The Shere Hite Reader

Book excerpt: 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." The authoritative collection of her work, The Shere Hite Reader challenges the reader to a new way of seeing.