these this group that's supposed to be kind of like breaking the mold and making this like women centric and not abusive fall into.
We're going to have to talk about the history of the female orgasm and popular awareness and medical conception.
There was a part of me that thought you were going to say, we have to talk about the clitoris. Where is it? How do we find it? What is it? Just a picture?
Let's all be on the same page. Got like a laser pointer. So it's like right there.
Just mining information. So let's talk about it, ladies.
Yeah, I think I my sex ed was so bad growing up in Texas. I'm fairly certain I learned about the clitoris from the South Park movie. Like, I think that was my first encounter with it when I was like nine or 10. Something like that. My sex ed, I took it over summer school and they just showed us multiple horrific birthing scenes. Oh, great. Yeah, we did see one of those. Just one.
I did watch one of those. Not one. Not two.
Maybe four. God. Well, at least they put in the hours. I didn't. I saw one birth video, but no, I didn't even get like period information. And it was like a running joke in my town how the fact that they did not invest in sex ed, but I went to this massive high school where there was a daycare at the high school. And you just have to think one perhaps led to the other.
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Chapter 3: How did the history of female orgasm awareness evolve?
Zeus Slander is absolutely always on the calendar. And we do talk about him like he is a guy that was just a dude. Like we met him at a Cinnabon. My only compliment to Zeus is that story about when Zeus birthed somebody from his forehead. He did. And that's how I think I got Anderson. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, there you go. Yeah.
I like the one where he turns into like a swan to have sex with a swan because he just sees a swan that's so hot. But he's like, I can't do this as a guy. Like, I got to be a swan. First of all, swans. Not nice. Second of all. No. Beautiful. Beautiful. Mm hmm. Sure. That's what Zeus said.
So because because the United States is a culture that was heavily influenced by puritanism and generations in which women were shamed and ostracized for even sexual contact that they had no choice in. It's easy to see that like, oh, the Greeks were like way more sex positive than like their Western descendants were thousands of years later. Right. That like.
Well, that seems like at least a more sex positive view, even though that's still kind of messed up. And there are some ways in which that's true. But assistant professor of classics and editor for the journal Eidolon, Tara Mulder, makes an important point about what this myth was really saying.
And this is relevant to everything that winds up happening in the Silicon Valley days of this fucking sex cult. So... That's going to actually be relevant to every every modern day orgasm cold, all of which are getting wrapped in like this is all about the women and all of us are going to wind up recreating that like ancient Greek and Roman shit. Like it's crazy how it's nothing changes.
OK, OK. So we already have this is maybe a record for you, Robert, of like we can't talk about this before we talk about ancient Greek mythology.
And we got to.
I fully believe it. I fully believe it. So is this, I'm guessing this is like, oh, this is actually about like women and women's pleasure.
And women are obsessed with being controlled and need to be controlled. And that's actually hot and liberating. It's a little more complicated and honestly dumb than that, Jamie. But I don't want to spoil how dumb it is.
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Chapter 4: What role did ancient Greek beliefs play in modern sexual narratives?
So Jazzer wrote about sex, but he wrote about it purely from the male standpoint. And to the extent that Constantine was interested in gathering research about sexual or stealing research about sexual pleasure, it was only stuff from the male perspective. But they weren't the only intellectuals weighing in on the subject at the same time. You're going to love this. This lady, both of you are.
She's awesome.
One of my sources for these episodes is the History of Women Medium page by Mary DeVry, and she wrote a really good article on a contemporary of Constantine's, a 12th century Benedictine nun named Hildegard of Bingen.
I'm already sold. I'm locked in. You've hit a lot of my buzzwords today. Is the nun fucking cool?
We've got a horny nun? She's a horny nun, but more than that, every now and then you read about someone in history, and they're from long enough ago that you don't get a ton of granular detail, but you can just tell, oh, you were smart as fuck. You were a genius. And that's Hildegard. So she she comes into life.
She's born into a rich family, but she had that doesn't mean she has any choice or agency in her life. It actually means the opposite. Right. Because during this time, her family's very religious. And at this period of time, if you're super religious, it's normal to tie the tenth of what you have to the church. And that's not just money in this age.
That means like if you have 10 kids, you're given one of them to the priesthood or to be a monk or to be a nun. Right. Like I didn't know that extended to flesh. That's for the very religious. Right. I'm not going to say every family is doing that, but a number of them are. That's why there's so many people in the church. Right. Yeah. You can get 10. Yeah. We get the 10. We'll give one to God.
