Shere Hite
Encyclopedia
Shere Hite is an American
-born German
sex educator
and feminist
. Her sexological
work has focused primarily on female sexuality
. Hite builds upon biological studies of sex by Masters and Johnson
and by Alfred Kinsey
. She also references theoretical, political and psychological works associated with the feminist movement
of the 1970s, such as Anne Koedt
's The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm. She renounced her United States citizenship in 1995 to become German.
to Paul and Shirley Hurt Gregory. She later took the surname of her stepfather, Raymond Hite. She graduated from Seabreeze High School
in Daytona Beach, Florida
. She received a masters degree in history from the University of Florida
in 1967. She then moved to New York City
and enrolled at Columbia University
to work toward her Ph.D. in social history
. Hite says that the reason for her not completing this degree was the conservative nature of Columbia at that time. In the 1970s, she did part of her research while at the National Organization for Women
, and also appeared nude in both Playboy
and Oui magazine. Hite teaches at Nihon University
(Tokyo, Japan), Chongqing University
in China
, and Maimonides University, North Miami Beach, Florida
, USA.
s through in-out, thrusting intercourse
but are able to achieve orgasm easily by masturbation
or other direct clitoral
stimulation. Only 30% of the women in her study reported ever experiencing orgasm during thrusting intercourse. She has criticised Masters and Johnson's argument that enough clitoral stimulation to achieve orgasm should be provided by thrusting during intercourse, and the inference that the failure of this is a sign of female "sexual dysfunction
." Whilst not denying that both Kinsey and Masters and Johnson have been a crucial step in sex research, she believes that we must understand the cultural and personal construction of sexual experience to make the research relevant to sexual behaviour outside the laboratory. She offered the criticism that limiting test subjects to "normal" women who report orgasming during coitus was basing research on the faulty assumption that having an orgasm during coitus was typical, something that her own research strongly refuted.
raises concerns about whether the sample data can be generalised to relevant populations. As is common with surveys concerning sensitive subjects, such as sexual behaviour, the proportion of nonresponse is typically large. Thus the conclusions derived from the data may not represent the views of the population under study because of bias
due to nonresponse. Hite supporters defend her methodology by saying that it is more likely to get to the truth of women's sexuality than studying women engaged in prostitution as if they were exemplary of women in general, or to study in laboratory conditions women who claim to orgasm during coitus.
Hite has been praised for her theoretical fruitfulness in sociological research. The suggestion of bias
in some of Hite's studies is frequently used as a talking point
in university courses where sampling methods
are discussed, along with the Literary Digest
poll of 1936.
One discussion of sampling bias is by Philip Zimbardo, who explained that women in Hite's study were given a survey about marriage satisfaction, where 98% reported dissatisfaction, and 75% reported having had extra-marital affairs, but where only 4% of women given the survey responded. ABC News and The Washington Post later gave surveys on marriage satisfaction to women in random samples; 93% reported being satisfied with their relationships, and only 7% reported having had affairs. Zimbardo argued that the women who had dissatisfaction may have been more motivated to respond than women who were satisfied and that her research may just have been “science-coded journalism.” On the other hand, social science methodological differences when questions are on publicly consequential subjects, e.g., immediacy vs. time for thoughtfulness when answering, can result in differences in honesty and promises of confidentiality are not all equally believed by prospective respondents, affecting respondents' openness and honesty. Some or all of her published surveys depended on wide multi-channel questionnaire distribution, opportunity for many long answers on a respondent's own schedule, enforced respondent anonymity, and response by mail rather than polling by telephone.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
-born German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
sex educator
Sex education
Sex education refers to formal programs of instruction on a wide range of issues relating to human sexuality, including human sexual anatomy, sexual reproduction, sexual intercourse, reproductive health, emotional relations, reproductive rights and responsibilities, abstinence, contraception, and...
and feminist
Feminism
Feminism is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights and equal opportunities for women. Its concepts overlap with those of women's rights...
. Her sexological
Sexology
Sexology is the scientific study of human sexuality, including human sexual interests, behavior, and function. The term does not generally refer to the non-scientific study of sex, such as political analysis or social criticism....
work has focused primarily on female sexuality
Human female sexuality
Human female sexuality encompasses a broad range of behaviors and processes, including female sexual identity and sexual behavior, the physiological, psychological, social, cultural, political, and spiritual or religious aspects of sex...
. Hite builds upon biological studies of sex by Masters and Johnson
Masters and Johnson
The Masters and Johnson research team, composed of William H. Masters and Virginia E. Johnson, pioneered research into the nature of human sexual response and the diagnosis and treatment of sexual disorders and dysfunctions from 1957 until the 1990s....
and by Alfred Kinsey
Alfred Kinsey
Alfred Charles Kinsey was an American biologist and professor of entomology and zoology, who in 1947 founded the Institute for Sex Research at Indiana University, now known as the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction, as well as producing the Kinsey Reports and the Kinsey...
