When you look at the psychological makeup of most cult leaders, two things in abundance are: narcissism and megalomania, but only 25% of people with narcissistic personality disorder are women, so already the odds are against you.
But that’s only the first issue you will encounter. We are starting to write the TV adaptation of my memoir Cult Following (starring Dakota Jonson and Riley Keough) and one of the ideas that has been floated is for the first cult leader that our road-tripping characters meet to be female. I love a bit of dramatic liberty, but something feels wrong. Inauthentic. The bones of cults are patriarchal, the structure needs someone (usually women) to be vulnerable (and in service). That’s the second issue.
How to Be a Cult Leader dives into bonkers and destructive rituals; bandage swallowing, enforced sex, no sex, self-mutilation, castration, and even mandated plastic surgery. My self-proclaimed un-shockability was stunned. Did you know that Jim Jones (Peoples Temple 1955-1978) would have followers swallow chicken giblets to fake coughing up cancerous tumours as if he was performing miracles? Raw Giblets FFS! But no matter what the ritual, the reality of these dramatic practices, is they are grounded in coercive control. And that’s one of the main struggles on a woman’s path to cultic success.
Because as women, we are at the most risk of coercive control, in fact, the majority of women, up to 90%, who report abuse, experience it. It is not as interesting as levitating, or being saved by a UFO in the end days, it comes down to controlling women’s finances, communication, freedom, mobility and time. Strip it back, and it is coercive control that is what really makes a cult. Without it, it’s just beliefs.
I am not saying I haven’t seen a woman climb the cult corporate ladder. Unfortunately, I have. When I was a kid, Mary Malaysia dominated the group I was born into, The Children of God. She designed programmes called Teen Camps, implementing public beatings, starvation, and isolation for kids as young as ten, which is the age I was when she put me in one. The year I spent in the camp I was not allowed to speak, make eye contact or communicate with anyone but her. Mary’s exceptional ruthlessness propelled her to become a global leader. However she was still just a tool.
So can we as women be cult leaders? Yes. But it’s a steep climb. It will take all the flair and phases they suggest in the Playbook, plus a fundamental shift in not just your social context, but value systems, and psychological makeup. So I say, enjoy the show, but burn the Playbook after reading. (Please, We do not need more cult leaders.)
How to Be a Cult Leader is on Netflix now.