And her parents were also may have been motivated. She started seeing visions at age three. So that may have been part of why they're like, well, she's probably in the church. I don't know if I want to deal with this. So I don't know what was going on there. And I actually don't know.
Part of me wonders, was she seeing visions or did she realize that if she had visions and talked about them, she could manipulate her circumstances to improve them? And I kind of think that may have been what's going on because the visions are always very conveniently articulated to get her what she wants. Right. My interpretation of her story is that the latter is more likely.
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Chapter 5: What was the significance of the Morehouse community?
He's talking to me right now. And oh!
i can't come to work if i'm not a loose nun sorry right oh that's genius it's so cool she's awesome so the nuns i get to leave and they set off to bring the name hildegard back it's a banger hildegard whips yeah i love it she goes off sorry continue when you're talking about a cool nun that just really just gets me going she's rad really coming alive right now with She's only just begun.
So she gets to leave with some of her other nuns and they get to found a new nunnery or whatever you call them. And along the way, while they're doing this journey, Hildegard decides that God had made her sick. And she's like around 40 when that happens because he wanted her to do something that she hadn't been doing. He'd been giving her visions all these years. Totally.
She'd been having it, but she just had kept them to herself. She never told them to anybody until now, but they'd always been there. And she writes this.
Though I saw and heard these things, I refused to write for a long time through doubt and bad opinion and the diversity of human words, not with stubbornness, but in the exercise of humility until laid low by the scourge of God, I fell upon a bed of sickness.
And I spoke and wrote these things, not by the invention of my heart or that of any other person, but as by the secret mysteries of God, I heard and received them in the heavenly places. And again, I heard a voice from heaven saying to me, cry out therefore and write thus. Basically, God's saying you need to go out into the world and write books.
and hildegard's like that's what god wants me to do and sorry god wants me to pivot god wants me to pivot pivoting the books i love this it's like it's the same like religious narrative we hear but it's like only being used to liberate her specifically yeah it's really cool yeah it's cool in the sense of like but the same thing happens in like the flds where like a new guy's like
I'm a prophet now the big guy told me I need 75 wives anyone can do it unfortunately this is that strategy being used in the right way In the very coolest of ways. So Hildegard reaches out to the Pope and she's like, this is what God said. She sends what I just read basically to the Pope. And the Pope is like, hell yeah, God wants you to write. Like, here's some fucking money.
Why don't you pick out a team of like helpers and they'll like transcribe and write out and like publish, you know, all of all of your visions from God and books. And so she starts putting out books that are supposedly inspired by God. I don't know. I didn't look that up. This isn't a story about a man, Sophie. I know, but anytime there's a pope that does a slight cool thing, I'm like, noted.
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Chapter 6: How did Nicole Daedone transition into the world of sex work?
For sure. For sure. And yeah, she also includes an incisive description of toxic men who she describes as being full of bile. The bile men. It's really fun. They are incapable of having a genuine loving relationship with any being. Through that, they become bitter, avaricious and full of foolishness and abundant passion. In intercourse with women, they know no moderation and act like donkeys.
Definitely she never had sex.
Definitely she never had sex. Her ex was fuming when he read that. That was... I do appreciate... That is like a very... Like... subtle but important distinction of like a man who is just like wildly horny and a man who is both horny and really into mind games that are like ruinous yeah let's retire fuckboy and bring back you're full of bile
Yeah, yeah. You're full of bile. We got to do that? Yeah. You know who's not full of bile, though, Robert? That's right. That's right, Sophie. I was just about to do it myself. Yeah, but I did it first. You did it first. You did it first. And the sponsors of our podcast have no bile at all.
Honey, bile-less. Hey, it's us, the Jonas Brothers, and guess what? We have some big news. What's the news, Nick? Huge news. We created our own podcast called Hey Jonas.
We invented a podcast?
Well, we didn't invent it. We just contributed to it.
We're the first people to do podcasts.
Yeah, a pretty wide range of podcasts. We're starting a trend. But this one's extra special. So how did we actually come up with the name Hey Jonas, guys? I honestly don't remember. I think it was on a call about what we should call it, and... Well, we were thinking of originally calling it one of the early names of our band before Jonas Brothers. This is how you guys remember it going down? Yes.
