The Hite Report on Shere Hite (19 page)

Marrying Friedrich, I got something of myself back – the musical part – as well as the physical part, the intimacy of sex and sleeping together daily. I gained seeing a beloved face in front of me, one of the dancing deer
in my heart. We lived together on a daily basis for five years. It was warm and intimate to be with Friedrich all the time. I cherish that period of my life and I love to remember it.

During this time with Friedrich, I began to discover my body, and the life of my body, in a new way. I could appreciate the physical side of myself, trust and risk more. It didn’t happen overnight, but two or three years into the relationship, and continued to progress. A deeper exploration of our bodies, his and mine – of his, and my own with him – through him, and taking steps with him which I would not have taken by myself. And he with me.

Over the years Friedrich lavishly presented me, every birthday, Christmas and on other occasions, with the most elegant dresses, shoes, blouses and skirts. Friedrich’s lingerie was always in exactly the right size. I felt very loved. And I needed this love very much. I needed it for all kinds of reasons. I needed it because I loved Friedrich too. I needed it because of all the things that had happened to me. I needed it because it opened a new door for me, to know how someone could show me their love in this way, and be so steadily charming, thoughtful and intelligent.

Trying on this clothing, I felt very shy about experimenting with him. His encouragement to wear it when out with him put me in mental turmoil. I had to confront the fact that I would hide my body in public, and even in private, although I thought I was proud of it and liked it. I feared its sexuality in some way. This forced me to notice that I and other women use clothes to hide
our anatomy. I always used to hide my body under baggy raincoats and drapey clothing. This clothing Friedrich brought me fitted tight to the body. Eventually, I began to think that my choice of clothing was a kind of mental chador. This might have very practical purposes, that is, to avoid men harassing one in the street, but was also very inhibiting. It decreased my power and identity to disguise my body and its form.

Women’s reproductive capacity – the evidence of which is our bodies’ shapes, our curves and build – is forever fetishized by patriarchal culture, in a negative way. Women are encouraged to see themselves (and men are encouraged to see women) only in terms of their reproductive capacities, or their sexuality – through their bodies. Thus, a woman’s control of her own body, reproduction and sexuality is the key to women’s freedom, as witnessed by the new United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Women. For a woman to emphasize or ‘display’ her body in well-fitting clothing seems as if ‘she’s asking for it’. But this implies that a woman always has to react to the culture, instead of being the initiator and in control.

Must a woman hide herself because others will not understand? Can she never feel pride in presenting her physical identity as it is? What if this makes her feel stronger and more self-assured?

It was Friedrich who metaphorically gave me permission not to ‘act my age’. Of course, I have female friends who have encouraged this too, and to have courage and take action. It’s not only Friedrich who has had this attitude. So why am I not pointing out these women
friends’ super intelligence? Because I take them and their support for granted? When Friedrich gave me such sexual clothes, I was very surprised, and initially, afraid to wear them. I was literally afraid to put them on, and looked for reasons not to. Or took a long time to do so. In the end, it was an education for me – to be loved for my personality, to be accepted as a woman, and at the same time to be encouraged to be overtly sexual. No double standard there. No ‘good wife’ and ‘bad girlfriend’ clichés operating.

When I married Friedrich and even today, I believe my sexuality was and is somewhat inhibited, compared to what it could be. Even now, I am not yet ‘me’, compared to what I could be. Why? For all the usual women’s reasons, but also because I am still trying to find out what sex is, for myself, and re-design my body’s sexual emotional language and assumptions.

But sometimes I did feel uncomfortable with the appreciation Friedrich showed of my sexuality. Why? Was it because both my grandmother and later, even feminist politics, told me (in various ways) that it was wrong for a women to be overtly sexual? Maybe it was politically incorrect, part of oppression, to ‘let a man use your body’? And, again, ‘lots of things in the world are more profound and important than sex!’ Children are starving in developing countries, for example. True, but the definition of our sexuality is linked to why we let this happen, and the creation of our psyches. I believe it’s all part of unravelling the same problem, the underlying social order, and remaking ‘human nature’. Somehow, to me, sex is important – or
physicality – a big part of me, part of what is fun and beautiful in life!

I think I have always been somewhat inhibited sexually. I have had desires I never had the courage to voice, or initiate. Luckily, my partners have had some courage – but there are extensive parts of my sexuality I haven’t yet explored. I am certainly not finished discovering my sexual identity.

