The Shere Hite Reader presents wide-ranging analysis on the individual and society from a renowned thinker on psychosexual development. The book includes new science in addition to previously published material, reflecting Hite's three decades of work probing the roots of human identity through questionnaires and theory.
For the first time Hite formalizes her thinking on male adolescence: that boys feel tortured by the new social role they are forced to assume at puberty requiring a show of superiority toward females. In new detail Hite advances her understanding that sex is political, linking the expectation for women to achieve orgasm through coitus with broader patterns of oppression. Hite discusses new research on female adolescence, challenging the virgin hymen concept, and documenting that sexual awakening often precedes puberty. Hite also argues that pornography misrepresents male sexuality (not to mention female sexuality), depicting it as singular and silly instead of full of intriguing, nuanced behavior involving the entire body, not just the penis.
These and many more new insights are joined by previous work addressing topics such as the G-spot myth and the coercive aspect of modern love. The Shere Hite Reader distills the findings of The Hite Report (1976); The Hite Report on Men and Male Sexuality (1981); Women and Love (1987); and The Hite Report on the Family (1994); as well as later books published outside the U.S.: Sex and Business, Women With Women, Women as Revolutionary Agents of Change, and The Divine Comedy of Ariadne and Jupiter
Remembering Shere Hite (November 2, 1942 – September 9, 2020)
Dr. Shere Hite, 77, a feminist sex educator best known for her groundbreaking book The Hite Report: A Nationwide Study of Female Sexuality, died at her home in England on Wednesday, September 9, 2020, after suffering from Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease. Born in Germany in 1942, Dr. Hite was recognized throughout the world for her work on psychosexual behavior and gender relations. She was director of the National Organization for the Women’s Feminist Sexuality Project from 1972 to 1978 and, since that time, she has acted as director of Hite Research International. In addition to The Hite Report: A Nationwide Study of Female Sexuality, Dr. Hite was the author of The Hite Report on Men and Male Sexuality, and Sex and Business, among many others. Hite renounced her American citizenship in 1995 and the past 25 years in Europe and the UK. She will be missed dearly.
From The Guardian – 'She began the real sexual revolution for women': Shere Hite dies aged 77
The pioneering feminist Shere Hite, known for her research on female sexuality, has died at the age of 77. She was best known for The Hite Report: A Nationwide Study of Female Sexuality, which has sold more than 50m copies since publication in 1976.
Based on the views of 3,500 women, it challenged male assumptions about sex by revealing that many women were not stimulated by sexual penetration. It also encouraged women to take control of their sex lives. It was dismissed as “anti-male” and dubbed the Hate Report by Playboy.
“I was saying that penetration didn’t do anything for women and that got some people terribly upset,” she told the Guardian in 2011.
She added: “I was the only sex researcher at that time who was feminist. I tried to extend the idea of sexual activity to female orgasm and masturbation.”
Hite’s husband, Paul Sullivan, confirmed that she had died at their home in Tottenham, north London, on Wednesday.
Hite was born in the socially conservative US state of Missouri, to her 16-year-old mother, and was raised by her grandparents.
While doing postgraduate research at Columbia University she posed nude in an advert for an Olivetti typewriter in the early 1970s. When the advert appeared in Playboy under the caption: “The typewriter so smart, she doesn’t have to be,” she backed protests against it.
Sustained criticism of her in the US, much of it highly personalised, led Hite to renounce her US citizenship in 1995.
She was married for 14 years to the German pianist Friedrich Höricke before the couple divorced in 1999. She lived all over Europe before settling in north London with her second husband, Paul Sullivan.
The writer Julie Bindel, who interviewed Hite in 2011 and stayed in touch afterwards, told the Guardian she had been suffering from Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease.
Bindel said: “Her work was groundbreaking – in many ways she began the real sexual revolution for women in the 1970s after the abject failure of the so-called sexual revolution of the 1960s. In the 60s, women didn’t ever feel that they had the right to sexual pleasure. Shere Hite put women’s sexual pleasure first and foremost for the first time ever.
“She centred women’s experiences as opposed to seeing men as the default position and women as secondary. That really spoke to a lot of women about their own bodies, their own sexual liberation and sexual pleasure.”
SHERE HITE, PhD, is recognized throughout the world for her work on psychosexual behavior and gender relations. Hite has taught at Nihon University in Japan, Chongqing University in China, and Maimonides University in North Miami Beach, Florida. She was director of the National Organization for the Women’s Feminist Sexuality Project from 1972 to 1978 and since that time she has acted as director of Hite Research International. Dr. Hite is the author of The Hite Report: A Nationwide Study of Female Sexuality, The Hite Report on Men and Male Sexuality, and Sex and Business, among many others. Hite renounced her American citizenship in 1995 and resides in Germany.
