The Hite Report on Shere Hite (12 page)

Publishing and promoting
The
Hite
Report
was not what I expected! This was six months of madness!

Just before the book came out, in August 1976, it became clear to me that there was very little publicity planned for the book. The whole point of going with a commercial publisher (besides money: a commercial publisher supplies an advance payment you can eat on) was to get really wide exposure for the ideas.

The publisher planned to print only 4,000 copies, and had given the book to a man in the publicity department, who had ten other books to publicize that month. He didn't appear interested and didn't have a clue about ‘this book on orgasm'. I doubt he ever read the book: I know his wife hadn't, because I asked him if he had given it to her and what she thought, and he said no, he hadn't, it had never occurred to him. He spent his evenings campaigning for the liberal party in his neighbourhood, he told me.

When a letter came from a women's morning TV programme, asking him to send them my book to possibly have me on their show, he wrote back suggesting they invite another author. How do I know this? By chance. Since I was usually at Macmillan until midnight or later with Ronnie, a woman friend of mine, addressing envelopes, making photocopies and trying to get together some kind of press material, one night, I happened to see this letter with his reply (he had never told me about it!). He had written back that he thought my book and subject would be too ‘ticklish' for television, and instead sent back another book and suggested they interview
that
author! You can imagine how I felt.

I asked for a meeting between him, his supervisor and myself the next day. (I was so naïve about office politics.) First of all, his supervisor, a woman of about forty-five told me she hadn't read my book, she didn't need to. She berated me for staying at Macmillan after hours and ‘looking through files'! But if they weren't doing their job, mailing out press releases and writing letters, someone had to. After five years' work, I was determined to get my research findings heard.

I decided – and at that time I was over $30,000 in debt – to hire a publicist, with the help of my editor. No matter if I had to work at a regular job later to pay back the publicist. My editor loaned me the $1,000 down-payment, even though she no longer worked at the publisher's. It was a matter of days now until the book's official publication date. By now, I was almost alone at Macmillan because my editor, had quit (or been fired, depending on whose view you took). The way the commercial publishing business works, if a book is not noticed when it first comes out, it dies, in most cases, because it is not news anymore. A poor system, but that's it.

I had heard that Ms magazine had a freelance publicist, and since I wanted a feminist above everything else, I called and met with her. She was Sheri Safron, and turned out to be very good. I told her I would have to hire her on credit. She said the fee would be approximately $3,000 plus expenses but she would work on credit, if I gave her a $1,000 down payment. The only hitch was that next week she was going to Europe, but ‘my assistant will handle things', like trying to get me
on TV, etc. This sounded better to me than another woman I had seen, who told me that the whole package (book jacket and cover copy) was all wrong and that the best she could do was a ‘mop up job'. That's about as helpful as standing there looking at somebody dying, and saying, oh well, it's probably too late anyway. What an idiot she was, I thought. So I said yes to the $3,000 and then went back to addressing envelopes until midnight at Macmillan with my friend. Usually we worked at night there (I paid my friend a pittance), because during the daytime we were made to feel in the way.

The name of the book was chosen by my editor, Regina Ryan, along with her husband Paul. She was the first female editor-in-chief of a major publishing house. Can you imagine? Now there are so many women heads of publishing houses! But not then. In the early seventies, women formed collectives inside major media corporations such as
Time,
the
New
York
Times
and so on, to gain equal pay for women. When this happened at Macmillan, unlike at other corporations, all the women were fired! They picketed outside the headquarters on Third Avenue, every day, until this was covered on television and gave Macmillan some very bad publicity. Macmillan's way of overcoming their problem was not to hire back the women, but to be the first company to hire a woman as editor-in-chief.

They hired my editor, who had been at Knopf for thirteen years. Barbara Seaman, co-founder of the Women's Health Network, had generously introduced me to her own editor, and said the book was a good idea. Ryan accepted, taking my book, among others, with her
from Knopf, where we had the contract, to Macmillan. While addressing the envelopes with Veronica, I began to worry again. There were so many books – how would this one be noticed? How would journalists with very little time to really read books, know to spend that time reading this one, and that it was not just another sex book? In fact, it was a meticulous and elaborate five-year research study, the kind that, if done by a university or government agency, would be announced in a press conference to the newspapers.

