Be Careful You Don't Build a Cult While Building Culture
The line between culture and cult is VERY faint, and white women frequently create the wrong one.
I got pulled into some girl drama a while back.
Drama that I didn’t start.
Drama that I didn’t have a role in.
Drama that I didn’t have a stake in.
Drama that I was purposely, intentionally avoiding.
But that didn’t stop other women from sucking me into the vortex of it simply through proximity.
And that’s the WHOLE problem with (some) women’s spaces.
A while back, I made a promise to myself that everything I do moving forward would align with my values, and that I will no longer keep quiet just to keep the peace. Because of this, I simply CANNOT keep silent on this one without betraying my values, or that promise to myself. Even if that means opening myself up to some of the same things I’m going to talk about in this piece.
So let’s get into it.
The Back Story: Two Red Flags
For context, it started with a social post. Someone I know posted what I thought was a very innocuous question in curiosity - “Why is everyone I know posting the same question?”.
And I had the same thought.
When you start seeing a lot of people posting the exact same post you can’t help but wonder what is going on.
Someone commented that it’s because they were all at the same event, and one of the speakers suggested doing this activity to create social engagement.
And that is where the first red flag was raised.
From a marketing strategy standpoint, having a group of people post the same thing to their social media accounts is bad strategy for a number of reasons. One of those reasons is that it goes against the platform’s ToC, and can have bigger account impacts than just looking a bit foolish.
But another reason is ethics; the practice of posting something off-brand to garner engagement is inauthentic. And make no mistake, when you’re following a copy paste “post this” strategy, it’s never going to be on-brand.
But that’s exactly when things went sideways in the comment section.
Event attendees showed up in droves to call the poster “mean” for mocking someone who was brave enough to stand up in room and speak.
And all I could think was “WTF.”
I read every comment on the post. Every reply.
And I could not see a single instance where the original poster was mean or mocking.
But I did internally question why everyone jumping on the OP was so defensive.
Which was red flag #2.
Defining Culture vs. Cult
Before I get deeper, I want to make one thing clear: I am 100% in favor of women having dedicated spaces to learn, connect, and grow. We need to see other women growing, doing hard things, challenging themselves. Because when we see someone else doing what we want to do, it allows us to stretch and grow and follow their lead. I myself feel inspired and connected when I see other women stretching themselves, being vulnerable, being powerful, claiming their goals, and working hard to achieve them.
We need spaces where we can talk openly about our struggles, get encouragement, and perspective without judgement or condemnation.
Culture (noun):
a: the beliefs, customs, arts, etc. of a particular social group, place, or time
b: a particular society that has its own characteristic features of everyday existence (as pastimes or a way of life)
c: the set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution or organization
The part no one wants to say out loud is that judgement and condemnation exist in these spaces regardless; it’s just subtle. It’s in the side-eyes and whispers.
And you only know it exists when you’re the subject of it.
I walked into my first women’s networking conference in 2012. I was 2 years into my business and one of my clients invited me to go along with her. The energy in the room was electric. Hundreds of women all there for the same collective goal. The space was beautifully decorated. The food was delicious. The speakers were engaging and entertaining.
It was clear to me that a lot of the women in the room knew each other and I was the outsider. I was frequently approached as “the new girl”, and ended up meeting a lot of new people that day. All of whom very pointedly were asking if I was joining the group - the group I wasn’t even aware of because I was a guest and not a registered attendee.
But the thing that stuck out to me is that this all felt very familiar.
It reminded me a lot of going to church with my grandparents as a kid.
And my grandparents church was absolutely a cult. While I won’t name it, it is a very prominent, highly destructive organization that has world-wide followers, and the local sect is widely known as a highly restrictive environment designed to eliminate independent thought.
Cult (noun):
1: a group (such as an organization or religious sect) with tenets and practices regarded as coercive, insular, or dangerous
2a: great devotion to a person, idea, object, movement, or work (such as a film or book)
b: the object of such devotion
c: a group of people characterized by such devotion
My grandparents weren’t always religious; my grandma joined the church after her first husband died. I was young - around 8. My only real experience with church or religion up to that point was a few visits to Sunday school, but a lot of what they were teaching didn’t make sense to me - even then. I remember questioning the very basics of Christian teachings and being incredibly confused because none of them made any sense. So when my grandma & my new grandpa started going regularly, it became a regular thing for them to bring me and my cousins. I think they thought it would help answer my many questions.
But it never did. I could never quite get past a lot of the things they were saying and doing that defied logic and reasoning. I’ve truly never been someone who believes blindly. Especially when what I’m supposed to believe defies facts.
And over the years, it just kept feeling more and more destructive, as I watched first my grandma, then my aunts, uncles, and cousins change entirely from people I loved deeply and enjoyed being around, to people who couldn’t be around me without preaching and condemning my choices.
