The Hite Report on Shere Hite (31 page)

During post-feminist years, according to my research, women have been involved in a search for a more authentic sexuality. Ironically, this search for redefinition involved a rejection of what was perceived to be ‘feminism’ with its supposedly ‘too straight’ sexuality. The new ‘bad girls’ anti-orthodoxy leaned towards nipple piercing and sado-masochistic dress styles. Yet this ‘revolt’ embraces the old ‘good girl/bad girl’ split sexual identity, still leaving women restless, unsatisfied and ready for ‘the new parity, the new virginity’.

Many women now are trying to push the walls back, to get old scripts off their backs – to name feelings as yet unspoken, rethink the physical dimension. I want to design a new physical-emotional body language to reflect this and my own feelings. The ideology, the
Zeitgeist
as we know it, creates a split in the personalities of women
and
men between ‘things of the mind and spirit’, and ‘things of the body’. This mind-body split has been part of Western philosophy for two millennia, but need not be forever. I plan to keep on working with visual images, and also to publish a new text about this in the future. Sexuality and spirituality should be reunited.