Talk:Shere Hite

Slacker edit
I tried to spruce up this page somewhat, but only really got to putting in headings before realising I'm way too tired to start adding real content (its way past midnight). I'm keen to move forward with this article, and save it from the "cleanup" tag. I accept that my edit as it stands isn't great - so please be spured into action, or else I will come back and do a better job soon. An An 13:59, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Criticism of Hite's statistical method
re: Edits by 193.167.195.60 The criticisms of Hite's statistical method might be valid criticisms of any statistical sampling. However,tThe criticisms don't really address the discursive approach and ultimate findings of Hite's work, they merely seek to discredit the foundation of the research as 'unscientific'. The remark about Hite's suposedly 'unorthodox' way of formulating questions is illuminating. These arguments could be better put on a more general scientific context. In this context, its merely feminist-bashing. An An 11:59, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

re: Edits by An An The previous version was admittedly too prone to methodological issues not relevant in this context. The shortened version is better. There was no intention towards feminist-bashing or vandalism, just questioning the reliability of population estimates derived from samples with large amount of nonresponders. The current comments concerning the criticism focuses only on this part (conclusions derived from data with large amount of nonresponders). All research does not suffer from such biases which are the main criticism for her conclusions. Therefore, link to selection bias is informative in this context. To balance the criticism, her theoretical fruitfullness regardless of the criticism is now praised in the end. 193.167.195.60 Tue Jun 21 2005

I just realized that link selection bias contains a remark towards a deliberate scientific fraud. To avoid these connotations, I changed the link to bias 193.167.195.60 Tue Jun 21 2005

Related articles ... neutral?
The "see alsos" on this page all address different types of methodological bias. There's not a single link to any other concept in feminism or sexology. Are there any objections to my paring those links down to just "sampling bias?" I feel that this is an issue that needs to be resolved. Asarkees 06:02, 9 May 2006 (UTC)


 * 10 days and still no comments on this issue. 10 more, and I will remove the NPOV marker. Asarkees 05:12, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Biographical info?
I looked up this article because I was interested in this topic, and I was wonder what happened to her after the 1980s (she stopped writing almost entirely after this point, though I see she has a new collection of essays coming out). Anyway, other than a few notes on her educational background, this article is completely lacking in the most basic biographical details. Not good – somebody who's a Shere Hite "expert" needs to fill in the missing details. Peter G Werner 02:19, 25 September 2006 (UTC)


 * BTW, the German article mentions a different birth name. Is it relevant here? --142.103.92.209 20:56, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Is it relevant that her lover is 19 years younger? The out-of-context info seems rather gossipy, 187.106.24.135 (talk) 21:45, 7 June 2011 (UTC)


 * This is her husband, not her lover. Anyway, the age difference is well-documented, and since she's a sex expert, it's more likely to be relevant than for most people, and it seems to be an important element of the story she tells about herself. The source is an article about an interview she gave. The ages at the time of the marriage are striking: she was 42 and he was 23. --Orlady (talk) 04:20, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

External links?
One of the links takes you to a page that makes you buy a PDF. Doesn't seem good considering that Wikipedia is all about free knowledge and this site bears the slogan "Knowledge on demand" =(

Missing references
The first paragraph of the article contains references 1 and 2 which do not have a corresponding link in the References section. Where are they? I couldn't find them in previous revisions? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.34.118.86 (talk) 15:48, 27 October 2007 (UTC)


 * The external New Statesman reference is a broken link. Preacherdoc (talk) 12:52, 12 March 2008 (UTC)


 * It would also be useful to have references to her peer-reviewed papers. Wally Tharg (talk) 22:11, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

Hite Report – influence
I have read that the Hite report was hugely influential. It's been credited with starting the sexual revolution. None of this is mentioned in this article. All this talk about Hite's methodology seems beside the point, if she was indeed the first to raise certain issues. --142.103.92.209 20:54, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

I have to argue the opposite – it seems to me that the article really softpedals her methodological flaws, and leaves the impression that a reasonable person might give her findings credence. She's the poster child for bad sampling techniques, and I think that should be mademore clear. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.232.197.154 (talk) 09:41, 17 September 2010 (UTC)


 * I may add some information about her influence at a later date. I already added a source back in June 2011 that discusses her influence. As for reasonable people giving her findings credence, I would say they should since she turned out to be right. Her findings have been consistently reproduced in newer studies about female sexuality and orgasm. Flyer22 (talk) 19:21, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

"it seems to me that the article really softpedals her methodological flaws, and leaves the impression that a reasonable person might give her findings credence. She's the poster child for bad sampling techniques, and I think that should be made more clear."

