The Hite Report on Shere Hite (29 page)
Read The Hite Report on Shere Hite Online
Authors: Shere Hite
Is heterosexuality natural? Do children become heterosexual at puberty? The results of this study implied that the concept that heterosexuality is a âbiological norm', is erroneous. Evidence from my research would seem to demonstrate that âheterosexual nature' is socially constructed, as there is no support for Freud's idea that gender becomes biologically heterosexually-focused at puberty, without social norms guiding it.
Briefly, the new interpretation of childhood offered in
The
Hite
Report
on
the
Family
includes the following ideas:
⢠Since so many girls can masturbate to orgasm from the age of five or so, is puberty really misunderstood for girls? Freud made too much of it, basing it on a male model It is the beginning of girls' reproductive capacity, not their sexuality. Puberty is the stage at which patriarchy demands that children shift their allegiance from their mother to their father. It is an ideological and psychological category: biological events are used to reinforce and mystify the ideological constructions we want children to have.
⢠A major crisis in boys' lives is created during their
puberty: at the same time they are flooded with sexual feelings and (most) masturbate to full orgasm for the first time, they are heavily pressured to demonstrate toughness in sports, âstay away from the girls', âdon't hang around at home with your mother', and told, âDon't be a sissy, a wimp!' (i.e., âfemale' or âfeminine').
Boys are taught to focus their sexual feelings on girls at the same time that they learn that women are objects of lesser stature. This leads to a love-hate relationship with women. Freud tried to address this, but got it backwards. The Oedipus Complex means Oedipus wants to love, but must disassociate, blind himself, to all that is female. This new theory can't explain why men hurt the women they love. Men learn as boys that they should demonstrate contempt for things female and then feel contempt for themselves when they love a woman. Men's ambivalence to loving women often translates into a desire for power and control during sex and the emotional relationship.
⢠Changes in the family: do they mean democratization of the family â or the family in crisis? The current slogan âpreservation of family values' really means preservation of the hierarchical family, rather than a new, egalitarian family. The current âcrisis' in the family â high divorce statistics, and so on â is really a sign of transformation, not a collapse of âcivilization' as we know it. This transformation involves the democratization of an institution that was never democratized, a change in the infra structure of society for the better. It can help a new, more advanced form of political democracy emerge, one less aggressive in its impulses, less
warlike, and thus more suited to the twenty-first century multiracial global community.
⢠Why do girls and their mothers fight? The research on growing up female demonstrated how the relationship between daughter and mother in the traditional patriarchal family is cut off. The relationship is disrupted on the deepest level by the patriarchal taboo on their disclosing sexual feelings to each other (especially taboo is the mother telling the daughter about her âsex life'). If the relationship is disrupted, girls grow up to feel, on some level, that they cannot trust women, especially older women, because âthey will not tell you the whole truth,' i.e., mothers know much more about sexuality than they are willing to share with their daughters. This creates a society in which women fear and distrust one another, seeing men as permissive and women as punishing.
Today, the relationship between mothers and daughters is changing. They may still fight, but many are forging new kinds of relationships.
The relationship most essential for patriarchy to disrupt is the relationship between mother and daughter. Mothers and daughters are not natural enemies (âcompeting' for the father, as Freud egotistically imagined), but natural friends, as they have many things in common. If this relationship were unbroken, however, patriarchy (male ownership of children and society) could not continue, since all power would not be âgiven' to, or directed toward and focused on men. Distrust of women (the famous double standard) is a hallmark of patriarchal psychology. The relationship with the
mother â and the social system's demand that boys and girls deny this relationship's meaning after they âgrow up' â is at the heart of boys' and girls' psychosexual relationship with each other.
There is no daughter in the Holy Family archetype â which is our basic model for what family roles âshould' be. Is the lack of an icon for a daughter (Jesus had no sister) one reason for our fascination with young women's dilemmas as the heroines of popular novels and films?
⢠Another unseen psychosexual drama in children's lives is a crisis of loyalty. Torn loyalties are normal for children in two-parent families. Most parents' relationships, according to children in my study and other statistics, still contain gender stereotypes: most men don't do housework, and condescend to women at home, while women's attitudes can be overly respectful, fearful, obedient. Children are sometimes better off with a single parent, than with two parents who are unequal and present the child with a terrible loyalty conflict. Children in my study report over and over again feeling pressure to choose, take sides, or help the weaker one â or else be left feeling cowardly, self-hating and confused.
⢠The âtraditional family' has political consequence. The traditional hierarchical family, with the father as head, trains children psychologically to keep on repeating the cycle of putting men on top in society and family, no matter what. This makes it difficult for women to be elected to positions of power.
Furthermore, the authority of parents, if no options
are given to children to leave or live elsewhere if they choose, ingrains in children, a tendency to avoid questioning authority or power as adults. They may too easily believe that one should âmake peace with the powers that be', understand âyou can't fight city hall', and so on. Yet we expect people in democracies to think independently, and indeed to question those in power in democracy at every election. Thus the traditional authoritarian, or hierarchical, family system is not particularly suited to enhance the democractic system.
While this book's ideas were well received all over Europe, South America, Canada, Sweden, Japan, Australia and other countries â it was not published in the US until later. In the end it took a statement of protest signed by some very famous writers (as well as journalists asking questions as to why the book was not being published), in order to realize publication.
