Sex On the Couch Thanks to Research Pioneers Such As Shere Hite, We Now Know More About the Psychology of Sexual Behaviour Than Ever. But Is All This Information Really Making Us Any Happier in the Bedroom?

Summary

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THE year 1976 was the year of the clitoris. More precisely, it was the year in which a 34-year-old American academic revealed that women had a far from passive view of sex and, as a result, were unfulfilled in the bedroom. Well, you can imagine the headlines. The academic was a woman called Shere Hite, and her book was entitled The Hite Report On Female Sexuality (or, as Playboy magazine re- christened it, The Hate Report).

In her book, Hite revealed the sexual attitudes of American women, countered many of the prevailing Freudian theories about female sexuality and in doing so built on Alfred Kinsey's groundbreaking research into sexual behaviour, undertaken in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

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Extract

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Sex On the Couch Thanks to Research Pioneers Such As Shere Hite, We Now Know More About the Psychology of Sexual Behaviour Than Ever. But Is All This Information Really Making Us Any Happier in the Bedroom?

Hite claimed what constituted "normal" sex was a cultural rather than a biological construct, and that the answer to women's sexual pleasure lay in their own hands.

The book was based on the anonymous responses of thousands of women to a detailed questionnaire she had compiled. It was the authentic voice of distaff America, and its success made her a household name and an iconic figure in the feminist movement. It sold 35 million copies, and in 1998 was selected by The Times as one of the 100 key books of the 20th century. "Western society owes a debt to Shere Hite that will be well nigh impo...

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