About age thirteen, I remember going dancing, after a football game, with my date. I didn’t know what to make of my body’s feelings. I was in my cheerleader’s outfit, it was very dark, and everyone was dancing to slow, fifties music. No one was talking. The boys’ hands were caressing the backs (and sometimes hips) of the girl they were dancing with. As I danced with my date, eventually my back was being caressed too. I wondered, should I
like
this? Should I be
letting
this happen? I was shocked (but mesmerized) both by the feeling of a hand running over parts of my body, and by how the other girls seemed to be doing it, accepting it, as the music droned on. This was so different from at home, where there was a massive denial of the body, and not even lipstick was allowed. Sexual feelings were certainly never mentioned (except for vague references to what ‘good girls’ do). Basically, life at home did not include or acknowledge ‘sex’.

When I was in high school in Missouri, I was elected to the ‘pep squad’, that is I was one of the girls who wore a special uniform and was expected to go to all the football and basketball games and lead the cheering for the boys who were playing. The boys used to ask us for dates
after the games, and we would go to places where they served beer and milkshakes and hamburgers, and had dark dance floors. Of course, the serious guys had their own, beat up cars, and we would go in their cars to these places. It would be unheard of to have someone’s parents take you there! And taxis didn’t exist in that small town.

So the system around me seemed to be pushing me in a direction I little understood. (I was supposed to be popular, it was ‘lucky’ and ‘great’ to be elected a cheerleader and to fit in with the crowd, and so on – especially for a child who, her grandmother had told her, did not fit in at all with the world, and should not have been born, and so on.) Here boys began to show me attention, which I also did not understand. But I could not deny to myself that my body did respond to some of their advances, both verbal and physical. I had mixed feelings about this: I liked the bodily feelings, but did not really like the psychological ones. This was in part because I was not overwhelmingly convinced I liked their personalities (though I found them interesting, like getting to know specimens from another planet), and in part because my grandmother had warned me against sex (and also the church had made this clear). So that if I were to participate I could not like myself.

So I felt my body responding, but my heart and psyche were not in it, and I did not participate completely, but always stopped at various points along the way, trying sex out around the edges, so to speak. What is called a tease, I guess. It wasn’t to tease them, however, but to protect myself. And also, because I didn’t
really like them enough, not to mention love them, I didn’t admire them enough, or want them enough. Dating seemed like something you were supposed to do, otherwise you weren’t popular, one of the accepted ones. You were a ‘nobody’. This was the 1950s rock and roll US. My best friend was president and founder of the Elvis Presley Fan Club. I never joined, and she was insulted. But I was faithful to Rachmaninov, with strong competition from Prokofiev and a few others.

I don’t know how much I learned about my body and sexuality from these early experiences. I know I felt confused. How could I feel yes and no at the same time? I knew I liked being held and touched, but I knew I did not want to go further, as I did not accept these people, and did not want them more intimate with me. There weren’t any around I wanted to be more intimate with me. Or was it just that I couldn’t see them, because they were shyer, and not so aggressive? Those who were aggressive and less sensitive were coming on so strong, that it took all my attention to deal with them? Or was my own church background so strong that it created too much confusion in my mind to allow me to accept more fully the idea of a physical relationship?

Or was I, during most of my childhood and young adulthood, holding myself in some kind of a cocoon, waiting for the time when I could come out and be myself, in a surrounding and an atmosphere that would not harm me and, meanwhile, saving myself. This, I think, is more true, and continued even during university and graduate school. In the women’s movement, I began to feel a space in which I could be me, I could
come out of my cocoon as much as I dared, and begin to flourish in an atmosphere of acceptance. It’s not that there wasn’t debate, or conflicting opinions, but it was the fact that there was more open debate that made me feel comfortable, happy, challenged and interested.

These years gave me the space for emotional and intellectual growth which culminated with my questionnaire for women. This was an amazing period in my life, a time of enormous pleasure and growth, as I opened letter after letter and read page after page of things I (and no one else) had ever heard before. Women’s voices had not been heard before, describing their sexual feelings. It wasn’t like in women’s glossy magazines today, but described in realistic, serious and emotional ways including the ‘mechanics’ of what was going on in their bedrooms and intimate lives.

I felt privileged and proud to be trusted with this information, and nourished by it personally, for I was growing and learning. I found I shared numerous feelings and experiences with a universe of women, and that there was a spectrum of experience and life out there where I fitted in. I wanted to write all this up and let women everywhere know what other women were feeling, and that they didn’t have to feel bad about male-dominated ideas of sex or, as I was to learn later, ideas created by the social order and upheld by men. This social order that
told
women how they ‘should’ feel. Women had the right to define the universe – sexually and otherwise – for themselves.