I would, from time to time, see articles in the
New
York
Times
about studies done by this person or that person, and I thought that my study should be reported in the same way, with the same dignity. The thing to do therefore, was to have a press conference. But I had no idea how press conferences were organized. Fortunately, at this point, someone helped me. Martin Sage. He had qualities like wit, charm and intellectual savy, as well as a practical side. One night, when I wouldn't let him sleep talking about my worries about what would happen to all my work, would anyone ever hear about it? – he told me that he had held a press conference for his block association, trying to keep McDonald's from opening a store on his block. Furthermore, he had been successful, and would try to do the same for me.

I and other friends all agreed this sounded like a good idea, everybody except Macmillan (neutral and uninterested) and the new publicist (by now in Europe, and reacting to her assistant's relayed message). She said it would be a ‘disaster' and I would be ‘crazy' to do it. When I proposed a press conference to the
publisher, they seemed astonished and also too busy to ‘do anything about that'. In fact, after my editor, Regina Ryan, had left, the publishing executives decided that I was ‘as terrible as she was', and that they would therefore only print the minimum number of copies of my book. They told me female sexuality had been over-discussed as a topic, and nobody needed any new books about it. Sorry kid. (Who did you think you were, anyway?) I knew this wasn't right. Martin and I organized the press conference, and I held it the next week. Wonderful.

I wrote a one-page press release, a manifesto really, and asked four other women in the field of sexuality or counselling, of various political and sexual orientations, to speak with me. Martin took around the press releases. The women who came to speak with me at the press conference were Leah Schaefer, Mary Calderone, Janet Wolfe and Kay Whitlock of the
NOW
Lesbianism and Sexuality Committee.

On the day of publication, over one hundred people came to the press conference: all women but one man (the invitation had said this was a press conference for women). We presented our information, and the debate and questions were great. All the major newspapers and magazines were there. I have tapes of our statements made that day, and the question and answer period which followed. What a day – the first time anyone had publicly declared, on the basis of a large sample of women, that most women do not orgasm from simple
coitus. And that this was no disaster, since they could orgasm easily from other stimulation – so that there was nothing wrong with women, it was just the definition of sex which society should change! And thanks to Barbara Seaman, Ti-Grace Atkinson, Ann Koedt and 3,019 women, there I was saying it.

The reaction was something else! Something I never expected and more than I had ever dreamed. I had thought that this would be a book seen by academics and feminists, I never dreamed it would turn into what is called a bestseller. The press rush was fun, it was great, it was terrifying, and it was fantastic. Everyone seemed to get the message.

Why was it so electrifying? Because in 1976, the year that
The
Hite
Report
on
Female
Sexuality
was published, it was believed by almost everyone that if a woman did not have an orgasm during penetration (i.e., coitus), she was frigid or had a sexual dysfunction (Masters and Johnson). Only Ann Koedt and Albert Ellis had questioned this, but there was no body of evidence to support them. They had asserted that the vaginal orgasm was a myth, and that perhaps no women at all had orgasm from the simple stimulation of ‘thrusting'. (In my book, I wrote, Why not call it ‘penile covering'? As far as I know, it is still, clinically, called ‘thrusting'.)

Before my book, it was known that many women did not have an orgasm during sexual intercourse with men (Kinsey, Freud, Masters and Johnson, Kaplan, Shaffer); still, they were expected to assist joyfully in stimulation
for male orgasm, i.e., coitus. It was said that a woman was not normal if she did not orgasm from intercourse.

