The Hite of Sexuality

A sex quiz for men: "Would you like to change sex in any way?" "Have you ever had something you would describe as an 'emotional orgasm'? " "Do you feel that sex is in any way political?"

Readers of the bestselling The Hite Report (TIME, Oct. 25) will have little trouble recognizing the muzzy style of those unfocused queries. Author Shere Hite, buoyed by a more than $300,000 advance from her publishers, is following up her study of female sexuality with a survey of male attitudes toward sex. She has sent out 45,000 questionnaires, most of them through men's university and liberation groups, churches and pop-psychology centers, and plans to send out 100,000 more copies.

The book will be "a kind of giant 'rap session' on paper," according to the questionnaire's introduction. Hite insists that her original intention was self-education. Says she: "I thought maybe I was full of misconceptions about male sexuality, so I just distributed the questionnaire with that in mind." But when she began to realize that the male survey would make a book in itself, she added "really important" questions. For example, she wondered: "Are men really aroused after orgasm, or could they not care less?" Kite's way of phrasing is part of the problem. She had to revise her questionnaires for The Hite Report three times. The male version has already been reworked once.

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