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Chapter 7: What is the concept of deliberate orgasm and its implications?
And one of these types of men is obviously a gay guy, but she does not understand that. So she's just like, some men are fine with it. And it's like, well, you're missing a piece of the story, Hildegard, but that's fine. But she writes here about men who stay celibate not out of religious obligation, but because they hate women.
Quote, they neither receive any love from their fellow men, nor have any inclination to a social life of their own, all the more since they exhaust themselves with continuous figments of their imagination. Then when they meet people, they are already full of hate, malevolence, and the wrong attitude, so they can't enjoy company anymore. It's amazing how spot on that shit is.
She's talking about clavicular. That's the 12th century. That could have been written this year. She wrote that shit 800 years ago, 900 years ago. Man, we always think that whatever generation has really reached the final stage of misogyny and being socially horrible. Nope.
Hildegard described the manosphere all the way back then.
You could have told me that was in the cut last week. That's nuts. That's fucking crazy. Now, unfortunately... This is where we got to leave our friend Hildegard, who's awesome and never did anything wrong. But we are not the show our friend Margaret Kiljoy does. So we're not going to talk about Hildegard anymore.
Margaret, drop the Hildegard episode, please. Margaret, I love you.
Just as this episode is going to be kind of downhill after Hildegard, the way women's sexuality was discussed in like medical literature in the Western world went kind of downhill after Hildegard, unfortunately. There's one bright spot in the word 1660, the word orgasm gets coined for the first time.
There's a doctor named Nathaniel Highmore who used the term to describe what happens during a pelvic massage. Even that early medical professionals were experimenting with the idea that orgasms could treat certain women's diseases. And, you know, this is this is just like any time anything to do with like the vagina is women's in this era.
Like that's just the way like all of the writing is in this period of time. Right. Sounds like a fucking Red Bull commercial. It sounds like they're just saying, endorphins give you wings.
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Chapter 8: How did societal views on sexuality impact the development of orgasm cults?
Coming is medically good outside of the context that people usually come in behind the bastards. Consensual coming is good. Yeah. Yeah. So this actually gets to another really important point about orgasm and sexual desire that we've come to understand more fully in the modern age.
In 2015, sex educator Emily Nagoski published an op-ed in The New York Times during fallout over the failure of the FDA to approve Fibranscrin, I think is the name, which is a drug that was supposed to increase female desire. That's like the description of what the drug does. I think it's basically a drug that increases like vaginal lubrication, I think is kind of the idea.
And Nagoski had an issue with this. She wrote that the biggest problem with the drug and with the FDA's consideration of it. is that its backers are attempting to treat something that isn't a disease. Her argument was that modern research suggests there are multiple perfectly normal forms of sexual desire.
Some people experience more spontaneous sexual desire, which is like somebody with a dick getting hard, right? Like that's what generally society sees as male sexual desire. That's not the only thing that spontaneous sexual desire is. But it's the kind of thing you can treat with a pill sometimes, right? Or at least you can imitate it with a pill.
A lot of people are way more into and feel way more responsive sexual desire. And you can't just drug someone into that because it's responsive to a situation and a relationship, right? Yeah, I think we would sooner drug someone than try to have an interesting conversation with them. Exactly, exactly. Yeah. OK. And that's that's kind of Nagoski's point.
She writes, I can't count the number of women I've talked to who assume that because their desire is responsive rather than spontaneous, they have low desire, that their ability to enjoy sex with their partner is meaningless if they don't also feel a persistent urge for it. In short, that they are broken because their desire isn't what it's supposed to be.
So the road for Masters and Johnson, to what I just read you, has not been a smoother and even one. Once people started to accept that sexual desire was normal and even good for both men and women, our culture experienced a sexual awakening that took on many forms, a lot of them problematic, right?
Some of which you get is like the free love movement of the 60s and the 70s, and of course the backlash to that movement too. Now, our subject for these episodes, Nicole Dedone, was born on August 24th, 1964, right in the smack in the middle of this massive period of evolution and how we talk about and understand sex. She had a difficult upbringing.
Her father, Joseph, separated from her mother, Beverly, when Nicole was like seven. And her earliest memories are of her desperate desire to have more of a relationship with her father than she was going to have. In the book Empire of Orgasm, Ellen Hewitt writes, he only visited sporadically and Nicole adored him.
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