Terror, Love and Brainwashing: Attachment in Cults and Totalitarian Systems

This non-fiction book by cult survivor and academic Alexandra Stein is a hard but illuminating read, mapping attaching theory onto the deliberate manipulation that happens in cults and deftly illustrating how almost anyone can brainwashed into incomprehensible and dangerous actions in the right circumstances. Combining case studies with neuroscience and other psychological theory, I initially told myself I was reading it to help with some client work I was doing at the time. And then I got into the guts of it: the control systems and techniques, the intentional isolation, the rules, rewards and punishments so many cults have in common. Dense and difficult, but – for me – incredibly helpful as a framework for understanding and affirming what I’ve seen in action.

Good Faith

My ass has been beaten black and blue while I’ve been adrift on waves of euphoria. I’ve given and taken orders, administered and yielded to deserved punishment. My leather pants have been shined with saliva in view of hundreds of casual observers. I’ve fisted men in the leather slings I helped install into warehouse ceilings. I’ve guzzled the piss of strangers in bathroom stalls. I’ve called female partners “Daddy” with a tone that in no way invokes my male genetic predecessor. I’ve done it for cash and I’ve done it for fun and I’ve done it for love; no one has ever persuaded me to pledge my allegiance to anyone or anything.

Listen, I love Tina Horn’s work, and this essay is no exception. Good Faith explores the crossover between sexual subcultures and cults, and describes ‘how queer BDSM and sex work helped me to refuse an inheritance of indoctrination.’

I Felt the End Before It Came: Memoirs of a Queer Ex-Jehovah's Witness

I spent eighteen years in a group that taught me to hate myself. You cannot be queer and a Jehovah’s Witness—it’s one or the other.

As a big fan of Cox’s novels, I was hyped for this book to come out. Via a collection of essays, we get glimpses into Cox’s experiences in and after the Witnesses, from door-to-door preaching as a Montreal teenager to being disfellowshipped for his sexuality to making art and porn in New York City while grappling with the aftermath of mind games, shame and judgement. Although the book didn’t live up to my (admittedly sky-high) expectations, it was nevertheless a powerful reminder of the complicated parallel legacies we navigate as the ones who got away.

I'm Having Sex and I Will Die: Twelve Steps to (Nearly) Overcoming Purity Trauma

I’m sixteen and touching myself. Not even skin to skin. Through pyjamas and cotton knickers. ‘Masturbation’, Mum says. ‘All your problems come from that.’ She must be right because our book Questions Young People Ask, Answers That Work argues that surely, it’s an unclean habit, even though it’s not mentioned in the Bible. Think consequences. Think how you’re hurting Jehovah.

This personal essay by Zoe Lambert hits incredibly close to home. There is so much I recognise in here: the threats, the fear, the shame, the way the concepts of salvation and damnation, paradise and Armageddon are indoctrinated and weaponised. The twisting together of sexual desire and terror. What it means to move through the trauma and grief towards liberation and healing. Uncompromising, unapologetic and relatable, and written with a courage I truly respect and admire.