Shere Hite was the architect of the famous The Hite Report, the groundbreaking study published in 1976 that demystified female sexuality. She “explained how women have orgasms, and she was hated for it.”

The author of the obituary, published in The New York Times in December 2020, masterfully condensed in those brief lines of the headline the life and work of a woman condemned to a fierce cancellation, which ended up erasing her from the collective memory and (almost) from the history of feminism.

It is therefore not surprising that many people today wonder Who was Shere Hite? Or why didn’t she know of his existence or her work? The documentary The disappearance of Shere Hitedirected by Nicole Newnham, satisfactorily answers those questions.

By no longer tolerating the harassment, from one day to the next Share left New York to take refuge in Europe. Although she was not the only feminist who at that time faced such bloody attacks (Gloria Steinem is another emblematic case), Hite was completely erased.

In the memory of few, she died in New York at the age of 77, weakened by her illnesses (Parkinson’s and dementia), stripped of the rights to her books and, therefore, in ruin. Her case is reminiscent of that of many other women of more recent generations, reviled by the media and by certain sectors of society.

Let’s not fool ourselves, we have not improved, and it seems that we have not learned either. In the age of social media, hunting and skinning reaches ruthless levels, and unlike in the past, what already existed, today they call the ‘cancel culture’. Shere Hite explained what the female orgasmand they hated her for it, for “breaking a functional silence,” as she would say on a television show from the 80s.

Censored and silenced in the US, little by little it disappeared from the scene, and the most alarming thing is that it vanished from the manipulable collective memory. The ‘deletion’ process His person and work were so infallible that, from generation, it is unknown. Recovering, vindicating and valuing his legacy is therefore an act of justice.

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