Read The Hite Report on Shere Hite Online
Authors: Shere Hite
Everyone kept telling me, ‘Never mind, people will still read your books anyway. The press is always crazy,
don’t
take
it
personally
!’ They seemed to think the point was to appear calm. Others said it was ‘the second book
syndrome – everyone who has a successful first book, gets attacked for the second’, and such things. It was confusing and there seemed to be no answer.
So as soon as I could, I stopped publicizing
The
Hite
Report
on
Male
Sexuality,
and began full-time new research. Thanks to Bob Gottlieb at Knopf, I had a contract for the third Hite Report – the one I had been planning since 1976 and which mattered intensely to me. What is love, how do women define it? This was to be the emotional counterpart to
The
Hite
Report
on
Female
Sexuality.
An inquiry into the nature of love, in fact. Women in the first Hite Report had often responded when asked the question, ‘Why do you like intercourse?’: ‘It’s not because I have orgasm, because I don’t, I have that when I masturbate or when, sometimes, he makes me come with his mouth. I have intercourse
because
I
love
him
.’
I did not doubt that this feeling was true, that love is one of the most important emotions that we know, but love could mean many things: I wanted to know what love meant for women. Was it, as some feminists said, the justification used to confuse women as to their situation? Or was it real, and if so, in which cases?
I had been collecting women’s statements about this since 1976, and now in 1982, already having quite a bit of data, I distributed questionnaires on this topic – again, essay questionnaires which were meant to be returned to me by post unsigned – nationwide, to women all over the US. I distributed questionnaires
through garden clubs, university student centres, the Unitarian Church, the
YWCA
, and many other venues.
The often repeated remark that I canvassed mainly ‘dissident groups’ or ‘heavily feminist groups’, is certainly inaccurate! As a serious researcher with rigorous academic training, I would never have made such a simplistic mistake.
I threw myself into this project, working harder than ever in my life. I asked women about love, what it meant to them, how they defined it and whether it was important. What went on emotionally in their private, sexual lives. These were subjects that had been discussed between my friends and in the women’s movement for years, but which I wanted to investigate in depth: an immense philosophical, emotional and political topic. Understanding it could be of immense service to women, I believed. A radical theory had been proposed, by Ti-Grace Atkinson, the great feminist theorist, that love was the ideology used to control women, nothing more. I was intrigued by this theory, and wanted to see for myself. (Of course, after she said that, Ti-Grace fell in love with Joe Columbo!)
I became immersed in the responses from women to my questionnaires. No one had ever done this research before, much less tried to quantify the answers. Freud had vilified women in his theories, believing in their ‘passive nature’. What was the truth? After the reams and reams written about women’s ‘nature’ and ‘love’ – was
any
of it true? What would women themselves say?
The advance payment from Knopf, for the new report I was working on, meant money was not the
problem it had been. Since this was my most elaborate work to date, I soon used up the advance, investing heavily in research.
Women
and
Love
was to be the most costly research project I had ever launched. It had been much easier to quantify how many women had orgasm during which activity, and so on.
The research I was doing, in fact, cost more money than I was making. Similar studies done by universities or the government’s census or population departments, cost incredible amounts of money. I was trying to do it all on my own, to make sure the research remained completely independent.
Far from being a millionairess, as the popular papers liked to reproach me, I have had to add to my books’ income by also making personal investments (as I had seen my grandfather do).
I have spent over two million dollars on my research to date, over twenty years; that is about $80,000 a year. I used this to hire people, cover overhead and business expenses and to live on. Also, since I had had to borrow money, to research the first book, the advance for the second book paid off the debts on the first, and so on.
Why did I spend all this, go out on a limb with the money I earned, spending all of it again on more research in this way? Other ways of earning a living would have been more sensible, and less risky, not to mention less nerve-racking. So why do it? Was I wanting to be closer to women somehow? To my mother? My grandmother? To free them, make them have more fun, be more sensual, more brave?
In between the seven-day-a-week work, I had the
pleasure of seeing Rusty and my other friends, taking walks in the nearby park with them, and restoring my beautiful new apartment in an historic building to which I moved in 1980.
One day in the middle of all of this, in 1985, I fell head over heels in love.
The body is so mysterious, delicate, more sensitive than we imagine – people diminish it, saying it is ‘just animal’, as if desire were not basically linked to emotion. I can feel myself open up physically when I receive and give love in return, but close down almost instantly otherwise, as if those parts of my body didn’t exist. I have been told that even the ovaries fold their heads together, like petals of a flower, refusing to open, when one’s emotions tell them to. I’m sure it’s true.
Of course, like most people, I can manage to pretend somehow what I don’t feel, or exaggerate. But what’s the sense of playing games with my body and manipulating its feelings? To me, the mind, body and emotions – they’re all one. In fact, my body can be a better indicator to me of my feelings than my emotions – which I can misread, control, transform or block – though the reverse is supposed to be true. I can even convince myself rationally of emotions which I may not feel, out of convenience or even laziness. But there is a certain clarity about the body. It’s more difficult to deny a physical reaction.
Soon after I met Friedrich I wrote in my diary:
Why do I feel so alive? Alive with all my body, my senses, emotions. I feel a spiritual passion, a possession, and I don’t know why.
I heard an old Hungarian song today, which my friend translated like this:
I am seeing you in my mind in the night
And
thinking
about
when
we
will
be
together
I feel so alone without you
(
I
cry alone
)
I wish I
could
go
to
you.
Tonight after I talked to you I felt such an ache to hold you in my arms that I went to lie down on the bed. I lay there, writhing and pressing myself against the mattress, my mouth searching for yours amongst the sheets.
When you held me and with your hand gently stroked my clitoris until I came, my arms around your neck, my lips on your cheek, breathing in your scent – I felt I had been baptized, reborn, life was a new.
