The Disappearance of Shere Hite

The Disappearance of Shere Hite a Documentary by Nicole Newnham

I couldn’t recommend this movie more. Outside of all that deep parallels between then and now the movie brings, Shere Hite is also just an incredibly vibrant and compelling woman, and you’ll be glad you learned (or learned more) about her. For real - watch this movie.

my history with shere hite

I’ve been trying to contact Shere Hite since 2012. HERE HERE and HERE are early blog posts about it. I knew that she had left the USA because there eventually just became too much anger, violence, and hatred pointed towards her here. However, I was finding activity from her on social media and with reporters in the 2006 to 2011 range, but she proved to be elusive, and I suspect in poor health at the time. So, it was never to be. I never got to talk with her. She’s a lady-gasm hero, and it would have been a joy, but unfortunately, she passed away in 2020- a true treasure lost.

The situation of Shere Hite has always been wild to me because she’s, for real, just about the most important lady-gasm researcher out there, but yet she’s largely unknown. I had been looking into female orgasm research and literature for years when I happened upon her (during those her active years) on The Colbert Report in 2006, and immediately bought and read her book. I literally think I bought it for a penny on Amazon used books (plus shipping of course). It blew my mind. Everything that I was starting to think, but that other sex literature just wouldn’t say, she said, and she said it clearly. The book is absolutely phenomenal. READ IT.

So, reading her book was what gave me the push to move in the direction that I did for this movie and this blog. She made it clear that women don’t orgasm from stimulation of their vagina through penetration. They come from outer clitoral stimulation, which is just wildly obvious if one where to look at the way women masturbate to orgasm, which she did - through detailed qualitative questionnaires to women all over the country. The physicality of how women said they stimulated themselves to orgasm fit quite well with what Masters and Johnson had just physically observed about female orgasm in their groundbreaking research less than a decade earlier.

Yet, I had never heard of her. Granted I was born 4 years after The Hite Report was released, but still. It wasn’t just me, either. I started noticing most I talked with had no idea who she was. It didn’t matter if they were my age, younger, or were grown ass people when it came out. Those that knew of her rarely knew much, and when they did have ideas about her, they were often perplexing to me. They often had ideas that her research had become much less relevant because of contemporary sex-knowledge like the g-spot or the inner clit (it has not become less relevant). There is also an annoyingly enduring idea that she was just an extreme 70’s feminist that was simply a polar opposite standing against Freud’s outright BS ‘vaginal orgasms are more mature’ idea; noble and important -sure, but she’s out of touch, because the lady-gasm reality is actually somewhere between these two extremist groups (as if Freud’s absolute made-up shit could be compared in any sensible way to the informed, enduring, scientifically congruent assertions made by Hite and the other 70’s feminists doing similar work). Sorry that comparison is very common, easily marginalizes her work, and makes me kinda angry. Basically, there was a sense that she was a hot topic for a minute and then rightfully slid into irrelevancy.

What was extra wild to me was that many famous sexperts and sex researchers were absolutely no different. Clearly, from the advice and research they were doing, a large portions of them had never heard of her or completely disregarded her. Even very hip, progressive, sex-positive ones who maybe had heard of her, clearly didn’t actually read her work, and strangely seemed to have and sometimes expressed those same misconceptions I wrote about above. It was/still is disheartening.

On top of that, the most crazy part to me was that the information in The Hite Report, that should have deeply changed our understanding of female orgasm and sexuality, just didn’t. All the misconceptions she was fighting against were as strong in 2006 as they were when she wrote it. And now, almost another 20 years later? It’s no different. Yet, she sold over 200 Million copies of this book?

So, like, how did her revolutionary research and writing on female orgasm get so lost, marginalized, and erased that it was like her and those ideas barely ever existed. As discouraging as that was for me, I couldn’t imagine what it was like for her, and it made me feel such an urgency to re-introduce and reinvigorate these ideas. She does speak about that in a 2008 On Issue article. I write about it HERE.

my overall take on this movie

When I heard there was a movie coming out about Shere Hite I was pumped, but honestly, pretty skeptical because, like I discussed above, I hear ridiculous negative connotations about her so often. However, I saw it on Sophia Wallace’s social media, and she was there for it, so her endorsement made me feel better. Turns out it was a fucking fabulous doc. It definitely did not shy away from her (sadly and strangely still controversial) assertions about female orgasm, but it was also so much more.

I really only read her first 2 books, the Female and then the Male Hite Report (for the love of all things holy, read both these books), and I didn’t actually know that much about her life. So, a lot of this movie was new to me, which I loved. It was also just beautifully told and incredibly poignant how disturbingly similar the battles she was fighting in the public mirrored the fights raging today. Yes, we’ve come a long way on gender and sexuality and how femmes are viewed, but also…have we?

