The Shere Hite Reader

For thirty years Shere Hite has regaled an international readership with instalments of brilliantly accessible social science. Her series of Reports set the standard for packaging substantive research in a readable format, in addition to redefining what could and could not be said about sex. In The Hite Report (1976), to answer sensitive questions dealing with the most intimate details of women’s sexuality, her innovation was simple: she asked women, a lot of them, everything - and published the responses. Further developing her fresh use of questionnaires in cultural research, Shere Hite went on to publish The Hite Report on Men and Male Sexuality (1981); Women and Love: A Cultural Revolution in Progress (1987); The Hite Report on the Family: Growing Up Under Patriarchy (1994); and The New Hite Report (2000). Her autobiography, The Hite Report on Hite, was released in 2000. The Shere Hite Reader offers a new statement on all five Hite Reports, as well as four later books, including Women as Revolutionary Agents of Change: The Hite Report and Beyond; The Divine Academy of Ariadne and Jupiter; Women with Women; and Sex and Business. Here, for the first time, the scientific and creative elements of Hite’s writing are blended. One can observe the progression from raw data to cultural critique, and the startling scope of cultural phenomena Hite penetrates. The Shere Hite Reader addresses subjects as diverse as female orgasm, images of men in pornography, development of gender identity via sexual socialisation of children, and global terrorism. It is a collection the reader will mine for years.