To truly understand how revolutionary Hite’s research and findings were in the mid-Seventies, it’s important to look at what male sexologists — back then, there was no other kind — had been saying up until then. The two most famous, Sigmund Freud and Alfred Kinsey, had both promoted the notion of the “authentic” orgasm, achievable only in the vagina — in other words, as a result of penile penetration — or as Hite put it, “the great male thrust”.

In her 1976 book, The Hite Report: A Nationwide Study of Female Sexuality, Shere offered a definitive debunking of the myth that women could only achieve orgasm through heterosexual penetration — and that those that couldn’t were “frigid”. As Hite pointed out, sexologists such as William Masters and Virginia E. Johnson had conducted their research in the laboratory, whereas hers focused on women’s experiences, told in their own words. The majority of the women who participated in the research disclosed that they could easily make themselves orgasm by masturbating, and that sex with male partners was far less satisfactory.

Of course, telling men that they are rubbish in the sack was — and remains — incendiary. The backlash was severe: Playboy magazine referred to the book as “The Hate Report”. And many found it difficult to take such a glamorous woman — one who had funded her PhD by posing for that very magazine — seriously. Still, it became a phenomenon; even today, 46 years after its publication, it remains the 30th-bestselling book of all time. In The Hite Report, Shere had put her finger on the pulse of the second wave of feminism: sex and sexuality. This was what feminists kept coming back to in the Seventies, in demanding both the freedom to live without the threat and reality of sexual violence, and women’s sexual liberation and pleasure. One cartoon that did the rounds showed a young girl asking her father, “Dad, what’s a clitoris?” to which he replied: “I don’t know, love, ask your mother.”

Hite was accused of using her research to make a political point — namely, that women didn’t need men. But what she actually did was lift the lid on women’s best-kept secret: their sexual dissatisfaction within heterosexual relationships. Women had not been asked about sexual pleasure by sexologists in the past. Her findings were damning: 84% of respondents to her questionnaire were not satisfied emotionally with their relationships; 95% reported “emotional and psychological harassment” from their male partners; 98% desired more communication, and just 13% of women who’d been married more than two years described themselves as being “in love”.

Those who hated her findings — pretty much any man who heard about them — became antagonistic. She was accused by sexologists and academics of bias and flawed methodology. Hite had distributed 100,000 detailed questionnaires in brown paper envelopes to random addresses from the phone book. Around 4,500 were completed and returned to her. Some publicly and angrily claimed the data was skewed because the women most likely to have chosen to complete and return the questionnaires would probably be those who were unhappy in their relationships with men; in other words, those with an axe to grind.

But as Hite told me in 2011, “Freud only interviewed three Viennese women.” She went on television to answer her critics, only to find herself on the receiving end of vicious verbal attacks. In 1995, tired of being one of the most notorious feminists on the planet, she renounced her US citizenship and moved to Europe, eventually settling in the UK. Yet the vitriol continued, and she was regularly followed by paparazzi. Because of her uncompromising manner with male interviewers, and the fact that she had published very unpopular findings about men, she had alienated the press in the US. Although her books were translated into several languages and sold in various non-English-speaking countries, her unpopularity was such that no American publisher would print her subsequent titles.

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One of the most startling findings was that 70% of women who had been married for more than five years had had at least one extra-marital affair. The Washington Post was so angry about her findings in The Hite Report that they conducted their own survey by phoning women and asking them questions. Hite’s response was caustic, as ever: “Maybe if her husband is in and she’s making dinner she may not want to answer questions about how happy or unhappy she is in her marriage.” Male journalists and commentators didn’t like the fact that Hite had made millions by dishing it out to men, but couldn’t take it when they argued back.

Having read her book, I had wanted to interview Hite for years when she contacted me via another feminist icon, Gloria Steinem, to accept my request to write a profile of her. “I want the young ones to know how important my work is,” she wrote. We arranged to meet at a café in Walthamstow, near the modest home she shared with her boyfriend Paul Sullivan. He escorted Hite to the meeting because, as she told me, “I can’t do anything on my own anymore”. When I asked what the problem was, she said she was suffering from “a condition”.

Brandishing a camera and accompanied by a sound person, Sullivan informed me that he was making a film about Hite that he hoped to sell, though no one had asked me if it was OK for them to film my interview. However, my irritation soon dissipated as the conventionally beautiful, ultra-feminine Hite began throwing around words like clitoris, orgasm, thrusting and fucking. The men in the greasy spoon didn’t know where to look.

