She then posed naked for an advertisement for a typewriter and was shocked by the text that read: “The typewriter is so smart it doesn’t have to be her.” She didn’t have to think twice and took part in a feminist protest against the ad she was on.
Enjoyment
In 1976 a groundbreaking project by Hite appeared: Nationwide Study of Female Sexuality. Globally, Hite would sell 50 million copies of this report. For this she had 3000 women tell about their experiences in bed by means of a questionnaire. Did they ever masturbate? Faketen they? Does your partner know what you want in bed and how does one feel orgasm for you?
She mainly processed the answers in quotations. “Sex is only one thing, but not with a man,” said hundreds of women. And what did bring them pleasure, they described in the (pornographic) details. It hit like a bomb. Playboy, for which Hite himself once undressed, even called it ‘The Hate Report‘. “I said penetration didn’t do that much for a lot of women, and some people got really angry about that,” Hite said in 2011. The Guardian.
Orgasm
Her research showed that the act did indeed leave more than 70 percent of the women cold. Other women found satisfaction in it, they said, but Hite wondered how true that was. Her contention was that they probably just didn’t know what one orgasm was.
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Although she was labeled by many as ‘anti-man’ and her research was widely criticized – and dismissed by many – others are also full of praise and Hite is seen as the trigger of the sexual revolution in the 1970s. “Her work was groundbreaking,” said British writer Julie Bindel The Guardian.
According to her, women in the 1960s, during the earlier sexual revolution, did not yet feel that they were entitled to sexual pleasure. But Hite, who put female pleasure on the map for the first time, changed that.
Death threats
The report and its feminist statements cost Hite dear. She was threatened with death and therefore moved to Europe. Here she met the German concert pianist Friedrich Höricke, whom she married in 1985. Ten years later, she also adopted German nationality, she says because she found Germany more open and tolerant than her native country.
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