Hite Rep Male Sexualty

Sex researcher Shere Hite brings the same style from her earlier look at female sexuality. Again, Hite compiled information from thousands of anonymous questionaires from the late 1970's, publishing the results, comments, views and attitudes of respondents. The result is an interesting and informative look at male sexuality. This study dates from before safe sex and cyber porn, and many criticized Hite's methodology. Such criticism may be valid, but what sex survey ever got 100% honesty? This book was pretty good, but (perhaps as a male) her earlier book on women was more fun to read.

I read this book in the early 1980's and found it quite interesting and revealing. The thousands of women that responded to Hite's anonymous questionnaires seemed willing to open up, and both men and women can learn from what they had to say. Hite's finding that only 30 percent of women climax during intercourse should encourage couples to communicate. She also mixes long responses with one-phrase answers, and the result is often revealing and occasionally tiltillating. Critics say that Hite lacked a perfect scientific sample, but one suspects her respondents were more honest than those who participate in face-to-face interviews (Kinsey, etc.). Perhaps most of all this book seems to confirm the emotional and physical appeal of the subject. This book was based on questionnaires answered in the pre-safe sex, pre-cyber porn 1970's, but seem quite relevant today. Ms. Hite left the USA for Germany in the 1990's, apparently due to attacks on her and her work. This is an imperfect book, but worth a look.

It does not matter if this book is statistically flawed or not. The merit in this book is the candid and revealing responses men made regarding everything that they think and feel about sex, sexual acts, women, women's bodies, their own bodies, their sexuality, etc. Reading it at a young age made me a more understanding, communicative, patient and confident lover. As much as sexuality pervades our culture, there is not a lot of honesty around sex. This book is very honest. I cannot vouch for levels of statistical significance, but I can tell you this was a very important book in my understanding of the male and sexual universe, and statistics had nothing to do with that. Moms: buy it for your 16+ daughter.

I already read the Hite report for women and this one was just as good. Anything you need to know about men you will find in this book. I liked both, they are very informative and interesting.

Whether the study was accurate enough or not, a lot of data in this book is still valuable. A great amount of men spoke out to a woman who knows how to interpret and how to write. Certainly during the time she wrote it, people were more loyal to any kind of study than nowadays, so you can't just say this book is only a nice thing to have on your shelves (referring to the review of the anonymous man from Argentina here below). It is not fair to state things are inaccurate and proven without mentioning the full (traceable) resources. In the book you can also see she has had many interviews with a lot of men. I still think Shere Hite has managed to collect valuable, timeless data.