I couldn’t recommend this movie more. Outside of all that deep parallels between then and now the movie brings, Shere Hite is also just a vibrant and compelling woman, and you’ll be glad you learned (or learned more) about her. For real - watch this movie.

some details to show how bad-ass this movie is

I’m going to focus on the intro to this movie because it says so much. It begins with her, quite young. It’s around 1976, soon after The Hite Report: A Nationwide Study of Female Sexuality was released. She’s sitting for an interview with a female reporter. There is some talk pre-interview, and then they begin.

Reporter: You said that your book in a sense, redefines sex.
Shere: Uh, the stereotype in our culture has been that women should orgasm from intercourse itself; that is, from thrusting.

The reporter looks past Shere, a bit annoyed and speak to someone off camera.

Reporter: Billy, free to stop snickering. Cut Please.

There is a cut, and we come back to the reporter for another questions

Reporter: At the start of your book, you write: “Masturbation, is, in a very real sense, one of the most important subjects discussed in this book, and a cause for celebration.” Would you talk about that?
Shere: Well, masturbation is really a cause for celebrations because it represents female sexuality underground. The majority of women, even since Kinsey’s time, know how to masturbate to orgasm easily, regularly, and with great pleasure. So this shows that women know how to have orgasms when they want, contrary to the popular stereotype that women have a “problem” - in quotes - with sex.

It pulls out and Shere is older and watching that interview with another reporter. It’s titled 1994.

Other reporter: That’s pretty radical stuff for 1976.
Shere: Yes, it was. I looked sort of nervous. Yeah.
Other Reporter: Did you feel nervous? I mean, you were talking about things people didn’t talk about.
Shere: I suppose I was nervous, of course.

There are many cuts of different reporters discussing the book and people talking about it and her. Speaking about The Hite Report on Female Sexuality, someone speaks to how popular it was. They say, “The McMillian publishing company couldn’t churn the books out fast enough.”

Eventually it cuts back again to Shere sitting with the reporter in 1976.

Original Reporter: Do you think that out of your work will come another sexual revolution?
Shere: This is going to lead to real changes in the definition of sex between men and women
Reporter: Is there any danger in that?
Shere: (pauses to think for a few second) Equality doesn’t seem dangerous to me.

This couldn’t be more poignant to me. You might think, from what that 1994 reporter said, that Shere Hite’s assertions in her book about intercourse, masturbation and female sexuality was less radical in 1994 than when she was discussing it in 1976, but it sadly is not. It’s not even less radical today in 2024. (It’s true. I say those things all the time, and I would argue that saying the things she said in her book is still so radical that the majority of people either get pretty upset about it or just pretend that what you said was something else similar, but more comfortable. Seriously. It’s wierd, but that’s a lot of reactions).

However, this doc goes on to show that not only info about female orgasm and masturbation, but so many of the other things Shere Hite says were indeed so radical, that it eventually got her beaten down until she was almost fully marginalized out of history. When it cuts back to the original reporter asking her if this will bring another sexual revolution and whether there is any danger in that, a young, hopeful Shere Hite tells her, it will bring change and that “Equality doesn’t seem dangerous to me.” That’s followed by a somewhat ominous opening credits begin, alluding to a much sadder truth that Shere will eventually discover.

Within the next couple minutes of this movie, we hear Shere Hite say all kinds of things that she asserts over and over in her book, things that continue to be revolutionary even though a handful of bad asses are saying them today.

“For centuries it was said that women have difficultly having orgasms. Men’s orgasms are so much stronger, the sexual organs bigger, and none of this is true. The most common means to orgasm has no name at all. The fact that there has been no word for clitoral stimulation for most of western history shows how clearly the culture has tried to stamp out knowledge of women’s bodies and to stamp out women’s enjoyment and pleasure.”

Fuckin’ A.

the vulva rating

I will give this move a 5 out of 5 vulva rating. I’m not going to go over every moment of depiction or discussion of female orgasm, lady-bation, or the clit like I would normally do in an SSL Review because there’s too much. However, rest assured that all the information about lady-gasms and female sexuality were congruent with the information in The Hite Report, and that is all fab information based from her knowledge of past physically observed scientific research into female sexual response and anatomy, mixed with the large amount of information she received from over 3000 ladies about their specific, detailed, physically descriptive experiences of how they masturbate and orgasm. It’s top notch and will get a 5 vulva rating from me all day, every day. Plus, I love that there is some information about the long, comprehensive process of compiling the over 3000 respondents’ long-form answers into reportable findings for the book. Again, go watch this movie.