Gradually the combination of my questions, my relationship with Friedrich, my study of men, and my work on de-cocooning myself, meant that I was developing a new feeling about how sex and sharing the body could be, a new perspective on my body. A new pride slowly affected my sexual expression. I began to act quite differently. I grew more confident. Part of what this involved was reflected, later, by photos taken of me by Iris Brosch, a close friend.

Just when I was enjoying my long-term home life with Friedrich and Rusty, my friends, the beautiful apartment I had bought and decorated, and my work – a long period of stability – suddenly the publication date of the third Hite Report,
Women
and
Love,
approached. After one year in editing, the book was published and the calm privacy of our lives ended abruptly. Unexpected chaos ensued, testing Fred's and my character and will.

This third Hite Report received such a harsh reactionary attack that it caused me grave personal, financial and political problems, which eventually culminated in my leaving the United States.

This is the hardest part of the book for me to write. Why? Because it is difficult to have a perspective,
impossible to know all of the facts. Basically, in 1987/8, there was an attack on me and my book in the US. Later, a committee was formed in my defence. Susan Faludi's book
Backlash:
The
Undeclared
War
Against
American
Women
and the
Women'
s
Review
of
Books
characterized this attack as ‘not so much on Hite, but on the rights of women everywhere'. A new, aggressive anti-feminism had emerged, the initial rounds of which turned out to be part of today's world-wide misogynist, ‘fundamentalist', movement. Whether Islamic, Christian back-to-basic ‘family values', or fundamentalist Catholic, its agenda is the return of women to the home and their silencing.

To start at the beginning. A strange thing happened in 1987, the year Knopf published the third Hite Report –
Women
and
Love:
A
Cultural
Revolution
in
Progress
, my research into women and the emotions of love.

Knopf presented an excellent synopsis:

Well, I thought I had done something really great! I had some dynamite material from women all over the US, I knew that many women could identify with and feel stronger after reading these women's statements, and my conclusions, re-interpreting the dynamics of love relationships and ‘female' emotions, would change forever the psychological landscape, empowering women and men!

Women
and
Love
put names on things that had never had names. Women were restive, it seemed to me, in an emotional system that, though unwritten, was just as oppressive to them as discrimination in jobs. This emotional discrimination (or outdated ‘emotional contract') had not been systematized, and was encouraged by semi-official psychological categories such as ‘women's emotionality', ‘men's fear of looking weak'.

Though ‘problems between the sexes' are said to be ‘part of the human condition'; in fact, women's problems in personal life, deep love affairs and emotional involvements are part of a structure which is invisibly stacked against them.

From the first minute of publishing this book I was held up to public hatred and ridicule by television networks and other media, my address shown on nationwide TV while an announcer proclaimed my ‘sins'.

I became a symbolic love—hate object, a fetishistic-target or symbol, for certain US fundamental extremists (and their fellow-travellers in the media), who acted as if I must be destroyed and stopped at any cost.

As unexpected attacks for things I hadn't done began
to be terrifyingly frequent, I felt like the Cary Grant figure in Alfred Hitchcock's film
North
by
Northwest
–
confused and misunderstood. I, like him, would have given anything to know who was pursuing me, and why!

This was the beginning of the ‘family values' hysteria, including the violent attacks by terrorists on women at abortion clinics in the US. The reactionary hysteria (US fundamentalism at work) engulfed the Congressional elections in the 1990s. It was a weird experience, this late 80s attack by the media, one which many friends, including Jesse Lemisch, Naomi Weisstein, Barbara Seaman, Janet Wolfe – and Friedrich, most intensely – shared and lived through with me. It grew more and more bizarre, as layer after layer of what was happening came to the surface.

Only later did we understand that this was the new corporate media trying out its power – power that we now see very clearly. Today we know that everything we see is filtered through a media prism, open to gross media distortion and interpretation, but when this happened to me the media was just beginning to try out their new muscle. It seemed that I was one of the first ‘test cases', one of the first to experience this organized media wrath. At the time, it was unusual to see violent adjectives and exaggerated descriptions of people and events: who else then had words attached to them like ‘hate'? Now we know that when the new media (or interest groups inside the new media) decide to go after you, they are relentless in their pursuit, shameless in the lengths they will go to or the type of criticisms they will level.

