The Disappearance of Shere Hite, a cogent documentary that argues for the late sex researcher’s contributions to the feminist movement, starts with a bracing news clip from 1976: Hite, her signature strawberry blonde curls tied in a low ponytail, responds coolly to a female news interviewer’s question about her book’s focus on masturbation. Hite calls the popularity of masturbation among the thousands of American women she surveyed a “cause for celebration”, as it shows that women know how to have orgasms when and how they want. Cut to 1994, Hite with another news interviewer shocked at Hite’s frankness 18 years before – her confidence on the language and centrality of female sexuality was startling then, and still invigorating now.
The Hite Report, as her groundbreaking 1976 survey of thousands of women’s individual sexual experiences was called, is according to the film (and to the surprise of some who helped publish it) the 30th bestselling book of all time, but it’s unlikely you’ll find it mentioned among younger feminists today. The nearly two-hour film from director Nicole Newnham (also behind 2020’s Oscar-nominated Crip Camp) interrogates that absence. It persuasively makes the case that Hite, who argued that most women cannot orgasm from penetrative intercourse alone, deserves renewed recognition as a feminist trailblazer, particularly in the still-fraught arena of sexual politics, self-knowledge and liberation.
