The Hite Report on Shere Hite (21 page)

Despite this important analysis, despite women forming a committee to defend me and holding a press conference at the annual conference of the American Studies Association (an academic organization in the US), the attack grew more intense. It progressed from media broadcasting to, as noted, media telephoning my book publishers, threatening calls ‘asking' whether my publishers were planning to continue publishing my work!

This was strange. It was unheard of for a reporter like David Streitfeld to take it upon himself to try to interfere with a book contract, manipulate events to ‘make a story' – first writing that a book is ‘fraudulent', then trying to get its publisher to agree!

What was this about? Why did he or his editors (or group he belonged to?) do this? I don't know. I tend to black this out, it is and was so terrifying. Because what do you do about it? How do you stop it? You wonder who, exactly, is behind such an act, and why? Was I that threatening? To whom?

This attempt to prohibit publication of my work seemed to be planned as the finale to an orchestrated crescendo. The final blow to my credibility was to have
been the withdrawal of my book from the market. But of course it didn't happen.

The first call was to my US publisher, Knopf. The new editor-in-chief, Sonny Mehta, had just taken over. It was his first week on the job when he received the call. He had to get in touch with the editor who had been working on my book, and ask her what it was all about. I was out on tour somewhere, and had no idea that this was going on until later.

Another publisher who the same
Post
reporter called was the British head of Viking Penguin, Clare Alexander. She told me she was amazed when he even managed to ‘track her down, out in the country' at a sales conference. She was startled to be dragged out of a meeting for this ‘urgent telephone call from the States about one of your books', then to hear someone from a major newspaper telling her my book was a ‘fraud', then asking, ‘was she still planning to publish it?'.

This reporter was going far beyond the bounds of reporting a story. Instead, he was trying to create one. But my publishers had a lot of integrity and believed in my work. I had been doing it for many years, and won various awards. Whatever conclusions anyone might agree with or dispute, there was no doubting my integrity and the integrity of my work. But of course they did not feel good about these telephone calls. No one likes to be threatened, or face threatening situations. And they have to think of their other authors; they need good reviews about other books in such important places as the
Washington
Post
(which also owns
Newsweek
): they can't afford to make enemies of powerful reporters.

Next, a speech at the Washington Press Club, where I had hoped to ‘defend' myself, was mysteriously cancelled. When I asked why, the man on the telephone (who didn't want to give his name) told me tersely, ‘Not enough interest', and hung up. It never occurred to me to doubt if he was really the head of the Washington Press Club, or to call back to try to verify this. Could the
Washington
Post,
being in the same city, have had a hand in this? Soon after,
Newsweek,
the
Post
's sister publication, ran a full page attacking my character and personality, together with the fifteen-year-old photo from
Playboy.
The
Post
too would ‘follow up' with short snide pieces every few days.

Why did various reporters want to create this negative atmosphere? The
Women
'
s
Review
of
Books
said the growing strength of the fundamentalist right in the US was flexing its power, out to stop the women's movement. Or as Patrick Buchanan (a Republican candidate for President for a time in 1992) put it in his speech at the national convention that year: ‘The real enemy we have to defeat right now is radical feminism'.

But was the reporter a believer in such ideas? What was the reason for his fervour in carrying on the attack over quite a period of time? Was he working in some other capacity than just reporter? None of us, neither I nor Friedrich nor my friends nor my publishers knew the answer.

My friends and I asked each other, ‘Why is this all happening?'

Clearly, on one level, women's descriptions of their new identity and how love did or did not fit into it – a basic human rights analysis applied to women's experiences in love relationships – was obviously too much for some. In fact, this book suggested that the massive statistics on rape and battering in the US reflected an even higher incidence of emotional violence against women, pervading ‘love' and personal life.

As the
Women
'
s
Review
of
Books
and many others agreed, it was a symbolic attack on feminism, but – on a deeper level – why? Wasn't feminism part of the ‘American dream', the idealism of democracy, with justice and equality for all?

Still others said I was being attacked simply because I had dared to challenge men sexually. The problem all started when I wrote about orgasm, and said men didn't understand women's sexuality! I'm sure Alfred Kinsey and Karen Horney, controversial figures earlier in the century who wrote about sex, would agree with this analysis. Or Mary Calderone and her struggles in the 1950s with the John Birch Society. Others said it was because of the way I looked, ‘too feminine', and this confused the men who were attacking me. They could not put me down with their usual stereotypes about feminists, and so on.

By the way, attacks like this do not sell books. People began to write to my publisher, asking for a book about
me
: few wanted to read what they thought were discredited statistical accounts of women's lives, by ‘complaining and unhappy women'!

One reporter for the
New
York
Observer
decided to
find out specifically why some of the reporters were attacking me. She used a brilliant technique, calling them up and asking them! In a piece of witty investigative journalism, Laura Cottingham analysed what was going on, in ‘The Shere Hite Affair':

Trying to convince Cottingham not to do her story, the
Washington
Post
reporter had told her, ‘Don't get involved, don't try to defend her, I have it on good advice that she is going to have a nervous breakdown.' Well, at least, he hoped! He was helping as much as he could to make it happen! The head of the
New
York
Times
literary section and others were also called.

Very few people saw the positive articles in the
Women's
Review
of
Books,
or this one in the
New
York
Observer
.
And few people were able to see my case as the political event it was – even though this happened a year after the attempted ban of the Mapplethorpe photographic exhibition, yet it was a good year before Anita Hill's testimony to Congress about sexual harassment.

Today it is clear that certain television ‘trials' are used to enforce ‘political correctness', as a means of intimidation and circus entertainment to a discontented people, following the lead of the 1950s Soviet style ‘media show trials'. Or is it so clear?

I was confused, and wanted to understand. Bill Paley, the founder and head of the
CBS
television network, lived next door. Why shouldn't I ask him?

Like the poor peasants in Russia under the Tsar, I kept thinking that these attacks – since they were unethical, not attacking the substance of the research but taking things out of context and attacking my persona – must be done by lone cowboy reporters. The heads of the networks would be outraged if they knew, or at least, would not want such disreputable behaviour – to possibly damage their reputations.

I went to meet Bill Paley next door. (And didn't Walter Cronkite, the most famous
CBS
newsman of all time, come from my home town? His father was my grandfather's friend.) Maybe Bill was nice. But I soon learned how out of touch the heads of networks were. Not that Bill was in his dotage, or rambling. Not at all. He just didn't see women as anything but decor, or
sexual or emotional comfort-objects. Bill had an apartment I'm sure he was proud of, but which looked like every other rich person's decorated apartment in New York. I wouldn't speak so unkindly about him, but he began sexually harassing me.

When I told him, ‘Do you know that there is only one woman on the board of the three major television networks?', hoping that he would try to get more women on the board, he replied quickly, ‘Oh? What's her telephone number?' I imagine he understood why this might be funny, but when I tried to get him to be serious a minute later, he would only repeat the same remark. And then, he wanted to tell me about his first sexual experience as a boy. I may be a ‘sex researcher', but I do not want to hear unsolicited tales. I do not ask people in person to tell me about their lives. He wanted to tell me, because it could lead the topic to sex. Then, when I tried to change the subject, he asked me what my first sexual experience had been and pulled out his penis. (The term ‘sexual harassment' had not yet come into general usage but this seems a perfect example!)