I couldn't agree more. She seems not to have understood Research Methods 101 at all. She used self-selecting samples that were specifically sent to women's organisations and achieved tiny response rates. Her questions were very leading. For example, "Does your husband/lover see you as an equal? Or are there times when he seems to treat you as an inferior? Leave you out of the decisions. Act superior?" (Page 795 of Women and Love: A Cultural Revolution in Progress.) You would flunk an undergraduate for gross errors of this magnitude.

Blaise (talk) 16:50, 23 February 2013 (UTC)
 * As touched on by the first poster in this section, this article provides sufficient criticism of her work. Seeing as there is currently more criticism than there is praise of it, there needs to be more information about that praise so as to not be non-WP:Neutral (specifically avoiding being WP:UNDUE) with criticism information. Whatever flaws in her work, she had an incredibly positive impact on female sexuality (as mentioned in the source I linked above), and, like I stated above, her findings have been consistently reproduced in newer studies. There really should be a lot more in this article about how her work impacted women (and, in some ways, men), from positive influence to any negative influence, as long as we give the information due weight. Flyer22 (talk) 17:25, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

Incomprehensible
What on earth does

"On the other hand, social science methodological differences when questions are on publicly consequential subjects, e.g., immediacy vs. time for thoughtfulness when answering, can result in differences in honesty and promises of confidentiality are not all equally believed by prospective respondents, affecting respondents' openness and honesty."

mean? If it's meaningful, should it have references?

Blaise (talk) 16:36, 23 February 2013 (UTC)
 * You may have already seen, judging by this edit you made two minutes following, but I removed that text. I can't tell if it's supported by the Zimbardo source that was (and still is) used in the fist sentence about him, but it definitely needed better wording/grammar. For example, the "and promises" part should have had a comma before it; not having that kept leading me to reading the sentence wrongly, including my mind somehow seeing the "are" as a grammar issue. Flyer22 (talk) 17:25, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

Shere Hite audiovisual recordings in the Radcliffe Institute's collections
I've removed two entries from the external links section because they're not likely to be helpful or accessible to most readers. However, they're valuable resources and may be quite useful to someone, so I'm leaving them here rather than buried in the page history.


 * Video and motion picture collection of Shere Hite, ca. 1978-2006: A Finding Aid at the Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University
 * Audiotape collection of Shere Hite, 1977-2004: A Finding Aid at the Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University

Rebbing   talk   05:30, 19 March 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 1 one external link on Shere Hite. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive http://web.archive.org/web/20111012204321/http://www.novelguide.com/a/discover/aww_02/aww_02_00560.html to http://www.novelguide.com/a/discover/aww_02/aww_02_00560.html

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true or failed to let others know (documentation at ).

Cheers.—cyberbot II  Talk to my owner :Online 23:56, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

Counter arguments by "Hite supporters"
The article reads that "Hite supporters defend her methodology by saying that it is more likely to get to the truth of women's sexuality than studying women engaged in prostitution as if they were exemplary of women in general, or to study in laboratory conditions women who claim to orgasm during coitus." But it lacked any citation or a clarification of who exactly these "supporters" are, so I added tags for that. It should probably be removed entirely though if nobody can find a source...

I'm also wondering if this counter-argument isn't something of a straw man, since I'm not aware that any of those criticizing Hite's methodology and sampling suggested that she should extrapolate from studies on prostitutes instead. -2003:CA:83DE:7C00:17A:166B:9574:5AFD (talk) 15:46, 1 April 2017 (UTC)


 * I've read that statement as that "respectable" scientists usually only sample prostitutes and clinical patients, and were complaining about the fact she didn't do the same. --2003:DA:CF23:B800:4B4:1EDB:6D30:E28 (talk) 18:35, 12 September 2020 (UTC)


 * Also, reading the article and the sources that it's linking to (such as Tracey Cox), the basic issue here is that Hite arrived at correct conclusions (later reproduced en masse by others) from small samples. She couldn't help the fact her samples were so small, yet her conclusions were correct, as others have corroborated later when building upon her seminal work, as she was combining a small size of samples with plenty of experience and sound intuition. That's all that's to the entire controversy here.


