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The Shere Hite Reader: New and Selected Writings on Sex, Globalism, and Private Life
The Shere Hite Reader presents wide-ranging analysis on the individual and society from a renowned thinker on psychosexual development. The book includes new science in addition to previously published material, reflecting Hite's three decades of work probing the roots of human identity through questionnaires and theory.
For the first time Hite formalizes her thinking on male adolescence, that boys feel tortured by the new social role they are forced to assume at puberty requiring a show of superiority toward females. In new detail Hite advances her understanding that sex is political, linking the expectation on women to achieve orgasm through coitus with broader patterns of oppression. Hite discusses new research on female adolescence, challenging the "virgin" hymen concept, and documenting that sexual awakening often precedes puberty. Hite also argues that pornography misrepresents male sexuality (not to mention female sexuality), depicting it as singular and silly instead of "full of intriguing, nuanced behavior involving the entire body, not just the penis."
The authoritative collection of her work, The Shere Hite Reader challenges the reader to a new way of seeing.
For the first time Hite formalizes her thinking on male adolescence, that boys feel tortured by the new social role they are forced to assume at puberty requiring a show of superiority toward females. In new detail Hite advances her understanding that sex is political, linking the expectation on women to achieve orgasm through coitus with broader patterns of oppression. Hite discusses new research on female adolescence, challenging the "virgin" hymen concept, and documenting that sexual awakening often precedes puberty. Hite also argues that pornography misrepresents male sexuality (not to mention female sexuality), depicting it as singular and silly instead of "full of intriguing, nuanced behavior involving the entire body, not just the penis."
The authoritative collection of her work, The Shere Hite Reader challenges the reader to a new way of seeing.
560 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 2006
16 people are currently reading
196 people want to read
About the author
Shere Hite
50 books82 followersShere Hite (born November 2, 1942, Saint Joseph, Missouri) is an American-born German[1] 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. After attacks on herself and her work, she renounced her United States citizenship in 1995 to become German.
Hite 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 attributes the non-completion of this degree to the conservative nature of Columbia at that time. She later completed a Ph.D. at Nihon University (Tokyo, Japan) and another Ph.D. in clinical sexology at Maimonides University, North Miami Beach, Florida.
Shere 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 orgasms 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.
Hite 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 attributes the non-completion of this degree to the conservative nature of Columbia at that time. She later completed a Ph.D. at Nihon University (Tokyo, Japan) and another Ph.D. in clinical sexology at Maimonides University, North Miami Beach, Florida.
Shere 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 orgasms 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.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
March 1, 2007
Possibly the most important book I've EVER read regarding sexual relations between women & men and how those relationships impact, and take their cues from, society. I reccomend it to anyone, everyone. Hite's book has completely revolutionized my view of sex/sexual relationships.
January 5, 2008
Brings together material from Hite's earlier book, especially her commentary and analysis; leaves you feeling just how much work there is to do before gender equality is a reality.
June 4, 2015
A compelling collection. Hite's research remains valuable today, despite subsequent research repeating or occasionally disagreeing with her claims. What's most interesting is getting examples of actual responses to her questionnaires that reveal in someone's own words, how they regard their sexuality. She draws important conclusions from this research which helps explain a lot of the strange sexual baggage many people carry around with them. Some essays are particularly repetitive, though, and I became a little impatient.
April 19, 2009
i think a book that i'm going to skim parts of more than i'm going to read it in entirety. some good things to think about in terms of sexuality.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews