The Hite Report on Shere Hite (13 page)

Sometimes psychological research papers, on the other hand, do cite directly some of the participants, but then they use only a handful of people (typically, graduate students or clients). Freud, in fact, generalized about women from a sample of only three upper-class Viennese women. However, I feel that small samples are inappropriate for psychological studies, since to generalize from limited samples means that one believes that human nature or behaviour is biologically or metaphysically universal, not culturally bound or socially constructed. I try, by having an extremely large and diverse sample, to include a broad range of voices and points of view, and thereby underline the cultural, socially-constructed nature of much of our thinking and feeling.

Because I publish for a large audience (because I want as many people as possible to be involved), I am however sometimes not cited in academic papers, although my ideas are clearly relevant and in evidence. I was once told by a female graduate student that she wanted to cite me, but couldn't, because in order to get her doctoral thesis accepted, she could not cite work as controversial or popular as mine.

I am often asked, ‘Why did you do all this?' The answer seems so obvious, that it is difficult for me to even put words to it. I feel shy saying this but in truth, I did it because I wanted to help people. Women like the ones I had known in my own family. And my friends. And myself. But I also did it because it was fascinating, thought-provoking and fun. And because it needed to be done: female sexuality was too important to be defined by harmful, outworn patriarchal clichés.

When
The
Hite
Report
on
Female
Sexuality
was published, the media went wild. At first I was fortunate: the great majority of interviews covering that first book were honest and courageous, such as the report by Sharon Nelton in the
Philadelphia
Inquirer.
Nevertheless, since the topic was, and is, one used and degraded by newspapers to sensationalize and ‘sell papers', so the setting (headlines, illustrations, photos) of many of my interviews was lurid and hyped.

At that time, the use of the words clitoris and
orgasm were not permitted in many newspapers, as if that part of women's anatomy was dirty and had to be hidden. So even to use the words, and say that women's sexuality was good, not bad, was heroic on the part of journalists.

I found the newspaper and TV situation confusing. I started to hate reading the ‘interviews'. Strange and violent adjectives (I thought) were sometimes used to describe or colour the interviews, my supposed speech and behaviour. It was odd. Articles often seemed not to reflect the ideas I meant to communicate. There were often physical descriptions of my appearance which I found dehumanizing.

It was ironic that, coming from a religious fundamentalist background myself, now I was experiencing the naïve (or cynical) jibes of this brainwashed mentality.

‘Why?', I asked my friends, ‘Why do they make it all sound so strange?'

‘Because papers want to sensationalize everything', they answered.

‘But the ideas are sensational enough, they don't need caricaturing.'

‘They don't think women have any ideas! Besides, they love to ridicule women social scientists. If you do something that is not “art” but “science”, this really gets them going. They never accepted Margaret Mead as a scientist, either. They think you are fair game, an easy target.'

Sometimes I got the impression that some people's picture of me, from the press, went something like this: She came riding out of the West on her horse, her
blonde hair streaming out behind her, guns blazing. Her mission: reclaim female sexuality for women, end the sexual exploitation of women. A lone cowgirl – courtesy of Dale Evans and Roy Rogers (and Margaret Mead) – in battle with the Evil Elements of Society. A bit naïve, though – just lucky in having a good idea, no real brain involved. It's always easy to forget how distorted the coverage of a woman, her ideas and actions can be.

The consequences of publishing a successful book were a real culture shock to me. Being on television, being (as Helen Gurley Brown put it to me in the Russian Tea Room) ‘all alone'. (‘Do you mean you did it all alone, without anyone behind you?' Answer: ‘Who should I have had behind me?') And now being ridiculed in the press. I didn't know how to react. But all in all, the reaction – particularly from women journalists – was highly favourable.

But then something happened.

I was exposed as ‘only an ex-model'. It was discovered that I had been featured in the nude (well, at least breasts and torso) in
Playboy.
Shock horror. So for anyone looking for a reason to refute me and my work, here it was. I couldn't be a good researcher because I was ‘just a bimbo' who had once posed nude for
Playboy.
Of course, this had been several years earlier, while in college and working as a professional fashion model with the Wilhelmina Agency, part of a series, ‘Famous Photographers Take Pictures of Their Favourite Models'.

Now some members of the press were delighted to declare that it was clear to see, she is no scientist!
Overnight, it wasn't important that I had got two graduate degrees in history, or that I spent five years researching this study. Photographed for
Playboy
meant immediate disrespect, derision and disregard for my work. I could not be right about women and orgasm (women had never faked orgasm, and had never fooled any man), despite my extensive research. So, no change necessary.

They had also said of Margaret Mead that she was no scientist. They said it even when she died, on the front page of the
New
York
Times
in her obituary. And they called Alfred Kinsey no scientist in the 1950s, especially the John Birch Society members who launched a campaign against him.

A television company, Tomorrow Entertainment, had been planning to make a TV series based on my book. Now, I was told, unless I held a press conference and apologized for appearing in
Playboy,
they couldn't go ahead. My head was spinning. If I hadn't needed the money, of course I wouldn't have taken the job and ‘posed nude'. But I did need money. I was still paying off Columbia. The photographer was a friend of mine, totally honest, totally trustworthy, a very kind and a nice man. It seemed hypocritical to me to apologize. I mean, to whom? I was the one who, it seemed to me, needed to hear an apology, for ever having had to be in that position. My book was testimony enough to what I thought of sexual stereotypes of women.

About four years later, the head of that television company did run the series, using almost the same words as the draft I had worked on (again, unpaid) with
three actresses. I was not consulted or mentioned directly, though I should have been, of course. I remember the publicity in television guides quoted one of the actresses as saying, ‘This is better than
The
Hite
Report
because …' Clearly, she had known that the series grew out of my work, and was my work.

Eventually, however, the furore died down, and my work was accepted and used by millions of women and men, as it still is today, all over the world, as well as by most sex therapists and counsellors.

It was wonderful to travel to Europe and Japan to publicize the first Hite Report. I was so excited and impressed. I had never been to most of those places before, and to get to go under these circumstances, to meet women in other countries interested in these issues, talk to extremely interesting publishers and journalists – it was great.

In Germany for the first Hite Report, there was a fabulous press conference arranged by my publisher's press agent, a certain Herr von dem Knesebeck. Gudula Lorez, later founder of a feminist press in Germany, was my translator, both for the book and the press conference. We became good friends and often met after that. The press conference, at the Hotel Vierjahreszeiten in Hamburg, was held in a room with tapestries, huge beautiful carvings and about seventy-five journalists.

My first introduction to Germany, two nights before, however, had been a little different! The press conference took place on a Monday. The plan was for me to arrive on Sunday night. But I was travelling already, and very tired. So, I thought, I'd better get there early
and rest up otherwise I'll be a wreck, I'll be exhausted. So I had arrived on Saturday night instead.

I arrived very late at night at the Hotel Vierjahreszeiten, because the plane had been delayed due to bad weather. The hotel wasn't expecting me to come until the next day. I wasn't used to travelling yet, so I didn't call ahead – or did I? – to say I was coming. There were other travellers from that plane too, all men in raincoats carrying briefcases. The concierge told me, after sorting out the other late arrivals, that they had no rooms. I observed that they had found rooms for all the others, and explained that I was booked to stay there for a full week by my publisher. But even then, I was treated with the most icy disdain, ‘Do you know another hotel you can recommend?' I asked. ‘No!' was the reply. ‘OK, so I'll have to spend the night here in the lobby.'

At this point, they found a room on the top floor, a very small room. I thought it was lovely, in fact, but their attitude had made me depressed. I managed to sleep somehow, but I caught a cold, and someone stole my favourite earrings. They were antique Italian rococco with gold, pink, yellow and white enamel bird cages! I had treated myself at the end of the US tour in Los Angeles at an antique shop I found. The next day, they put me in an elegant, suite on the second floor. I met Gudula Lorez, and we held the press conference together with Herr Knesebeck, the head publicist of Bertelsmann. So I went away with good memories, wonderful memories.

