The Hite Report

Shere Hite released the groundbreaking results of her nationwide study of female sexuality, The Hite Report, in 1976 to wide ranging acclaim. Collecting detailed questionnaires from diversified American socio-economic stratums, Hite synthesized her unprecedented research which successfully accessed women's consensual but unspoken attitudes about sexuality. The Hite Report articulated American sexuality's as yet untold folk-talk by printing direct quotations from its questionnaire's participants. Its pioneer approach combined statistics with the savvy of street knowledge, casting the illusion that poetry and science could momentarily be squeezed together in a culture increasingly specialized. To coalesce the scientific with the poetic allowed Hite to further her political agenda with greater ease and artistry. Continuing the rebellion against 50's conventions of formality, incorporating the pull toward the uncensored liberation characterizing sexual freedom in the 60's, Hite rendered a now somewhat dated but surprisingly accurate account of 70's sexual mores and aspirations.

Hite's strengths as a researcher writing near the crest of feminism's surge also underlie the weaknesses of this landmark study. Within the book what is taboo and secretive is presented in a style where twenty years later the embedded tone of its unsettling backlash is more readily disconcerting. Marked by a fighting spirit struggling to push past anger and suppression The Hite Report stands as o

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oregrounding women's avenues for sexual fulfillment hitherto degraded by formal psychoanalytic theory, Hite emphasizes the centrality of clitoral stimulation in contradistinction to Freudian theory, the validity of lesbian relationships, and the dangers of women staying in sexually unfulfilled relationships, ties dominated by social commitments which she dramatically names as "sexual slavery" (Hite, 1976, p. 281). Hite contends that the reproductive model of sex exploits women by insisting that "the sequence of "foreplay", "penetration", and "intercourse" (defined as thrusting)" are centered upon achieving the male's orgasm without necessarily pleasuring the woman's sexual appetite. The study's lament is that this approach has "institutionalized out any expression of women's sexual feelings except for those that support male sexual needs" (1976, p. 251). Hite ruefully observes that "lack of sexual satisfaction is another sign of the oppression of women" (1976, p. 281). Following Hite's near strident call for women's sexual liberation as expressed in The Hite Report released in 1976, Hite delivered a companion volume in 1981 entitled The Hite Report on Male Sexuality. Centering her research upon how established sexual nor

Category: Psychology - T