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Shere Hite Explained How Women Orgasm, and Was Hated for It - The New York Times

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Shere Hite never set out to discover the female orgasm. As a child, she wanted to be either a classical composer or a person who could figure out how society got to be so “irrational.” But as she once told an interviewer, “How many women have you heard of becoming composers, right?” So she obtained bachelor’s and master’s degrees in history instead, and in 1968, she enrolled in Columbia University’s Ph.D. program, where she ended up studying female sexuality. Around that time, Hite modeled for extra money. She was booked for a television commercial for Olivetti typewriters that she later discovered was being used for an advertising campaign with the tagline “The Typewriter That’s So Smart, She Doesn’t Have to Be.” Hite was livid. She discovered that the National Organization for Women was protesting the campaign and decided to join them on the street. Soon after she became a member of NOW-NY. By then she had dropped out of Columbia, disheartened by its conservative standards for her st

The Lives They Lived Remembering some of the artists, innovators and thinkers we lost in the past year. Hite in London in 1981. Trevor Leighton The Lives They Lived Shere Hite never set out to discover the female orgasm. As a child, she wanted to be either a classical composer or a person who could figure out how society got to be so “irrational.” But as she once told an interviewer, “How many women have you heard of becoming composers, right?” So she obtained bachelor’s and master’s degrees in history instead, and in 1968, she enrolled in Columbia University’s Ph.D. program, where she ended u

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