Shere Hite
Feminist and author
BORN NOVEMBER 2, 1942 – DIED SEPTEMBER 9, 2020, AGED 77
SHERE Hite revolutionised women’s sex lives thanks to her pioneering research into the female orgasm in 1976, invalidating established patriarchal assumptions of the time.
Based on the questionnaire results of 3,500 American women, The Hite Report: A Nationwide Study Of Female Sexuality, created a furore, proving so controversial Playboy magazine dubbed the work “The Hate Report”.
By the mid- 1990s the criticism was intrusive enough for Hite to relinquish her American citizenship in favour of German nationality, gained via marriage to concert pianist Friedrich Höricke.
She was born Shirley Diana Gregory in Missouri, the daughter of Paul Gregory and his wife Shirley, née Hunt.
Her mother divorced and remarried Raymond Hite, giving the little girl her new surname, but the second marriage did not last and Shere was later raised by her grandparents. She read history at the University of Florida before moving to New York to enrol in a PhD at Columbia University.
Funds were tight so Hite posed nude for Playboy and for a typewriter advert captioned: “The typewriter that’s so smart that she doesn’t have to be.” The blatant sexism so incensed her she joined protests against its publication.
She began researching her bestselling report following a meeting at the National Organisation Of Women in which the topic of female orgasms, or lack of, arose.
In 1981 she wrote another contentious study, focused on male sexuality.
Married three times, she moved to London in later life with her last husband Paul Sullivan. He said she died of the neurological disorder corticobasal degeneration.