It’s very surreal to watch your childhood best friends become people you no longer recognize. It’s even weirder to watch a half the people at a family reunion go swimming in full-length skirts and long-sleeve shirts because showing any skin at all (or cutting your hair, or having a job) is a sin for women.
For 30 years, I watched this cult destroy the people I loved most in the world, and while it’s now been about 10 years since they all left. The damage is done, and irreparable.
Does this experience make me more sensitive to environments where cult-like tendencies might show up?
Absolutely.
The Overlap of Cults and Culture
"Cult, which shares an origin with culture and cultivate, comes from the Latin cultus, a noun with meanings ranging from “tilling, cultivation” to “training or education” to “adoration.” In English, cult has evolved a number of meanings following a fairly logical path. The earliest known uses of the word, recorded in the 17th century, broadly denoted “worship.” From here cult came to refer to a specific branch of a religion or the rites and practices of that branch, as in “the cult of Dionysus.” By the early 18th century, cult could refer to a non-religious admiration or devotion, such as to a person, idea, or fad (”the cult of success”). Finally, by the 19th century, the word came to be used of “a religion regarded as unorthodox or spurious.”"
I’ve seen the damage, the dangers, and the dog whistles of cults up close. The way they rally and invite, while subtly calling out all the ways your current life doesn’t stack up. The way they circle round the answer while never truly addressing the question, and then guilt you for questioning. The overt ways they welcome newcomers while actively hiding the parts of their organization that don’t make sense. The way they’ll send multiple people to welcome (recruit) you into the fold, all telling you how much value you’ll get out of the group.
Because they want you fully emotionally invested before you ever find out about the things that don’t add up. And once you find those things, and start questioning them, that’s when the group starts to turn on you.
First, you’re accused of not believing. Then you’re accused of doing harm. And finally, they circle around you just like they did in the beginning, only now it’s with malice and not love.
Because if you don’t or won’t think like them, then you don’t belong, and they will do everything in their power to make sure you know that you’re unworthy.
Which is exactly how a lot of white women behave.
Mean Girl Behaviour in Business Spaces
We all know the mean girl trope. There’s enough media about it. And it’s easy to believe that a lot of creative license has been taken, or that the stories we see in movies, TV, and books are exaggerated for entertainment.
Unless you’ve lived it. Or watched the devastating aftermath of mean girl behaviour. There are many, many documented cases - some that took place within an hour or two of where I live - where mean girl behaviour has ended in someone’s death.
And those teenage mean girls grow into women who learned more understated methods to bullying other women. Methods that include gaslighting, gossip mongering, and condescension so subtle it sometimes takes someone else to point it out.
This is the kind of thing that happens frequently in women’s groups. They welcome you in, while keeping you at a distance until you’ve proven yourself to be one of them. And it’s a sometimes-grueling gauntlet of small tests that you don’t even know you’re taking until you find yourself on the wrong side of things.
Which is where I ended up in this story - on the “wrong” side of things.
While I had chosen not to engage in the original post, I apparently didn’t get the memo that we were collectively supposed to be ostracizing the poster. So when I dropped a comment on a separate post, I was not expecting that I would be pulled into the original drama, but that’s exactly what happened.
Unironically, my comment was calling out the cult-like nature of some women’s spaces. And it was met with the same behavior I was calling out.
I am not going to share the response; that would be engaging in the behaviour that I’m against. But I will say that it was a long-winded restating of a lot of the same things said on the original post; how brave the speaker was, and how “sad” the commenter felt that I “called her cult-like.”
Colour me confused because I don’t see anywhere in my comment where I directly referenced anyone or anything, let alone directly called a person cult-like.
But that doesn’t matter to the white-woman-cult. I had apparently chosen a side, and it wasn’t theirs. Therefore, I must be made to know how unworthy I am to be one of them.
The thing is that as a result of this, I now have chosen a side. Because every single person that was involved in this fiasco showed me exactly who they are. They showed me how they think. And that has informed how I move forward in these circles from now.
Even after I called out the mistake, I didn’t receive an apology for getting dragged into it. Not really. What I got was a half-assed “apologies, I’m just so passionate about supporting women doing brave things.”
Which feels insane to say to a woman you just tried to drag into something she wasn’t a part of, and then throw under the bus for being there.
Independent Thoughts over the Herd
I’ve always been a bit of an outsider, and have had to endure more than my fair share of mean girl behaviour from white women over the course of my life. And a lot of that is because I have my own opinions, my own thoughts, and I’ve never been one to blindly follow the herd without questioning where we’re going. But I haven’t always spoken up about it; instead, I’ve chosen to disengage.
But the way I see it, if being part of the group means I have to stop having independent thoughts, I’m perfectly happy on the outside.