"Sterling's 'teachings' misogynistic"

September 2001
By a former girlfriend of Sterling member

I am a former girlfriend of a member of the Sterling Men's Group. My relationship with this wonderful and well-intentioned man would have ended anyway, for a variety of reasons, but the Sterling issue hastened its demise. Our relationship ended years ago, but I recently ran into a Sterling member and decided to research the group on the Internet. When I found your website, all of my very unpleasant memories associated with the Sterling Group came flooding back.

Here's what I remember: My boyfriend and I had long arguments about whether Justin Sterling's "teachings" were misogynistic. Although his teachings were supposed to be a secret, I knew enough of them to know that the man was making money hand over fist peddling his hatred of women to men with unresolved issues about their mothers [sic].

It was clear from what little information I gleaned that the organization, if not a cult, was frighteningly cult-like. My boyfriend was never permitted to question anything requested of him by the group, although it seriously interfered with his functioning as a normal working person trying to have a normal intimate relationship and normal friends. He was up at all hours doing ridiculous purposeless, things just to prove his commitment and his manhood. The whole thing was actually quite pathetic and sad, because in my observation, he could never live up to what the group asked of him, which left him feeling more useless and more impotent than ever.

I also frequently inquired as to the relevance of the Sterling message to the gay and lesbian community. Although the organization purports to heal relationships, which couldn't be further from the truth, I couldn't understand how it was relevant to many of the people living in the San Francisco Bay Area. My boyfriend assured me that there were many gay and lesbian Sterling members, but he never could explain how the teachings applied to them. If Sterling's entire plan for living revolves around satisfying a man and helping him achieve true manhood, what's in it for lesbians? Or the male partner of a man pulled into Sterling?

The most horrifying aspect of the rhetoric was that Sterling apparently teaches that women are responsible for men's acts of sexual abuse, rape and violence, because they raise men to be pussies, and men rebel and act out as a result of their feminization by women. Any "bad behavior" by a man can be directly related to a failing by some woman.

At this point, one might ask, "Why did you stay with this man"? Well, I was young, misguided and when I met him, he was not a Sterling follower. For a while, I just laughed it off, because my boyfriend would come home saying things that were so obviously idiotic that I simply didn't take him seriously. I humored him until I saw how truly detrimental the organization is.

Most distressing to me, and the source of most of our arguments, was the CONSTANT pressure to recruit new members for the group. I asked why the group couldn't simply succeed on its merits, rather than coercing people into blindly paying big bucks to spend a sleep-deprived weekend isolated from their friends and families. I was told that the way the program worked was getting people to commit to a life change without questioning the process.

My boyfriend pleaded, begged, cajoled and then demanded that I take the Women's Weekend and even offered to pay for it. But no one would tell me anything about it. Of course, I told him I would rather eat dirt for the rest of my life. He essentially said that we could never stay together if I didn't take the Women's Weekend because I needed to learn a "woman's proper role."

I did sometimes socialize with the Sterling people, because almost all of my boyfriend's friends were members of Sterling. As a conciliatory gesture, I worked at an ICSD project for a weekend. The people were nice enough and everyone was friendly to me, but I couldn't believe that every single piece of material and every hour of manpower used for an ICSD project came from the slave labor of the sheep and lemmings that followed Justin Sterling.

Do the math!! Justin Sterling makes over $100,000 on a weekend and yet he doesn't contribute ONE CENT to these ICSD projects that I was aware of. Sickening.

In sum, I think this organization is very dangerous and sad, and I appreciate the opportunity to vent my long-held frustrations. It's quite depressing when someone you think you know well becomes a target for brainwashing and worse yet, an automaton who questions nothing his "team" asks of him.