The Hite Report: What Do Women Really Want?

"I Masturbate with my fingers on my clitoris, and other fingers pinching, pulling, scratching across the surface of my nipples. It is necessary to maintain moisture on the clitoris. Sometimes I rub up and down, sometimes in circles. And my legs are sometimes together and sometimes apart. It is especially exciting to hold my hand still and get the friction by movement of the body against the stationary finger. I also like to see and feel my breasts in motion. Usually I stand in front of a full-length mirror."

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"I prefer to wear blue jeans that are so tight the seam presses against the tip of the clitoris. Otherwise, I use my fingers to provide gentle press-release pressure to the top of the clitoris. My legs are usually together and I move very little. I can even do it in public without being observed."

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"Orgasm is a feeling of warmth, first, all over me. In fact, my general mood and the atmosphere around me before sexual activity begins are a great part of the build-up of this warm or excited feeling. After the general warmth comes tension in my legs--particularly my thighs--my abdomen and, of course, my breasts and genitals. My clitoris feels very tingly. I feel very strong just before orgasm and my insides seem to be alive and powerful. The moistness, heat and strength are all very satisfying. Sometimes my buttocks and pelvis feel the need to be very frenzied and move a lot, and sometimes I feel more like pushing strongly against something with my pelvis and legs. The orgasm itself reminds me of a dam breaking. I can feel contractions inside me and a very liquid sensation. The best part is the continuing waves of build-up and release during multiple orgasms."

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"Massages like licking and sucking are great because they involve a constant breaking of contact, which keeps the sensation from being too monotonous. Every time the tongue touches, it is a new and pleasurable sensation, which eventually leads to orgasm. Any great change in position would be distracting, but the slight breaks and expectations are exciting."

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Those quotes, all first-person accounts of sexual behavior, make up the heart of The Hite Report, Shere Hite's nation-wide study of female sexuality. The book found its way onto most best-seller lists and Hite has been interviewed, reviewed and in some cases dismissed by just about everyone in the media. Why all the fuss? We've had the Kinsey Report, three books by Masters and Johnson, two by Alex Comfort and Morton Hunt's survey of sex in the Seventies. The topic has been strip-mined. So what, exactly, does The Hite Report have to offer that the others don't?

Kinsey gave us statistics. Masters and Johnson came along and gave us a working model of the efficient lovemaker--the person who has orgasms during intercourse. Alex Comfort provided us with customizing hints--how to do it differently. And Morton Hunt did an update, trying to compare old data with the changing times.

Hite does not really believe in statistics or norms. Her book consists of the subjective accounts of more than 3000 women. The Report is a confessional wherein the reader learns the dark secrets of female sexuality, those things that partners seldom tell each other. Men who read the study are astonished at the diversity of sexual response. No two women are alike, no one is average and, in sex, nothing is normal.

Hite's most revolutionary contribution to sex study is her redefinition of orgasm. She treats the term as a verb, active, not passive. The man does not give the woman her orgasm: It is something she works toward herself. And once she accepts the responsibility, it becomes clear that intercourse as we know it is not the most efficient way to achieve it. Hite's study shows that only 30 percent of the women interviewed have orgasms regularly during inter-course. Laying siege to the sacredness of intercourse is an act just this side of inciting riot. Critics attacked the findings of The Hite Report, charging that the sample was biased, that the kind of woman who is so obsessed with the quality of her orgasms that she would take the time to answer a 57-item questionnaire on the topic has to be unusual and/or weird. The Report is biased and that may be its strength. The women who answered the questionnaire were articulate and outspoken. Their answers may seem to be on the fringe, but that fringe might be lying next to you in bed. We don't get our partners from central casting. A record of anyone's relationships would be biased and eccentric. One woman confessed that she had to relearn how to orgasm with each new partner. That exemplifies Hite's notion of sex--there is no single model, there is only what happens between partners.

To get to the source of all this controversy, we decided to interview the author. We started with the statistic that has drawn the most fire--that 30 percent figure. The women hadn't said that they didn't enjoy intercourse, mind you. But it made men suspicious, anyway. Men have learned (or come to accept) that a woman's pleasure is, or should be, an important part of sexual contact. Why do women still have so much trouble having orgasms during intercourse?