I was surprised, several years later, when I heard
someone saying, ‘Ms Hite, I want to apologize for what happened at the hotel when you were here,' since I had almost forgotten. It was something I tried not to think about, even at the time. It was depressing because, as I was standing there, the only woman in all that crowd, and everyone was looking at me, the concierge was acting like he couldn't be bothered to deal with me, and so on. He acted as if I couldn't
possibly
have a reservation there. The whole thing made me feel as if he thought I was a prostitute even though I had explained to him that the publisher had reserved my room, and that I had written a book, etc. Women on their own are quite often made to feel like prostitutes, for example, if they should go to a restaurant by themselves at night. They may be shunned by everyone there, or told by waiters there are ‘no tables', or at hotels that there are ‘no rooms', and so on. Even if they are two women together.

But not everyone is so stupid. And now, ten years later, here was this lovely man still worrying about how they had tried to tell me they had no room. Even when he apologized, I could not stop and shake hands over it – I had gone there for an afternoon tea with my husband Friedrich, and we were feeling stressed. This was about 1988, and we were recovering from the 1987 publicity traumas in the US. Now the same stories had been copied from the US press and printed in Germany, even in
Der
Spiegel,
and Friedrich, stalwart that he is, never once complained that he was being ridiculed in the press. Or that I was, and that this might reflect on him; Germany, after all, was his home territory.

I always, however, regretted not getting to know that man's name. He was exceptional.

In the end, the first Hite Report was banned in many countries, but published in sixteen languages – every major language but Russian and Arabic. The countries in which it was banned included India, Brazil, Argentina, Malaysia, most Arab countries, South Africa, China, the Soviet Union and the entire Eastern Bloc of that time. In some of these countries, pornography was allowed, but they felt that my book, linked to women's liberation, would threaten their ‘stability'.

In Arab or African countries which practise, or have practised female circumcision – clitoredectomy and infibulation – of course my books are totally banned. If a woman no longer has a clitoris, or her vulva is sewed together, then reading my books would raise questions, and women might want change. In fact, as Alice Walker and Pratibha Parmar's extraordinary book
War
rior
Marks
shows, women in these countries today are deciding they want change.

In Brazil, when the book was Number One on the bestseller lists, the Government banned it (even though male-oriented pornography was not banned) and sent police to bookstores to seize the copies. The proclamation stated, as its' reason: ‘This book is against our old and good customs.' As the local joke went, ‘Yes – against the old and good custom of a woman not having an orgasm with a man!' A 1993 ban in Turkey states, almost verbatim, the same thing.

A psychological society invited me to Brazil for a large public debate. I decided to go, despite the ban. It was a strange trip, the plane took a very long time to get there. After we landed, I was picked up by a man I had never met and taken to a small room in a hotel which seemed, oddly, to be completely empty and deserted. I wondered if people would be afraid to show up for my speech, but there were hundreds, and especially, lots of women! So I was glad I had gone, despite the slightly endangered feeling I had.

Censorship continued in other ways too. For example, in the Israeli (Hebrew) edition, the chapter on lesbianism was cut. Similar bizarre cuts were made in other languages, most publishers probably hoping I would never find out (who can read Finnish?), while others pleaded economic necessity for their various cuts and changes. My books always have been, and still are, banned by the Indian postal service, i.e., you cannot ship them through the Indian post without a penalty. Thus they cannot be legally published in India (how could the publisher ship and distribute them?), and so the book was published in a bandit edition. No royalties, of course, though in a strange kind of courtesy, the ‘publisher' did telephone me to explain. Only since the end of apartheid has the ban on
The
Hite
Report
on
Female
Sexuality
been lifted in South Africa. In Turkey, the publisher was called into the police station to ‘explain his actions' in 1992. China had only a Taiwanese edition, until 1996; now there are three. In Malaysia, where clitoredectomy is so widespread, of course it is banned, and so on.