 * BTW, it's funny how Americans seem to be able to ridicule both Freud *AND* Hite to this very day for each of them having made statements (with Freud later revising his) entirely contradicting each other on the issue of female stimulation, as if somehow *BOTH* could be wrong on vaginal vs. clitoral stimulation at the same time. Freud is considered ridiculous and "debunked" because he once said that females can or should only be stimulated vaginally, whereas Hite is considered ridiculous and "debunked" because she said that females need clitoral rather than vaginal stimulation to orgasm. The only sound conclusion can be that female stimulation is too much of a touchy subject as that anybody treating it can be taken seriously at all. --2003:DA:CF23:B800:4B4:1EDB:6D30:E28 (talk) 18:42, 12 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Are you the other IP as well? As for "Hite is considered ridiculous and 'debunked' because she said that females need clitoral rather than vaginal stimulation to orgasm."? By whom and where? Researchers know that the reason women usually do not experience a "vaginal orgasm" (which is also commonly attributed to the G-spot) is because the vagina (as a whole) has relatively few nerve endings compared to the rich, abundance of erotic nerve endings in the clitoris. Today's evidence indicates that the clitoris is the reason that women even experience "vaginal orgasms." Like this 2012 "Discovery Series: Human Sexuality" source, from Cengage Learning, page 103, states, "There has never been any scientific proof of [the G-spot's] existence, and today research indicates that increased sensitivity in the G-spot area may actually be caused by stimulation of the bulbs of the clitoris (Folds & Buisson, 2009; Pastor 2010)." In this 2012 The Journal of Sexual Medicine review examining years of research into the existence of the G-spot, scholars stated, in part, "Attempts to characterize vaginal innervation have shown some differences in nerve distribution across the vagina, although the findings have not proven to be universally reproducible. Furthermore, radiographic studies have been unable to demonstrate a unique entity, other than the clitoris, whose direct stimulation leads to vaginal orgasm." Flyer22 Frozen (talk) 23:23, 12 September 2020 (UTC)


 * Also, I'm not aware of Hite having stated that no woman can orgasm from vaginal stimulation. Flyer22 Frozen (talk) 23:43, 12 September 2020 (UTC)


 * Well, thank you for confirming with external sources what I have said above: That Hite was ridiculed and used as a "poster child of fraud and quack science" (as it has been put by a number of people on this talkpage before, and the article still suggests as much by referring to the fact Hite is merely only discussed at universities as a grave example of alleged sampling bias and poor sampling methods) simply because her sampling base was small, but has since been vindicated by many others recreating and confirming her findings (that the vagina has few nerve endings and thus females require clitoral stimulation) with much larger samples. --2003:DA:CF23:B800:4B4:1EDB:6D30:E28 (talk) 14:47, 15 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I'm pressed for time these days (am dealing with a lot) and used today to catch up on my watchlist and remove articles from my watchlist. I'll see about cleaning up this article within this month. Flyer22 Frozen (talk) 01:03, 19 September 2020 (UTC)

Pronunciation of her name
Is her unusual name pronounced Sh'Ray Hitter, Sheer Height, Sherry Hittay, or what?


 * To this undated question, the parenthesised pronunciation makes it a combination of the last two candidates, Sherry Height. (I am not a Professor Higgins.)Cloptonson (talk) 07:56, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

Olivetti Story – no attribution and is almost certainly false.
I have removed the story about the Olivetti typewriter. Even though the story has appeared in numerous print articles, this website (https://oztypewriter.blogspot.com/2020/09/the-hite-report-and-lies-about-olivetti.html) seems to conclusively falsify the story.

If a photo of the ad actually surfaces, and references can be found to Hite and other feminists protesting about the ad, do reinstate the story. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Guyburns (talk • contribs) 12:09, 9 October 2020 (UTC)

Age gap between her and first husband
I query the statement Friedrich Horicke 'was 19 years her junior' because in both his English and German wikipedia articles his birth year (without birthday indicated) is stated to be 1963, which makes him 20-21 years junior to her. To be literally correct and mesh with her established recorded birth date he would have had be be born in 1961-62. The cited retrospective newspaper story does not quantify age difference only that the couple's ages were then 42 (hers) and 23 (his). Makes me ask, as far as mention on the wiki page goes, should it stay or should it be left off, or can it be rephrased to tell the reader not to dogmatically accept it? Cloptonson (talk) 08:04, 3 October 2021 (UTC)