Shere Hite. [Courtesy Sundance Institute]

THE DISAPPEARANCE OF SHERE HITE
Directed by Nicole Newnham
Certificate: 15
☆☆☆☆☆

IN 1976, sociologist Shere Hite published the findings of her study on female sexuality.

The Hite Report became an instant best seller and set off a wave of discussions and counter arguments.

This brilliantly insightful documentary questions why she has fallen out of the public eye when her work was so important (and remains so), but also moves beyond the work she did and the extraordinary response it garnered. We learn much more about the person behind the report, her background, influences and motivations.

What this film does so well is highlight how bizarre we are as a species. Men reacted terribly to hearing some bare-faced facts about their sex lives from a woman’s point of view: Hite’s respondents to more than 100 questions included the fact that nearly every woman who replied said they reached orgasm through clitoral stimulation, not just penetrative sex. The outrage of the male/industrial complex at such statements seems breathtaking today.

She found her work attacked for the fact she had posed in Playboy as a struggling student to earn some money. The research she did and the statistics she used were questioned. Her follow-up book that focused on male sexuality was an even bigger red rag to the religious and cultural right, while her third important work, about love, again spoke cold hard truths that were not pleasant for some to swallow.

The film benefits from Hite often being interviewed and being prepared to defend and discuss her work carefully and rationally. But it makes for some uncomfortable scenes as she is bullied and ridiculed by sniggering interviewers.

The USA lost many bright lights because of McCarthyism and, in a similar fashion, Hite went into self-imposed exile in Europe. It was here she spent time with Kentish Town writer Joanna Briscoe, who appears to talk about their time together, and we see her work with photographer Iris Brosch.

Hite was a Pre-Raphaelite in looks and this film is beautiful to look at, with Hite’s own idea of self worth evident through the public image she created.

She died in 2020, and it is high time her work was revisited, her advocacy for human rights celebrated, and her lessons about how patriarchal societies are damaging for everyone, men included, reconsidered.