. She also references theoretical, political and psychological works associated with the feminist movement
Feminist movement
The feminist movement refers to a series of campaigns for reforms on issues such as reproductive rights, domestic violence, maternity leave, equal pay, women's suffrage, sexual harassment and sexual violence...
of the 1970s, such as Anne Koedt
Anne Koedt
Anne Koedt is a United States radical feminist and NY based author of The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm, 1970, the classic feminist work on women's sexuality...
's The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm. She renounced her United States citizenship in 1995 to become German.
Early life, education, and career
Hite was born Shirley Diana Gregory in Saint Joseph, MissouriSaint Joseph, Missouri
Saint Joseph is the second largest city in northwest Missouri, only second to Kansas City in size, serving as the county seat for Buchanan County. As of the 2010 census, Saint Joseph had a total population of 76,780, making it the eighth largest city in the state. The St...
to Paul and Shirley Hurt Gregory. She later took the surname of her stepfather, Raymond Hite. She graduated from Seabreeze High School
Seabreeze High School
Seabreeze High School is a high school located in Daytona Beach, Florida. The school has been named a Blue Ribbon School of Excellence.- Notable alumni :...
in Daytona Beach, Florida
Daytona Beach, Florida
Daytona Beach is a city in Volusia County, Florida, USA. According to 2008 U.S. Census Bureau estimates, the city has a population of 64,211. Daytona Beach is a principal city of the Deltona – Daytona Beach – Ormond Beach, Florida Metropolitan Statistical Area, which the census bureau estimated had...
. She received a masters degree in history from the University of Florida
University of Florida
The University of Florida is an American public land-grant, sea-grant, and space-grant research university located on a campus in Gainesville, Florida. The university traces its historical origins to 1853, and has operated continuously on its present Gainesville campus since September 1906...
in 1967. She then moved to New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
and enrolled at Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
to work toward her Ph.D. in social history
Social history
Social history, often called the new social history, is a branch of History that includes history of ordinary people and their strategies of coping with life. In its "golden age" it was a major growth field in the 1960s and 1970s among scholars, and still is well represented in history departments...
. Hite says that the reason for her not completing this degree was the conservative nature of Columbia at that time. In the 1970s, she did part of her research while at the National Organization for Women
National Organization for Women
The National Organization for Women is the largest feminist organization in the United States. It was founded in 1966 and has a membership of 500,000 contributing members. The organization consists of 550 chapters in all 50 U.S...
, and also appeared nude in both Playboy
Playboy
Playboy is an American men's magazine that features photographs of nude women as well as journalism and fiction. It was founded in Chicago in 1953 by Hugh Hefner and his associates, and funded in part by a $1,000 loan from Hefner's mother. The magazine has grown into Playboy Enterprises, Inc., with...
and Oui magazine. Hite teaches at Nihon University
Nihon University
Nihon University is the largest university in Japan. Akiyoshi Yamada, the minister of justice, founded Nihon Law School in October 1889....
(Tokyo, Japan), Chongqing University
Chongqing University
Chongqing University is a comprehensive national university in the Shapingba District of Chongqing municipality, China. It is a member of the Project 211 and Project 985 which aims to transform Chinese universities into better research institutions.-History:...
in China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
, and Maimonides University, North Miami Beach, Florida
Miami Beach, Florida
Miami Beach is a coastal resort city in Miami-Dade County, Florida, United States, incorporated on March 26, 1915. The municipality is located on a barrier island between the Atlantic Ocean and Biscayne Bay, the latter which separates the Beach from Miami city proper...
, USA.
Research focus
Hite has focused on understanding how individuals regard sexual experience and the meaning it holds for them. Hite has criticised Masters and Johnson's work for uncritically incorporating cultural attitudes on sexual behaviour into their research. For example, Hite's work showed that 70% of women do not have orgasmOrgasm
Orgasm is the peak of the plateau phase of the sexual response cycle, characterized by an intense sensation of pleasure...
s through in-out, thrusting intercourse
Sexual intercourse
Sexual intercourse, also known as copulation or coitus, commonly refers to the act in which a male's penis enters a female's vagina for the purposes of sexual pleasure or reproduction. The entities may be of opposite sexes, or they may be hermaphroditic, as is the case with snails...
but are able to achieve orgasm easily by masturbation
Masturbation
Masturbation refers to sexual stimulation of a person's own genitals, usually to the point of orgasm. The stimulation can be performed manually, by use of objects or tools, or by some combination of these methods. Masturbation is a common form of autoeroticism...
or other direct clitoral
Clitoris
The clitoris is a sexual organ that is present only in female mammals. In humans, the visible button-like portion is located near the anterior junction of the labia minora, above the opening of the urethra and vagina. Unlike the penis, which is homologous to the clitoris, the clitoris does not...
stimulation. Only 30% of the women in her study reported ever experiencing orgasm during thrusting intercourse. She has criticised Masters and Johnson's argument that enough clitoral stimulation to achieve orgasm should be provided by thrusting during intercourse, and the inference that the failure of this is a sign of female "sexual dysfunction
Sexual dysfunction
Sexual dysfunction or sexual malfunction refers to a difficulty experienced by an individual or a couple during any stage of a normal sexual activity, including desire, arousal or orgasm....
