When Shere Hite, in vintage lace, goldilocks curls flying, jumped on her motorbike to distribute questionnaires to women in 1970s New York about sex – what did they feel about it? Why did they do it? Would they like things to be different? – she changed history.
Kind ladies faked orgasm. Good ladies closed their eyes and thought of England. As one put it, “a little kiss, a little feel, a finger for arousal, a touch of breast, he’s on top. Then wham, it’s over”.
Oh dear.
Of the 3,000 women who answered Hite’s questionnaire, more than 70 per cent said they had never orgasmed during “straight” sex. Cue patriarchal outrage. Who was this chick, admittedly a beautiful one, telling men how to do it? Making the womenfolk “damn impertinent”.
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Besides, everyone knew their Freud: mature women orgasm via the vagina. Immature ones, “frigid” and “hysterical”, clung to the clitoris.
The what?
After a horrendous childhood, Hite made it to Columbia. To make the NYC rent she modelled, including for Playboy, and appeared nude in an Olivetti advert with the strapline “it’s clever so she doesn’t have to be”. That propelled her into the National Organisation for Women. Her two passions came together: feminism and sex. “For sex to be really great, society has to be remade.” Thousands of women, and men, agreed.
The Hite Report delivered feminism and better sex to the suburbs. To 50 million readers worldwide.
Then came the backlash. Recession, neoliberalism and deindustrialisation arrived. Welfare cuts for the poor, tax breaks for the rich as Ronald Reagan cooed about white, traditional, patriarchal, religious America. Clearly feminism was responsible for America’s downfall! Oh how the religious right agreed! Hite became the proxy for their rage.
Monstering by media ensued. Time magazine, the New Yorker, the Chicago Tribune, Oprah, Harvard, Yale, Fox News, Playboy lined up to burn the witch. Hite and her work were “disappeared”. She fled to Europe but she never gave up the fight. Or the high style. She died in London in 2020.
If you’re not foaming by the time you finish Rosa Campbell’s brilliant recapture of this feminist warrior, I’ll eat my hat.
Rosita Sweetman’s memoir, Girl With A Fork In A World of Soup, is published by Menma Books