Hite: The assumption is faulty because intercourse per se does not provide enough clitoral stimulation for most women to orgasm. Women can orgasm during intercourse by simultaneous manual stimulation of the clitoris if they want, but the problem here has always been the idea that men should be able to give women orgasms--that women must be provided for here as everywhere else. And increased knowledge about clitoral stimulation has meant, in most cases, just another area men are supposed to attend to. My study shows an interesting statistic: Ninety-five percent of the women who did masturbate said they always, or almost always, orgasm from it. But masturbation makes them feel guilty. Most of the respondents still see masturbation as secondary sex--what you do when you're alone or when your intercourse hasn't been satisfactory. Although 70 percent of the respondents do not orgasm from intercourse, they prefer it to masturbation because of the closeness, the intimacy that goes along with sharing sex with another person. Now if women could stimulate themselves manually during intercourse--which does not mean excluding men from participation--they would be able to have all the things they like about intercourse and achieve orgasm. Another point: When women fel-late men, it is rare that either party takes offense when the man reaches in to guide the woman, to show her the best spots or the best rhythms. Why should the same behavior by the female partner cause such suspicion? Most women don't go to pieces when men touch themselves.

Nellis: Do the women in the study blame themselves or their partners for the anger and disappointment they feel about their sex lives?

Hite: There were different feelings expressed. One kind said sex is OK but I'm not. A small group--made up for the most part of women in the movement--was critical of men or society. Another group blamed men, but in a different way. These women said if men could go longer during intercourse, women would orgasm. But they didn't say what longer was. Still another group said that duration wasn't important as much as the quality of the contact during intercourse.

Nellis: What do these responses tell you about how women see themselves as sexual beings?

Hite: It says to me that women are trying to fit into an archaic model of sex. They have an idea that their sex lives should resemble the sex discussed by the media, by men and by other women. The definition of sex is intercourse. This is very damaging to both men and women and doesn't leave a lot of room for creativity, or experimentation, or alternative forms of sexual satisfaction. And if men and women see intercourse as the only real sex, it means that no matter how satisfying or how interesting anything else they do together is, it's all foreplay without intercourse. I'm suggesting we call sex something else and it should include everything from kissing to sitting close together. Whatever someone feels is physical contact.

Nellis: Your sample has been criticized for not being representative of the general population. Who, exactly, are the women who responded to the questionnaire?

Hite: I have repeatedly said that the work was never intended as a survey, therefore criticisms of the "sample" seem beside the point to me. I did make a big effort to get the questionnaire widely (concluded on page 136)Hite Report(continued from page 132) distributed. I put notices in a lot of diverse places--church bulletins, the N.O.W. newsletter, university women's groups, older-women's groups, Brides magazine, The Village Voice, Ms., Mademoiselle, and the full questionnaire ran in Oui magazine. I received answers from 3019 women. They came from all age groups, geographical backgrounds, religions and occupations.

Nellis: Did you get different responses from, say, the readers of Brides and the readers of the N.O.W. newsletter?

Hite: Yes and no. The greatest difference was between a group of radical lesbians and the female readers of Oui magazine. But for the most part, the information about how women come to orgasm physically and how they feel about their bodies was similar. The difference was in how the women felt about their feelings. Lower-class women were still more bound by stereotypes, as were the women who hadn't been involved in the women's movement. Women who had been exposed to the women's movement were blaming themselves less for their sexual problems, although many of them felt that they were unusual because they needed clitoral stimulation.

Nellis: How did you get involved in this study in the first place?

Hite: I got interested in the women's movement in 1971, about the time that Masters and Johnson's second book, Human Sexual Inadequacy, came out. I spent a lot of time with feminists debating that book. Did it reflect our sexual experiences? A lot of it didn't. So I began to distribute the first version of the questionnaire. I wound up with four versions, because I kept improving the questions based on the kinds of answers I was getting from the women. Those answers were so interesting and so exciting that I began to be convinced that I should do a book and get the information out to as many people as possible.

