In 1976, a Playboy model turned feminist sex-researcher called Shere Hite did hundreds of television and radio appearances promoting her book, The Hite Report: A Nationwide Study of Female Sexuality. She went on Good Night America dressed in a high-necked Victorian white silk blouse, huge faux-pearl earrings and matching necklace, her face framed by a cloud of apricot curls.

The host, Geraldo Rivera, grinning under his 1970s handlebar moustache, asked her to summarise her book’s findings. “Don’t get hung up, turned off or turned on by the explicit language,” he warned the audience. Hite outlined the great provocation of the work: “Intercourse doesn’t lead to orgasm for most women.”

Using a survey methodology, Hite found women required clitoral stimulation to orgasm. And while they knew about the clitoris because they masturbated, they rarely asked for it in straight sex. Instead, they gritted their teeth or faked it, the loudest way to be silent about sexual dissatisfaction.

To understand why, Hite held sex up to feminism, and found it was shot through with power and inequality. Society insisted that women – like men – should find their greatest pleasure in penetrative sex: the man penetrating, the woman penetrated. Hite declared: “Sex is sexist … Women’s sex lives clearly reflect their second-class position in society.”

The book exploded across the US. It was translated widely, became a bestseller in Japan, was banned in Brazil and smuggled into East Germany. To date 50 million copies have been sold, making it the 30th bestselling book of all time.

For a time Hite was everywhere, and everyone loved the book. Erica Jong, author of the sex-forward 1973 novel Fear of Flying wrote in the New York Review of Books: “Read The Hite Report if you want to know how sex really is right now.”........

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