Such organized ‘mafias' or interest groups inside the new media rarely argue directly on the issues they care about; they attack sideways, to destroy their enemy, i.e., if they cannot ‘win' the argument on fair grounds, they resort to personal ridicule or blacken the person's character, for example in my case, calling me a ‘bitch', or speaking endlessly about my methodological sample and not the ideas I raised, i.e., that women have the right to redefine love, that women should not be expected to only define love as ‘taking care of another'. It was as if they purposely set out to spread disinformation about
Women
and
Love
(a book that asks, ‘what is the nature of love?'), and make sure people never heard its ideas – but at the same time, gave people the impression that they ‘knew all about it' …

This became even clearer in the late 1990s, with the further attacks on abortion clinics, and murders, as noted in
Newsweek'
s map of ‘Terrorism in the US' (November 1998).

In the early 1950s, another period of media bigotry, the black singer Paul Robeson was castigated by the FBI and allied media for his so-called ‘political views'; this undermined his social acceptability and singing career. Jean Seberg, the actress, was labelled ‘Communist lover' and hounded to death; Eartha Kitt was smeared with ‘leftist nymphomaniac', and left the country, and so on.

The unfairness of the attack, its dishonesty, shocked me and my friends more than anything else. I'm not sure we ever got to the bottom of what was going on, as the bigger dimensions were hard to see. There was a great sense of perplexity. I kept stammering, ‘But when
do I get to talk about the ideas?' to various media. It never worked that way. Susan Faludi's book,
Backlash,
published four years later, came closest to naming what happened, as well as an article about my media appearances in the
Women
'
s
Review
of
Books,
and a statement made by a group of women defending me. Later, the censoring and threatening of Tasleema Nasreen by a different group of ‘religious' fundamentalist bullies clarified the concept of backlash further.

What did
Women
and
Love
really say? Published in the autumn of 1987, on 12 October, the day of the US stock market crash, the most complex of my works and still least understood, posed the questions: ‘Is love real – or just a way that women are manipulated? If parts are real, which parts? What kind of love do you want? Why does love sometimes become emotionally or physically violent? Do women today still want love, or to be free of it? Is love as traditionally defined a manipulation of women? Does passionate love or a more low-key, caring love make for a better relationship, a more rewarding life?'

My interpretation of women's emotions contradicts Freud's negative-to-women labels, which saw women's emotional life in a more neurotic way. I found that, in fact, how women are behaving in love is frequently heroic, rather than ‘clinging' or ‘masochistic', as so often wrongly labelled. Yet, is women's frequent heroism in giving and nurturing good for women themselves? Or is ‘love' the manipulation of women by an ideology that exploits them?

Here was the first time human rights standards
were applied to private relationships – and it was a shock to some. For the first time, this book opened the doors of the bedroom and private life and let women state the emotional battering and crimes against them done by some men in the name of love. Earlier, the world had been surprised by and denied the extent of the newly presented statistics on physical battering in marriages. With
Women
and
Love,
ten years later, when many women testified to widespread emotional battering, this data was called ‘fraudulent' and inaccurate (‘male bashing') by portions of the US press. Denial again.

Perhaps it alarmed some when the book asked if love', that category by which women were defined for so many centuries, would still be as important to women as it had been. Of course, love is important, but which kinds? An enormous housecleaning of old labels was going on, hence the subtitle of the book: ‘A Cultural Revolution In Progress'. In addition, many women, the study found, were beginning to take their friendships with other women just as seriously as their relationships with men. The ideology of ‘love', with women as the care-takers and love-givers, especially only of men, was being questioned. New ways of forming private life were being tried.

Did the press discuss all these intricate and weighty ideas? Did they notice or say that I was maturing, growing in my abilities? Even that ‘at least' I had collected a lot of interesting data from women? No! I had done a
terrible job. Well, one woman in the
New
York
Times
Book
Review
said that, although my methodology was lousy, some of the ideas were interesting. It was disappointing.

By this time, the late 1980s, the new media and publishing consolidations were in process (as documented by Ben Bagdakian at the University of California), and fundamentalist right-wing power groups inside them were gaining enormous power – and learning how to use it.

Is it even worth telling this story? Can I bear to write about it? It is unpleasant, and my writing about it could lead to charges of my being ‘focused' on the media! On the other hand, it is part of a big story, especially in the light of what we know today about extremist groups and the lengths they will go to to stop their opponents, both inside and outside of the media. Eventually I had to leave the US because of this attack, and threats made against me. It would seem odd not to write about something that had such a huge impact on my life.