Her openness had its limits, however. When I asked Hite whether she had ever had female lovers, she changed the subject. Twice. I have since been approached by two women, separately, who have told me about their sexual relationships with Hite. For all her chutzpah, Hite seemed vulnerable when I met her. She said she regretted not having children, and was considering having a baby via a surrogate, at the age of 68. As we left that interview, she leant forward to whisper to me, “because I have sold a lot of books, I think that women think that I’m fine, but I’m not fine. I hope they realise that.”

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I was disappointed: this was not the kickass feminist I’d been looking forward to meeting. And anyone who looks into her life will find that her behaviour was often totally unreasonable. Hite was accused of punching and choking the driver of a limousine who was waiting at her Fifth Avenue apartment to take her to a coveted slot on Sally Jessy Raphael’s talk show. According to a producer, Hite was angry at the driver telling her that, because he had had to wait an hour, it was now too late to get her to the studio. He claims that she physically attacked him when he called her “dear”. Hite denied this. The next day, on another TV show with Larry King, Hite went berserk, storming off the set when the controversy was mentioned.

Her personal imperfections are stark, but her work still deserves to be remembered. The Hite Report is still relevant today; decades after its publication, the majority of women in the UK still reported being dissatisfied with their sex lives and feeling discomfort during sex. But though Hite was one of the most famous feminists on the planet, few talk about her now. As the second-wave feminist Phyllis Chesler remarked in The Disappearance Of Shere Hite, if she ever mentions Hite to young feminists today, they have no idea who she was. I hope the film — which includes fascinating archive material, including interviews with Hite and extracts from her personal journals — brings her work back into the spotlight, and helps more women to feel liberated.

Hite died in September 2020. Her funeral was a bit like a meeting of the Stevie Nicks Appreciation Society: lots of women with long flowing hair and cheesecloth skirts. Several of her old friends were there, almost all of whom told me that it had been a very long time since they had seen Hite. She had become something of a hermit. The last time I spoke with her, she had told me that she was writing a screenplay about her life. It never materialised. My interview with her turned out to be the very last one she ever gave.

It was the same in many towns and cities. During the early days of second-wave feminism, in the late Sixties and throughout the Seventies, women’s libraries cropped up, usually housed in the corner of an alternative bookstore. The first one in North America, Minneapolis’s Amazon Bookstore, opened in 1970 on the porch of a commune. At one time, there were over 150 feminist libraries on the continent, mostly run by volunteers, providing resources key to the movement. Today, partly because of a different kind of Amazon, they have almost all closed down.

One feminist library that has survived and thrived is London’s. Founded in 1975, for decades it has been a valuable resource for historians, social scientists, journalists and, most importantly, young feminists who wish to learn their history. Countless women have benefitted from it. I myself have spent days there, digging up details of old campaigns for articles and research projects.

But now, it is threatened — by people who call themselves feminists but are in fact the opposite. Four years ago, the library trustees — all older feminists who had been involved for many years — decided to expand the collective and actively recruit young women to join. Unfortunately, many of those who came forward were hostile to the type of feminism that prioritises women, which was soon displaced by trans activism.

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An early sign that things were going wrong came in September 2019. The Feminist Library declined to offer a stall to FiLiA — a female-led, feminist organisation that hosts an annual international conference for women — at one of their events. FiLiA was told that the library’s new “Community Policy” would not allow FiLiA on their premises. It’s worth mentioning, here, that FiLiA has made it clear that women — and women-only spaces — come first in the feminist movement, and the organisation has been vocal in public and on its website about its rejection of extreme transgender ideology.

Then on the 28th January 2021, the Library published a statement on transphobia and accountability. Among a load of virtue-signalling waffle, the statement resolved “not to feature trans-exclusionary groups on our panels or other events at the Library or allow them to book the Library for their own events”. Despite the tradition of the library being women-only, this meant that those who believe in women-only spaces, and sex-based rights, were banned from accessing books and collections. Today, women have even been stopped from meeting on library premises if they don’t believe that “trans women are women”.