." Whilst not denying that both Kinsey and Masters and Johnson have been a crucial step in sex research, she believes that we must understand the cultural and personal construction of sexual experience to make the research relevant to sexual behaviour outside the laboratory. She offered the criticism that limiting test subjects to "normal" women who report orgasming during coitus was basing research on the faulty assumption that having an orgasm during coitus was typical, something that her own research strongly refuted.
Methodology
Hite uses an individualistic research method. Thousands of responses from anonymous questionnaires were used as a framework to develop a discourse on human responses to gender and sexuality. Her conclusions derived from these questionnaire data have met with methodological criticism. The fact that her data are not probability samplesRandom sample
In statistics, a sample is a subject chosen from a population for investigation; a random sample is one chosen by a method involving an unpredictable component...
raises concerns about whether the sample data can be generalised to relevant populations. As is common with surveys concerning sensitive subjects, such as sexual behaviour, the proportion of nonresponse is typically large. Thus the conclusions derived from the data may not represent the views of the population under study because of bias
Biased sample
In statistics, sampling bias is when a sample is collected in such a way that some members of the intended population are less likely to be included than others. It results in a biased sample, a non-random sample of a population in which all individuals, or instances, were not equally likely to...
due to nonresponse. Hite supporters defend her methodology by saying that it is more likely to get to the truth of women's sexuality than studying women engaged in prostitution as if they were exemplary of women in general, or to study in laboratory conditions women who claim to orgasm during coitus.
Hite has been praised for her theoretical fruitfulness in sociological research. The suggestion of bias
Bias
Bias is an inclination to present or hold a partial perspective at the expense of alternatives. Bias can come in many forms.-In judgement and decision making:...
in some of Hite's studies is frequently used as a talking point
Talking point
A talking point in debate or discourse is a succinct statement designed to persuasively support one side taken on an issue. Such statements can either be free standing or created as retorts to the opposition's talking points and are frequently used in public relations, particularly in areas heavy...
in university courses where sampling methods
Sampling (statistics)
In statistics and survey methodology, sampling is concerned with the selection of a subset of individuals from within a population to estimate characteristics of the whole population....
are discussed, along with the Literary Digest
Literary Digest
The Literary Digest was an influential general interest weekly magazine published by Funk & Wagnalls. Founded by Isaac Kaufmann Funk in 1890, it eventually merged with two similar weekly magazines, Public Opinion and Current Opinion.-History:...
poll of 1936.
One discussion of sampling bias is by Philip Zimbardo, who explained that women in Hite's study were given a survey about marriage satisfaction, where 98% reported dissatisfaction, and 75% reported having had extra-marital affairs, but where only 4% of women given the survey responded. ABC News and The Washington Post later gave surveys on marriage satisfaction to women in random samples; 93% reported being satisfied with their relationships, and only 7% reported having had affairs. Zimbardo argued that the women who had dissatisfaction may have been more motivated to respond than women who were satisfied and that her research may just have been “science-coded journalism.” On the other hand, social science methodological differences when questions are on publicly consequential subjects, e.g., immediacy vs. time for thoughtfulness when answering, can result in differences in honesty and promises of confidentiality are not all equally believed by prospective respondents, affecting respondents' openness and honesty. Some or all of her published surveys depended on wide multi-channel questionnaire distribution, opportunity for many long answers on a respondent's own schedule, enforced respondent anonymity, and response by mail rather than polling by telephone.
Personal life
Hite has no children. Since 1985, she has been married to German concert pianist Friedrich Horicke, who is 19 years her junior.Notable works
- Sexual Honesty, by Women, For Women (1974)
- The Hite Report on Female Sexuality (1976, 2004)
- The Hite Report on Men and Male Sexuality (1981)
- Women and Love: A Cultural Revolution in Progress (The Hite Report on Love, Passion, and Emotional Violence) (1987)
- Fliegen mit Jupiter (English: Flying with Jupiter) (1993)
- The Hite Report on the Family: Growing Up Under Patriarchy (1994)
- The Hite Report on Shere Hite: Voice of a Daughter in Exile (2000) (autobiography)
- The Shere Hite Reader: New and Selected Writings on Sex, Globalization and Private Life (2006)