Join us for an evening with Shere Hite,
author of The Shere Hite Reader. A book signing and reception will
follow the discussion.
The Shere Hite Reader presents
wide-ranging analysis on the individual and society from a renowned thinker
on psychosexual development. The book includes new science in addition to previously
published material, reflecting Hite's three decades of work probing the roots
of human identity through questionnaires and theory.
For the first time Hite formalizes
her thinking on male adolescence, that boys feel tortured by the new social
role they are forced to assume at puberty requiring a show of superiority toward
females. In new detail Hite advances her understanding that sex is political,
linking the expectation on women to achieve orgasm through coitus with broader
patterns of oppression. Hite discusses new research on female adolescence, challenging
the �virgin� hymen concept, and documenting that sexual awakening often precedes
puberty. Hite also argues that pornography misrepresents male sexuality (not
to mention female sexuality), depicting it as singular and silly instead of
�full of intriguing, nuanced behavior involving the entire body, not just the
penis.�
These and many more new insights are
joined by previous work addressing topics such as the G-spot myth and the coercive
aspect of modern �love.� The Shere Hite Reader distills the findings
of The Hite Report (1976); The Hite Report on Men and Male Sexuality
(1981); Women and Love (1987); and The Hite Report on the Family
(1994); as well as later books published outside the U.S.: Sex and Business,
Women With Women, Women as Revolutionary Agents of Change,
The Divine Comedy of Ariadne and Jupiter, and L'Orgueil d'être
une femme. The authoritative collection of her work, The Shere Hite
Reader challenges the reader to a new way of seeing.
Shere Hite, cultural
historian, is internationally recognized for her work on psychosexual behavior
and gender relations. Dr. Hite, visiting professor of gender and culture at
Nihon University in Japan and previously instructor of female sexuality at New
York University, has lectured at universities around the world including the
Sorbonne, Harvard, Columbia, Cambridge, Oxford, the London School of Economics
and others. Director of the National Organization for Women's Feminist Sexuality
Project from 1972 to 1978, since that time she has directed Hite Research International.
Hite also writes regularly for international newspapers and journals, as well
as continuing to direct the expanding activities of Hite Research.