If you are a young woman living in America and you have never heard of Shere Hite, you’re not alone. The American-born radical feminist who became famous in the ‘70s for her controversial views and subsequent publications on sex and sexuality was effectively driven into obscurity by an increasingly critical public eye. So much so that the writer even went so far as to renounce her American citizenship, choosing to live out the rest of her life in Germany. In Nicole Newnham’s latest documentary, The Disappearance of Shere Hite, Newnham seeks to draw our attention back to this unique and important woman and her work through a detailed look into her life and views. The result is a dazzling exploration of Hite’s life that highlights the seemingly never-ending battle for women’s rights in America.
While working toward a Ph.D at Columbia University, Hite became increasingly disturbed by the way she and her fellow female classmates were treated. No one seemed to want to take her questions about women’s lives seriously, least of all men. After becoming involved with the National Organization for Women (NOW), Hite came up with the idea of distributing surveys to women that asked personal questions about their sex lives. Adding to the research done by Masters and Johnson on female sexuality, these surveys were anonymous, and they were designed to collect information about different women’s relationships to their bodies, their masturbation habits, and their relationships with romantic partners. After compiling all the data received from these surveys, Hite published the book The Hite Report on Female Sexuality to great critical acclaim. It seems that everyone was enticed by the idea of the woman as a sexual entity, and Hite was quickly embraced as a guru of female sexuality.
During the ‘70s, these kinds of casual discussions about female sexuality were not commonplace, and Hite was one of the first women to openly address the double standards surrounding women and men in the bedroom. And while her book became a bestseller, not everyone was happy about what she had to say about women and what they were looking for behind closed doors. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the most vehement critics came in the form of men seemingly aghast at the possibility that the women in their lives had been lying about their satisfaction for years. In a desperate attempt at leveling the playing field, Hite conducted more research — this time focusing on men — and released a follow up book to the original Hite Report titled The Hite Report on Men and Male Sexuality. Unfortunately for her, the book was torn to pieces by male critics, and Hite’s reputation as a sex expert and feminist quickly began to go down the drain.
Much of The Disappearance of Shere Hite focuses on Hite’s life story from beginning to end. Old footage of the young, strawberry blonde writer permeates the entire film, and even if you’ve never heard of her before, the minute she appears on screen, her magnetism is palpable. Dakota Johnson (who is an executive producer on the film) contributes voiceover of Hite’s writings that help give insights to Hite’s mind. The film depicts her as a confident, self-assured woman hellbent on fighting for equal rights for women, and even as her career and her image start to slip, the fury with which she fights for what she believes in is inspiring. At one point, Hite is asked to appear on The Oprah Winfrey Show to discuss her books with an audience entirely made up of men. The footage is heartbreaking and infuriating as Hite is essentially thrown to slaughter by dozens of angry men shell-shocked by the possibility that their sexual performances in the eyes of their female partners just might be sub-par at best. It’s a hard scene to watch — even Winfrey seems disturbed by the men’s unbridled rage — but one can’t help but make parallels to the modern-day equivalents of men’s rights activists and incels prevalent in our culture today.
This is why Newnham’s documentary about the enigmatic Hite is so powerful. Underneath the thrilling biography, connections are being made to America’s current state of affairs in regard to women’s bodies. The underlying message of the film seems to suggest that feminism and the fight for equal rights amongst genders is an ongoing and often cyclical thing. Hite just happened to be one of the first to openly begin to discuss sex from the viewpoint of women. Because of this, she was an easy target for ridicule and unfair criticism which effectively ran her out of the country and sent her into a self-imposed exile. The country was not ready to hear her radical, hard truths. Thankfully though, this documentary serves as a reintroduction to Hite and her groundbreaking work while also reminding viewers that the fight for equal rights is far from over.
Photo courtesy of IFC Films
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