Nellis: Did you find that media coverage of sexual research had any effect on what women seemed to know about themselves or one another?

Hite: Masters and Johnson uncovered one important piece of information that got a lot of press. Women need clitoral stimulation to orgasm. But they said that women should be able to get enough indirect clitoral stimulation from thrusting during intercourse to achieve orgasm. Further, Masters and Johnson very carefully chose for their original sample only those women with a history of orgasms from intercourse, and then generalized from this small sample to the rest of the population. In fact, no one before my study had ever asked women directly whether or not they orgasm from intercourse. And my study shows that most women don't.

Nellis: Do you think of your study as a good way to disseminate information to the general public? After all, we seem to have had a deluge of information in the past ten years, some of it useful but some of it faulty, and some of it deliberately incendiary.

Hite: But that's the whole point. There has been a deluge, but there hasn't been much real information. Sex has been described graphically, like a game plan or a series of events. That implies that there is a mechanical process for people to follow and any interruption results in problems. Many of the women in my study report that they feel something called vaginal ache--the need to be filled, the desire for penetration. Many of the same women describe the moment of penetration as thrilling and extremely important to them. So the fear that learning about how women orgasm from women themselves will somehow destroy sexual relations between the sexes is a myth and has been emphasized in those negative reviews my study has received.

Nellis: Speaking of myths, can you give us an example of the type that the study has destroyed?

Hite: It turns out that a number of women get still or rigid during actual orgasm. They don't thrash around wildly, for the most part. Men usually think if a woman gets still, what he's doing isn't working, so he goes on to something else at what just might be the crucial moment. If a woman doesn't feel free to say, "Keep doing what you're already doing," which most women don't, she loses her moment.

Nellis: Do you think younger people, who seem more at ease talking about sex, are having better sex than middle-aged or older people?

Hite: I think the sexual revolution is overrated. A lot of older people are having good sex because they've had more experience. Also, some older men are slower, which is good for women, and often older men connect sex with feelings more often than younger men do.

Nellis: How does this fit into the statistics about the 30 percent of the women in your study who orgasm from intercourse?

Hite: I don't think that the 30 percent represents women who are somehow anatomically or emotionally different. I think those women were able to be more assertive about getting what they need and most of them were getting direct clitoral stimulation during intercourse, usually through contact with the man's pubic area.

Nellis: What about the women who report that they don't orgasm at all?

Hite: Sex therapists generally agree that the best way for women who aren't orgasmic to learn is to masturbate. A vibrator can be a good aid. But women who can't orgasm from masturbation may have some very real problems about touching themselves or allowing themselves to have pleasure. The study showed that those women feel very bad about it but don't feel they can discuss it with anyone. The trouble with most sex therapy is that often its goal is to teach women how to orgasm during intercourse, a goal that often is never reached. They should be teaching women how to get comfortable with masturbation and clitoral stimulation.

Nellis: One reoccurring criticism of your research has been to link the low statistics of orgasm during intercourse and the high statistics of orgasm during masturbation to a pro-lesbian position on your part. Are you trying to tell women that they will have better sex alone or with other women than with men?

Hite: There are a whole lot of points to make on this subject. In essence, the book is arguing for a genderless definition of sex in physical relations, and for sex that wouldn't always be genital but would be physical. But the men who have taken the absence of orgasm in women to mean that women don't like intercourse are absolutely wrong. Women are looking for an equal role in sex. And they define a lot of physical activity as sexual--like holding, kissing, cuddling, fondling, and so on. Yelling lesbian has happened before. Men have often defined the desire for change by women as a form of rejection. Not so.

Nellis: How can women bring about the right atmosphere for the kind of sexual attention they want?

Hite: I hope that the information in my Report will become part of a general conversation on the meaning of sex in our society--which will lead to losing the definition of sex as we now know it and creating a more individual and humane spectrum of possibilities. Then people wouldn't automatically go to bed with the old definitions or the old expectations. The communication would take place before embarking on sex. Then women wouldn't have to stand up in the middle of things and say, "Wait a minute!"

"The sexual revolution is overrated. A lot of older people are having good sex because they've had more experience."