THE BOOK THAT TAUGHT THE WORLD TO ORGASM AND THEN DISAPPEARED

A tireless investigator of sex lives.

Campbell, a historian of global feminism, makes her book debut with a biography of Shere Hite (1942-2020), author of the controversial Hite Report (1976). Aiming to study history in graduate school at Columbia, Hite dropped out, discouraged by sexist attitudes among academics. While supporting herself by modeling and acting in porn films, she became involved in the burgeoning feminist movement, which inspired her idea of investigating women’s sexual experiences. In response to a detailed, anonymous survey, women reported widespread dissatisfaction; they did not achieve orgasm through vaginal penetration, they disclosed, and often faked it to get sex over with. Offering a different perspective from reports by sexologists Kinsey, or Masters and Johnson, Hite asserted that women reached orgasm through clitoral stimulation. Praise from Erica Jong in a New York Times review “put The Hite Report on the map.” The book became an instant hit, selling 50 million copies, and was translated into 13 languages. Although Hite received grateful letters from women, mostly suburban wives, and even from some men, who admitted that it taught them about sex with women, Hite was attacked by others. She was accused of assuming that a “normal” woman was white and middle-class; some readers outside the U.S. said she was culturally insensitive. Hite was also criticized for promoting an essentialist view of women as nurturers and men as emotionally closed off. In the 1980s, Hite’s trilogy—The Hite Report, The Hite Report on Male Sexuality, and Women and Love—became caught in the crosshairs of a feminist backlash from the right wing and evangelicals, and Hite’s stature plummeted. Campbell aims to revive her contributions: with the rise of the manosphere, trad wives, “resurgent misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, and racism,” Hite, Campbell argues, is worth remembering.

A portrait of a complex woman in fraught times.