I pushed myself down on you – over and over again – thrusting with all myself, all the weight of my buttocks, feeling a great, grassy plain inside of me, longing for you. I felt myself shoving my vagina down on you. Over and over again I pulled back and shoved full force over and over. There was no thought in my mind but to feel you in me, to feel you enter me over and over again, trying to find peace, home. I was screaming from desire – my throat was aching with desire.
My body is on fire. What was the word you used, transcendental? It’s odd – my vagina is on fire, and my whole body is pregnant. I can feel every inch of my body, but it seems insignificant compared to the sense I have of our spirits together, as if you are me, and yet totally alien and yourself. What is this feeling? This
is
reality. This is more real than all the rest. This is where I want to be.
Before we came home, we walked and walked. The closeness between us was so strong it was almost a physical
presence. The evening air, the sounds – the soft lushness of life, the streets during the drizzle, all surrounded us like a soft cloak. People passing us by seemed hushed and tranquil, respectful of our need to be alone with the night, and happy too for us.
We walked, listening to the fluttering of the wings of our souls as they met each other, entwined around each other, rising up above us …
The poignant and fleeting beauty of a moment in time, an instant of feeling, the perfect harmony of a day, an event and the smells and sights so glorious – all to be gone, gone. Later – erased – it cannot be remembered or recaptured. Centuries pass away, and the beauty of a human being, or two human beings together, is lost forever. What does it mean? Who can remember it?
The light on a tree, the summer sounds – the slow, lazy feel of the air embracing you gently, sounds singing to you, rhythm of slight sweat and pale breathing – this day will never come again. Have I embraced it? Does one see clearly what was real, beautiful, that which spoke to the soul? Does one regret the non-time given to ugliness, or what is not real? Does one feel sharply the need to have said more to those who spoke to one’s heart and soul – lost in the jumble – perhaps lost altogether?
Thoughts of other cities of the past – Babylon – Knossos – fill my mind. Where am I now, here in the afternoon light, fading, looking at these buildings which begin to fade away? Am I here? Or am I in some other century? I feel quite more than I am, or seem to be. How can I express it.’
It is Sunday morning, and the air has become clean and beautiful. As we get up, we open the blinds and make a large breakfast. We pull the couch next to the window so
we can eat and watch the people passing by, their faces happy, looking hopeful, expectant, feeling that only good can come of such a beautiful day. The sun pierces the air so cleanly, this time of year, very early spring as opposed to the summer when it moves through a haze of heat. In this brilliant light we lie on the couch for an hour – peaceful, not wanting to move, a perfect day.
Being faithful, wanting to be, is a form of passion, devotion – sexual bondage. I pull aside your lips and kiss your teeth so the kiss will last for eternity. Five hundred years from now when there is no more flesh, your teeth will still be there, to have been kissed by me – to know I loved you. To feel the warmth of my kiss.
We pass each other in sleep by day, clothed to cover our thoughts, to keep our souls private, keep from radiating our light. At night, during the moments before sleep, true expression comes out, the self is itself.
‘Why did you marry him?’ How many times have I been asked this question?
Because I fell in love.
We started out being friends. We met at a party after a Lincoln Center concert, at the German Consulate in New York. That was exciting enough, and though we were with various friends, we wound up going downstairs after the party in the small elevator, alone together. We both looked at our feet and spoke not a word during the entire ride.
At the very last minute, when the car was already waiting, we exchanged telephone numbers.
So began our friendship. For several weeks, we had
long telephone conversations (he lived in Philadelphia) about everything under the sun, from classical music (it was great to find someone who could tell me so much I didn’t know about it) to history (as his second subject in school had been history, he was if anything better versed in many periods of history than I). It was like having a walking, fascinating, magnetic encyclopaedic brain encased in a body oozing beauty, sex appeal and gorgeousness, for a friend.
We continued as friends – for this is all I thought we could be, with such a difference in our ages (he was much younger than I) – and also, I was not expecting a pass from him, because he seemed unlike all other men. And he is. So, I happily continued with our friendship until one day he came to New York and kissed me on the lips.
For me, the weeks that followed were heaven. During one of those days, three months or so later, we decided to get married.
We were secretly married for four months before telling anyone. When we did, Friedrich’s family hated it, him for doing it and me for ‘causing’ it. Our friends, however, were enthusiastic. Naomi Weisstein said, ‘Feminists are the best lovers. Feminists are the best in romance. He never knew what hit him!’ It was more that I never knew what hit me, but I’m sure feminists are indeed the best lovers.
Later we had a more formal wedding, and invited all our friends and family. My Aunt Cecile was my maid of honour. She looked radiant wearing a fuchsia silk dress with hat to match, everything finished down to the last
detail. There she was, smiling and glowing. And there was Friedrich’s family, his mother weeping and crying every time she looked at me! I didn’t think that stereotype of possessive motherhood still existed until I saw it with my own eyes. I thought her wounded attitude was ridiculous, but it caused Friedrich a lot of hurt and turmoil, and so therefore, me too. It never came close to damaging our relationship, but it put some distance between us that hadn’t been there before. It was very painful.
Was I betraying feminism and sisterhood by getting married? I only married when I was forty-two. Fred was much younger. Why did I marry? Because of my own insecurity. I wanted to know that here was something I could count on, that this was a relationship intended to last. I didn’t want to invest myself emotionally if I wasn’t sure it would give me and him a long-term framework.
He became my intellectual, political and sexual companion, and we explored all manner of thoughts and experiences together. Our relationship provided me with a lot of stability, freedom and love. The stability gave me courage to let myself love, be less afraid, become more physically expressive. It sustained me later through the most difficult period of my life, the ugly attack that occurred on my work, and me personally, in 1987/8 in the States.