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Right next to
The Name of the Rose
and not far from
One Hundred Years of Solitude
is
The Hite Report
on the list headed by
Don Quixote
of the most read books of all time.
And yet, and as the documentary
The Disappearance of Shere Hite
notes with astonishment and even bewilderment , few are those (and, above all, those) who are under 50 years old and know exactly who they are. Hite and what changed the most famous of his three studies on sexuality.
The film signed by Nicole Newnham (also the author of
Crip Camp)
and recently presented at the Sundance Festival, not only does she recover her figure from that sensation of surprise, but she reviews -now with astonishment-
the persistent and even less well-known harassment to which she was subjected after the publication of the third of her books
, this time around with masculine sexuality and follows the trail to what was his definitive escape in full glory.
Shock defines everything.
"The fact that there is no name for clitoral stimulation gives an idea of the suppression of female sexuality in Western culture
," says Hite in an interview and in his statement offers one of the keys to much of what came later.
As if it were a thriller, the film's director combines what she wants to be a character study with the most brilliant investigative techniques to produce a portrait of the author that ends up being the perfect x-ray of a time, ours. , with each and every one of their dissatisfactions (sexual and otherwise) intact.
Hite was, in her own way, the great discoverer of, indeed, the clitoris.
As it is.
The first report of her published in 1976 maintained, and demonstrated thanks to more than 3,000 anonymous interviews, that it was the main sexual organ of women,
revealing the prevailing belief that orgasm was only achieved through penetration.
The film reveals the author's journey to get here.
And through her we discover, through the meticulous and perfect assembling of period images with testimonials from the best of present and past feminism, that the road was bitter from the first step.
When she arrived in New York, Columbia University rejected her because, literally, "a woman could not have done such brilliant previous work."
Hite not only modeled for magazines like
Playboy
(which was later used against her) in order to live, but the legs that appear in the poster of the James Bond film
Diamonds for eternity
are hers.
But, with everything, the bleeding would come later.
The rejection of his work was immediate and radical on all fronts.
Even his publisher limited the print run against his own interests.
For the academy, the report lacked scientific rigor.
For the media, who came to carry out a telephone survey as a reply and refutation to what was her last work, the author became an enemy to be beaten.
Keep in mind that in many of them the word clitoris was banned.
And, in general, that thing as diffuse as it is granite that calls itself the establishment (obviously masculine) interpreted each written or spoken word of the anthropologist as a frontal attack.
In interview after interview, in an anthology of infamy, Hite is insulted, belittled, pimped or outright attacked in the most blatant display of the extent to which her work had hit the most sensitive nerve.
Not in vain, the report, beyond technicalities, revealed that what is considered rare, different or sinful was not the exception but the norm.
Much of Hite's success consisted in turning her books into a comfort tool.
Normal was sick.
Not the other way around.
"The worrying thing is that perhaps young women will have to fight the same battles," he
says at another time to describe what will be the third act: the story of the erasure.
Hite ended up losing and was erased from memory, not only from the feminist.
First she took refuge in Germany, then (in 1995) she renounced her US citizenship and finally died ravaged by a degenerative disease in 2020. And despite everything, and despite the fact that from today the revelations of
The Hite report
may seem obvious, the body of women continues to be a battlefield.
Never has a single book advanced so far, and no book on sex has been so celebrated and controversial at the same time.
The 30th most read book.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
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