It was a shock to me to see that even seven years had not made a difference in US conglomerate publishing circles. The prejudices remained as strong as ever. At one point, a major publisher in the US did buy the rights to this book from my British publisher, but then declared he would not publish it, âfor editorial reasons'. But why did he buy it? Everyone must know by now what my books are like, and the book's lengthy proposal stated quite clearly what the book and its methodology would be like. Instead of ruining my reputation as he may have planned (following the same plot line as the reporter who tried to get my books âwithdrawn from the
market' in 1987?) he only looked foolish, since at the same time it was published to acclaim and healthy debate in ten other countries.
The defence committee that first spoke up for me in 1987 again issued a new press release about the problem I was having now in 1994/5:
The
Hite
Report
on
the
Family:
Growing
Up
Under
Patri
archy
â the latest book by ground-breaking researcher Shere Hite â could be a major contribution to the US's ongoing debate over high divorce rates and âfamily values'. Unfortunately, you cannot get a copy of this book in the US, although it has already been published to favourable reviews in Australia, Canada, Great Britain, the Netherlands and Germany. The fact that this work, by an author who has sold millions of books over the last two decades, is being withheld by the US publisher suggests that the backlash against feminism is far from over.
| Â Â | Â | Phyllis Chesler | Â Â Â | Andrea Dworkin |
| Â | Â | Naomi Weisstein | Â | Gloria Steinem |
| Â | Â | Jesse Lemisch | Â | Susan Faludi |
| Â | Â | Barbara Seaman | Â | Stephen Jay Gould |
| Â | Â | Barbara Ehrenreich | Â | Christine Delphy |
| Â | Â | Kate Millet | Â | Ruby Rohrlich |
NBC
Television News in the US had broadcast a favourable fifteen minute piece on
The
Hite
Report
on
the
Family
when it came out in Britain, asking why the US publisher, Dutton/NAL, wouldn't publish. In
addition,
CNN
,
People
magazine, and the
New
York
Times
carried positive information on the family report when it was published in other countries.
Ms
magazine analysed the situation this way (SeptâOct 1994), in an article by Jennifer Gonnerman:
Who's Afraid of Shere Hite?
When Shere Hite revealed that women had better and more frequent orgasms on their own than with a partner, a chorus of angry critics tried to silence her. Now, eighteen years later, it seems that backlash may have temporarily succeeded â at least in the United States.
In 1976,
The
Hite
Report
on
Female
Sexuality
thrust Hite to the forefront of the sexual politics debate. Three Hite reports and one
Time
magazine cover later, she has sold more than twenty million books in at least thirty-six countries. But even with her bestselling clout, Hite is having trouble getting her latest book published here.
Several years ago, Dutton bought the US rights to
The
Hite
Report
on
the
Family:
Growing
Up
Under
Patriarchy
from Bloomsbury, Hite's British publisher. Late last year, Dutton sent out news of the book's upcoming release, but it abruptly cancelled the book several months later for âeditorial reasons'. Dutton and Bloomsbury refuse to give any details.
Like previous Hite reports, this one is based on replies to more than 3,000 surveys distributed mostly through magazines and organizations, including
Elle,
Penthouse
International,
the YWCA, and various student groups. Half the responses are from the US, and most of the rest are from western Europe. In this report, women and men answer intimate questions like, âDid your father or mother
look at pornography?' and âIf you don't have one parent, how do you feel about it?'
The result is a book packed with provocative conclusions: men raised by single mothers enjoy better relationships with women; children's respect for their mothers increased with the rise in single and employed mothers; adults enforce a sense of physical isolation by encouraging children to sleep alone (something they don't even require of themselves); 72 per cent of boys feel pain and ambivalence at being taunted to âbecome a man'; girls develop a split identity â as both a âgood girl' and a sexual being â partly because parents pretend their sexual experimentation isn't happening. Hite concludes that recent changes in the family â especially increased divorce rates â do not signal a crisis. Instead, they are evidence that the family is finally being democratized. âThe family has been a repressive, authoritarian institution for too long,' she writes.
Since Dutton cancelled the book, no other publisher here has picked it up. But Hite says, âI wouldn't be surprised if some of the troubles with publishing this book in the US have to do with the past media attacks.' Hite was the target of fierce media criticism following the 1987 release of
Women
and
Love,
which claimed that most women are emotionally dissatisfied in their relationships with men.
Women
and
Love
was attacked in the press ostensibly for its methodology,' says
Backlash
author Susan Faludi. âBut when you looked beneath the surface, what they were really attacking Hite for was giving voice to the frustrations and rage of everyday women â anger that was not given an outlet in the media in the eighties.'
The media's relentless hostility finally drove Hite to pack her bags and move to Europe. âI feel like she was
driven from this country, and I understand it because I am ready to leave every day,' says writer Andrea Dworkin. âThe media chew people up and spit them out. I think Hite's work is conceptually brilliant, and now we're missing the further development of these ideas.
While Shere Hite struggles to get
The
Hite
Report
on
the
Family
released here, her predicament is a disturbing reminder of how much power the media and publishing industry wield over the direction of feminist debate.
The US publisher who declined the pleasure (and profit) of publishing
The
Hite
Report
on
the
Family
in the US never changed his mind. But other smaller publishers started making inquiries. Thanks to the help of Barbara Seaman, famous for having cofounded the Women's Health Network and for her bestselling books, this book was brought to the attention of an excellent independent publisher.