A woman's lack of orgasm through coitus was labelled a ‘neurosis', ‘psychological block' or ‘Victorian attitude'. My research and theories pointed out the logical and factual errors in these assumptions. First, my research demonstrated that the stimulation most women use for masturbation (during which they can orgasm easily) is not at all the same as the stimulation they receive during intercourse (coitus). Most women masturbate with exterior clitoral or mons pubic or vulval stimulation, as my work (for the first time) made clear, citing thousands of women's descriptions, in their own words. Intercourse, on the other hand, gives women vaginal stimulation, plus some stimulation of the vulva. I concluded, not that there was something
wrong
with women (psychologically or physically), but that there was something
wrong
with this attitude that women who needed clitoral stimulation for orgasm were ‘immature' or ‘frigid'. It was not women who had a problem but our society for not accepting the many ways in which women do have orgasm easily and regularly. For most, this means clitoral stimulation, though a few can orgasm through coitus and other means.

In my research, most women, two thirds, can orgasm easily during some form of clitoral or exterior stimulation, but not from coitus alone. Over 90 per cent of women in my study could masturbate easily to orgasm, with only two per cent using penetration during this self-stimulation. It is not women who have a problem with sex, but the society in which they live that has a
problem with the way it defines sex, and with women's bodies.

If women don't generally have an orgasm simply from coitus,
The
Hite
Report
asserted, this is not a terrible mistake of nature, but shows that the definition of sex is too rigid and should be made more individual and varied; furthermore various forms of sexuality and touching should always be possible. This sounds innocuous now, but certainly wasn't when I first said it!

Sex is cultural, was the very new message. Society has accepted a limited, reproductive, definition of sex, designed by patriarchy. It is not ‘naturally ordained'. Sex need not be defined as foreplay, leading automatically to intercourse, the finale being male orgasm. This is simply a reproductive definition of sex emphasized by an earlier society that needed to increase reproduction. As I pointed out (before Michel Foucault), ‘sex' is a culturally created institution, not a biological given. The classical Greeks had to pass a law stipulating that men had to have coitus with their wives at least three times a month, to ensure its reproductive aspect. Sex could be redefined to include many more types of physical communication than have been seen as ‘normal' today – with various levels of intensity and intimacy. Affection should be possible without ‘going all the way'; eroticism and sensuality are valid experiences in themselves. Kate Millet and Andrea Dworkin were also early pioneers in deconstructing the definition of ‘sex,' though Michel Foucault was later credited with it.

One of the innovations in my research was distributing questionnaires in such a manner that I could be
sure to protect the complete anonymity of those participating. In most research, people are asked questions over the telephone, or in face-to-face interviews. By using a written questionnaire, distributed through clubs and organizations, churches and colleges, and then asking people not to sign their essay answers (to over one hundred questions) but only to inform me of their age, occupation, religion (if any), income and so on, people knew they could feel free to write anything they wanted. They need not hide anything.

In my published studies, I also provided statistics on many new topics that were not considered research areas before, starting with ‘When do you orgasm, and exactly how?', ‘How does orgasm feel?', to ‘How do you masturbate?', going on to such subjects as ‘Who broke up first?', ‘When were you loneliest?', and, ‘What does love feel like? Is love passion or caring? Which is more important?' These questions, and hundreds more, can be found in the appendices to my books.

I used essay questions, since I believed that simpler, multiple choice questions with pre-set categories for answers would mean imposing my own (or society's) categories on others. In addition I felt that since, as women, we had never had a chance to speak for ourselves on the topics of orgasm, sexuality and the ‘politics of the bedroom', essay questions would create an opportunity for us, as women, to write in our own words, in our own way.

The final innovation of my research methodology was to present my analysis of
the findings, not only my own voice but also allowing those participating to
debate topics within the books. By presenting the written statements of those participating (and 90 per cent of the books are composed of these testimonies), one gains the richness of people's own experience expressed verbatim. In addition, readers can judge for themselves which points of view they prefer. Readers need not agree with my conclusions or point of view, but may prefer that of one or more of the studies' participants. Only after presenting all the points of view received in answer to my questions do I proceed to draw what I believe are the appropriate conclusions. I am aware this is almost never done, especially in research with large samples such as mine. This was the democratic principle of the Enlightenment applied to research in social science, perhaps for the first time; after all, social science was a discipline which had only existed for a hundred years and which could and can be improved upon!