Shere Hite

Shere Hite (/ˈʃɛər ˈhaɪt/ SHAIR HYTE; born Shirley Diana Gregory; November 2, 1942 – September 9, 2020) was an American-born German sex educator and feminist. Her sexological work focused primarily on female sexuality. Hite built upon biological studies of sex by Masters and Johnson and by Alfred Kinsey. She was the author of 'the groundbreaking The Hite Report: A Nationwide Study on Female Sexuality (1976), which became a bestseller. She also referenced theoretical, political and psychological works associated with the feminist movement of the 1970s, such as Anne Koedt's essay "The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm". She renounced her United States citizenship in 1995 to become German.

Born Shirley Diana Gregory p in St. Joseph, Missouri to Paul and Shirley Hurt Gregory. Shortly after the end of World War II, her parents divorced. When her mother remarried, she took the surname of her stepfather Raymond Hite. According to her friend Joanna Briscoe, Hite had never known her father, and had been abandoned twice by her mother at times of mental problems. She did live briefly with her mother, stepfather (whose surname Hite she adopted) and baby brother. Her mother repeatedly lived in psychiatric facilities for much of the rest of her life.

Hite soon returned to her grandparents, who raised her until they divorced. They sent the girl to Florida to be raised by an aunt.

Hite graduated from Seabreeze High School in Daytona Beach, Florida. After she received a master's degree in history from the University of Florida in 1967, she moved to New York City and enrolled at Columbia University to work toward her Ph.D. in social history. Hite said that the reason for her not completing this degree was the conservative nature of Columbia at that time. She posed in the nude for Playboy magazine while studying at Columbia University.

In the 1970s, she did part of her research while at the National Organization for Women. Her most well-known work, The Hite Report: A Nationwide Study on Female Sexuality, was published in 1976 and became a bestseller.

Again using her technique of analyzing responses to questionnaires, she wrote and published two additional studies: The Hite Report on Male Sexuality (1981) and Women and Love (1987). In the midst of changing roles for women and men , these books made people "more uncomfortable" and brought strong criticism..

In 1988, she made an extended appearance on the British TV discussion programme After Dark, alongside James Dearden, Mary Whitehouse, Joan Wyndham, and Naim Attallah.

In 1989, she was interviewed in London by Joanna Briscoe, who later became her friend, and whose flat she often lived in.