This enlightening documentary is about a woman with a captivating presence. Shere Hite was a controversial feminist and self-proclaimed sexologist way ahead of her time. She lived at the precipice of the women’s rights movement as it was exploding in the 1970’s. Slim, smart, stylish, soft-spoken and well-educated, Hite wrote a book based on her own sex research, sending out more than 7 thousand questionnaires to get the female point of view which she had to defend over and over again.
The film, directed by Nicole Newnham, has an abundance of archive footage consisting of interviews, speeches and TV appearances. Executive Producer Dakota Johnson also serves as the narrator in a voice that is similar in quality and tone as Shere herself which makes the dialogue seem all the more personal.
Shere was born in Missouri, but abandoned by her parents, moving to live with relatives in Florida where she went to the University of Florida. She then moved to New York City to get a Ph.D at Columbia University in Social history. Her thesis was to be about class gender prejudice, but when she got push back for it, she dropped out.
Looking like a strawberry-blond nymphette , uninhibited with flawless features and body, she had no trouble finding work modeling for photographers. But she was not happy with the way women, in general, were being treated. Newnham includes the commercial she was in for Olivetti typewriters that really set her off. She is shown lugging around a heavy Olivetti machine with the tagline, ”The typewriter so good the operator doesn’t have to be.” Her activism took hold from there, joining NOW and other women’s protest groups as they were hitting the streets. But there has been some controversy about whether that line that the typewriter was smarter than the operator, was the actual tag line.
Hite had studied Masters and Johnson and The Kinsey Report about how women achieve orgasm and took exception to their theories putting the onus on men. Hite wanted women to know that they already had what it takes to achieve orgasm and satisfaction through clitoral stimulation, and that male penetration was not always as effective. She received a lot of criticism from the male dominated society of that era and went out on her own to prove her theories.
There are testimonials from the photographers and women who worked with Shere, as well as in the women’s organizations who were protesting at the time. But, even more interesting are the segments on talk shows where the hosts and guests had difficulty using the biological terms of men and women’s genitalia to talk about her research. She appeared everywhere including with Johnny Carson, Merv Griffin, Mike Douglas, Maury Povich, Geraldo Rivera, and even with Oprah Winfrey.
At first she is shown having fun easily talking on TV talk shows, but later in the film, after doing research for her books about Men and sex, she is taken to task for her methods of gathering information. She was accused of not having big enough samples for what they called her “non-scientific.” studies. This was pre-computer and her data was often long written answers to the questions on her mailed questionnaire. Her work would have been very different in today’s tech world.
Shere Hite was quite the romantic figure, married three times, first to a German concert pianist 20 years her junior. She left the United States, frustrated with the way she and her studies were received and doubted, even renouncing American citizenship. Hite became a citizen in Germany, living there, London and Paris until her death.
Director Nicole Newnham & Dakota Johnson show Shere Hite as a colorful and romantic character who fought hard for women to have sexual satisfaction and a rightful place among men. She asked, “Why is equality dangerous?” A question women still ask today.
IFC Films 1 hour 57 minutes R
Now in select theaters
