The Silencing Of A Sex Researcher Explored In Award-Winning ‘The Disappearance Of Shere Hite’ – For The Love Of Docs
By Matthew Carey
October 18, 2023
Watch the full conversation with director Nicole Newnham HERE.
Sex researcher Shere Hite became a media sensation in the mid-1970s with the publication of her groundbreaking study of female sexuality, The Hite Report. Then came the furious backlash.
Hite’s extraordinary impact on American culture, and the price she paid for her work are explored in the award-winning documentary The Disappearance of Shere Hite. The film directed by Oscar nominee Nicole Newnham (Crip Camp) screened as part of Deadline’s virtual event series For the Love of Docs.
In a conversation following the film, Newnham told Deadline she first read The Hite Report as a kid, after finding a copy of the book in her mother’s possession. Then years later, in September 2020, the director came across a New York Times obituary for Hite, who died essentially in exile in the U.K.
“I read the obituary and the title was one of those moments you never forget… It said, ‘Shere Hite. She described how women orgasm and she was hated for it.’ And I thought, wow, what a title for an obituary about anyone and what does that say about our culture?” Newnham recalled. “And then I thought, whatever happened to Shere Hite? I had never asked myself that question, which I feel quite ashamed of now. But even in the obituary, there was a sense of what sort of had happened, which was that our culture was so afraid of what she was revealing — simply by opening up questions to women and asking them and revealing women’s real experiences — that they had to silence her.”
The Hite Report, which was based on anonymous surveys of thousands of women, became a massive bestseller. It triggered controversy because its findings were so revolutionary: Hite’s research demonstrated that most women did not achieve orgasm through penetrative sex, but through clitoral stimulation. As such, the male sex organ was not essential to women enjoying sexual satisfaction.
“Her data was very strong, and also it just went against the prevailing wisdom of the time,” Newnham observed. “It was really like a bomb in our culture, provoking a lot of relief from a lot of women who suddenly felt like they weren’t alone, a lot of further exploration, then, of various things that did produce orgasm in women. And, also, it engendered a lot of fear and the beginning of the backlash amongst men who started to worry about the shift in their position as a result of all of this.”
The Disappearance of Shere Hite premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January. On Tuesday, it was named to DOC NYC’s prestigious shortlist of the year’s best documentaries and on Monday it earned three nominations for the Critics’ Choice Documentary Awards, including Best Archival Documentary, Best Biographical Documentary, and Best Narration for the work of actress Dakota Johnson, who provides Hite’s voice in a number of sections of the film. In addition to Sundance, the documentary has played at festivals across the country, from Miami to Nashville and Nantucket, provoking strong reactions among viewers.
“I love that young women are literally buying the book, The Hite Report, on their phone during the screening,” Newnham said. She added that many young women respond to the archive material in the film which shows how, as a public figure, Hite embraced her femininity and dressed in a distinctive, glamorous style. “By the end of the film, they come up and want to know where Shere got her clothes and what designers she was wearing and they’re Shere ‘Stans,’ which is extremely thrilling to me — and actually kind of the hope. One of the Sundance programmers told me that when they saw the film, they thought we should program this because we want everybody to be dressing like Shere Hite for Halloween. They wanted people to re-embrace her as the cultural icon that she was. So, when I see evidence that that’s happening, it’s very thrilling.”
For the Love of Docs is a virtual Deadline event series sponsored by National Geographic in partnership with the International Documentary Association (IDA). The series continues with a new film screening each Tuesday through December 12. Next up, on October 24, is Satan Wants You, directed by Sean Horlor and Steve J. Adams.
