Verified by 
In 1976, Shere Hite, who died this week at age 77, rocked the world with her publication of The Hite Report. While my sex therapy, education, and research lists are full of posts of tributes to her contribution to female sexuality and her life, I fear too few not in the field of Human Sexuality even know who she was, the importance of her message, and what she suffered to get this important message to the public. This post is both an attempt to share this information and to honor and revere her memory as a heroine whose giant feminist shoulders I stand upon.
Indeed, in the "Clistory" section of my book, Becoming Cliterate, I write about Shere:
While many dedicated feminist writers and researchers worked to bring attention to the clitoris, I want to focus on just a few central figures.
First is Shere Hite. In 1976, she rocked the world with a survey of over three thousand women in which she found that most weren’t having orgasms during intercourse. The Hite Report told women that it was normal to not orgasm during intercourse and that, instead, the vast majority of women need direct clitoral stimulation to orgasm.
In this same in-depth survey, Shere was the first to describe how women masturbate. In an interview with Shere and two other sexual revolutionaries (Leonore Tiefer and Betty Dodson) at the 2008 meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality, Shere described this as her contribution to the understanding of female sexuality. She said, "[The Hite Report] ... was the first work, and still remains one of the only works, to detail in women's own words how they masturbate to reach orgasm. For most women, this does not involve vaginal penetration, but rather massaging without stopping the clitoral area or pubic area of their external genitals with their hand."
In terms of the details of how women pleasure themselves and again quoting from Becoming Cliterate:
In her landmark study, Shere Hite categorized the way women masturbate. And, no surprise, she found out that women stimulate what she called the “clitoral/vulva area.” In the study, most women—73 percent—did this while lying on their backs; about 5.5 percent while lying on their tummies; 4 percent by rubbing up against a soft object; 2 percent by massaging their genitals with running water (e.g., placing their vulvas under the bathtub faucet or using a handheld shower attachment); and 3 percent by simply pressing their thighs together rhythmically. Another 11 percent of women didn’t just stick to one way or position; while they had a favored method, they sometimes switched it up. Hite also found that the vast majority of women focused completely on external stimulation, but around 12 percent always or sometimes simultaneously put something inside their vaginas. Consistent with cliteracy and the notion that it’s rare for women to orgasm from just penetration, only 1.5 percent masturbated solely by putting something inside their vaginas.
Perhaps most important, Shere found that when masturbating, most women orgasm. In her interview at the SSSS conference, she said, "My research report shows that the great majority of women—over 92 percent—know how to reach orgasm in private, so the supposed 'problem' women have with orgasm lies merely in sharing this information with partners; it is the society that has the problem, not women... Indeed, my work showed/shows that almost all women can easily reach orgasm via a more 'direct' gentle clitoral massage. My conclusion is that women should not fear expressing themselves in this way sexually, that women have the right to be sexual in their own way."
Shere drew these conclusions not only from standard questionnaires but also from women's own words or what the New York Times article on her called "revelatory first-person testimonials." The Hite report is full of women's descriptions of both satisfying and unsatisfying partnered sexual encounters; I used many of the former in the chapter of Becoming Cliterate to illustrate ways of doing sex differently than the standard "foreplay, intercourse, male ejaculation, sex over" script that is so predominant in our culture and that leaves women unsatisfied and wondering what's wrong with them. I've had clients read such first-person accounts in the Hite Report for validation and information. All have found it enormously helpful.
In short, Shere told the world that women don't orgasm from intercourse, but they do from clitoral stimulation and that such stimulation should be incorporated into heterosexual couple's sexual routines. But for this science-based message, Shere received an enormous backlash. Playboy called the "Hite Report" the "Hate Report." Even worse, as she continued to write on this topic (see her list of books here), she received death threats due to her work. She renounced her U.S. citizenship in 1995, stating in an article in the New Statesman, that "After a decade of sustained attacks on myself and my work, particularly my 'reports' into female sexuality, I no longer felt free to carry out my research to the best of my ability in the country of my birth."
When I published Becoming Cliterate in 2017, I tried to contact Shere to express immense gratitude for her groundbreaking work, but she was still not responding to U.S. messages, so I was unable to reach her. I never had the chance to thank her for the opportunity to stand on her giant, feminist shoulders.
Several reviewers described Becoming Cliterate as "radical." Bustle said, "Dr. Mintz is leading the revolution in how to become more sexually satisfied and understand the cultural forces that have worked against that for so many years." This isn't true. I simply tried to pick up the revolution that Shere started. So, please, let's honor Shere Hite's memory by no longer considering the notion that most women need clitoral stimulation to orgasm a radical one.