The library is now run by women hostile to feminists. Lola Olufemi, who was appointed Volunteer Coordinator at the end of 2019, was instrumental in de-platforming the historian Selina Todd at the 50th Anniversary of the first Women’s Liberation conference in February 2020 — an event that Todd helped organise. That same month, FiLiA attempted to open a dialogue with the Library, asking them for a meeting and voicing the concerns of their members. They felt the trustees should be ensuring the resource was available to those who need it; feminist librarians should not be excluding women.

“The biggest trick that patriarchy pulled is to put distance and barriers between women and to destroy the possibility of solidarity,” Lisa Marie Taylor, CEO of FiLiA, told me. “The new guard at the Feminist Library are doing this. They are blocking women from accessing our history and our language. They are literally stealing our words from us, and there’s no accountability. After 47 years, I’m sad to say that it is at existential risk.”

The library has responded to some of the many letters of complaint they have received from feminists, but very curtly. There has been no meaningful engagement with criticism. They have also issued a statement, saying that they are going to “review” their collections. What does this mean for the books, the textiles, the historic items in their care? Will anything that doesn’t conform to the ideas of trans activists be put under lock and key in the Restricted Section? Or worse, thrown away?

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London’s is not the only feminist library threatened by trans activists. In February 2017, the Vancouver Women’s Library opened its doors. The city has a vibrant feminist movement, which mainly focuses on campaigns to end male violence. At its opening event, women gathered to celebrate. They were met by very aggressive protesters who tried to block them from entering the building.

The crowd included several men identifying as trans women or “sex workers”, shouting things like, “Take SWERF and TERF books off the shelf”. Red wine was thrown over the feminist posters on the walls. The protesters began lighting cigarettes in the non-smoking building and accused women of “violence” for the crime of running a feminist library. Books were damaged, items were stolen, and the fire alarm pulled. The volunteers had to pay $500 to the owner of the building. Despite all the hostility, those who wrecked the Vancouver Women’s Library claimed to be progressives. They were, in fact, misogynists.

The row that broke out at Glasgow Women’s Library in 2020 was less dramatic. Trans rights activists held a training day, led by two men, at the publicly-funded venue. They then published a statement saying that they only accept bookings from organisations and individuals that “align with our values”. Those values, of course, allow men to invade women’s spaces: the Library subsequently refused access to a women’s group for the crime of thinking that men can’t become women.

Claire Heuchan, a feminist writer and Chair of the Labrys Lit lesbian book group, volunteered with the Glasgow library for five years. Her love for the institution was evident when we spoke. “Libraries foster campaigns outside of the library and it is a connection to past campaigns too, so women don’t need to reinvent the wheel in their activism. Reading women’s stories and theories freed me from the pale, male stale curriculum I learned about in school, and led me to celebrate women’s voices. And it was for free.”

But it would appear that a number of feminists that used to be regulars at the library no longer feel welcome. As Linda (I’ve changed her name) told me: “The library used to be a sanctuary, but I don’t feel comfortable going now since all the spaces advertised as women only are mixed-sex and many former friends have ostracised me for supporting single sex spaces for women.”

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Fortunately, there are a number of women resisting this hijacking of feminist values. Bec Wonders is a currently a feminist researcher at the Glasgow School of Art and co-founder of Vancouver Women’s Library. She is horrified at the way that women are being excluded from our own movement. “It is so anti-intellectual, and blatantly insulting to the ability of women to think for ourselves. It goes against the aim of empowering women to make up our own minds.”

Like me, Bec sees feminist libraries as not just a passive place where knowledge is stored and catalogued, but also a space where plans are made. Bec has lost all hope for the Feminist Library in London. She suggested that women should be storing things at home: emails, online conversations, pamphlets, publications — all the things that women in 50 years’ time will want to see. “We all need to be archivists,” she says.

What a tragedy, though, that we can no longer trust a collective to store these resources. Any movement whose goal is the destruction of women’s spaces, including feminist libraries, is not feminism; it undermines everything feminism has built. Gail Chester, who is one of the library’s founders and remains a trustee, appears to have been ostracised by the new guard for being committed to women-only spaces and the literature produced by early pioneers of the movement. She is the only person involved in the library willing to provide a comment for this article.

“As a founder of the feminist library,” says Chester, “what I want is an anti-sectarian library that is accessible to everybody, where debate and dialogue are welcome, and where no feminist publications are censored.” It doesn’t seem much to ask.