Kriti Mehrotra
If there’s one thing absolutely nobody can deny, it’s that Shirley Diana Gregory — better known to the world as Shere Hite — was not only a revolutionary feminist but also a trailblazing sex educator. The truth is she didn’t have a very happy or wholesome childhood, yet she subsequently made conscious efforts to have her own power instead of letting the past push her down a traditional path. After all, she knew firsthand what it’s like to be placed in a box and wanted things to be better for future generations.
How Did Shere Hite Earn Her Money?
It was reportedly back around 1960 when Shere graduated from Seabreeze High School in Daytona Beach, Florida while being raised by a loving aunt following her grandparents’ unexpected separation. According to reports, her early years were quite lonely since she never really knew her serviceman father and was abandoned twice by her mother — who was merely 16 when she was born. Yet she didn’t let it affect her education or worldview one bit; in fact, she then pursued a Master’s in History from the University of Florida before enrolling at Columbia University for a Ph.D. in Social History.
However, Shere dropped out of Columbia before completing her education owing to the conservative nature of it, and delved deep into modeling to make ends meet. As per documents, she even posed in the nude for Playboy magazine while also researching for the National Organization for Women. Then started her interest in sexology, driving her to conduct research and write several books over the years, including ‘Sexual Honesty, by Women, for Women’ in 1974 ‘The Hite Report on Female Sexuality’ in 1976, plus ‘The Hite Report on Men and Male Sexuality’ in 1981.
Shere’s work did cause her to receive a lot of backlash over the years, but it was ‘Women and Love: A Cultural Revolution in Progress’ in 1987 that turned things upside down as she began being called a male hater. She actually was not even given any royalties for this book and ended up selling her New York apartment, just to soon move across Europe multiple times alongside her German concert pianist husband Friedrich Höricke before settling down in London, England. Though between this period, she did make an extended appearance on the British TV discussion programme ‘After Dark’ in 1988.
Shere did write more books as the years passed by, including ‘Fliegen mit Jupiter’ (Translation: Flying with Jupiter) in 1993 as well as ‘The Hite Report on the Family: Growing Up Under Patriarchy’ in 1994, but none were as successful as her original ‘Hite Report.’ Eventually, she evolved from a radical feminist into a trailblazing female sexuality activist in the public eye, too, resulting in her landing teaching positions in several universities across the globe. According to reports, she taught at Nihon University in Japan, Chongqing University in China, and Maimonides University in North Miami Beach, Florida, upon renouncing her American Citizenship for a German one in 1995.
Shere Hite’s Net Worth
The reason Shere became a German national is because she regarded German society as more tolerant and open-minded about her endeavors, and it’s while she proudly held that title that she published ‘The Hite Report on Shere Hite: Voice of a Daughter in Exile’ in 2000 plus ‘The Shere Hite Reader: New and Selected Writings on Sex, Globalization, and Private Life’ in 2006. Nevertheless, even though she didn’t write much in the latter years of her life, she remained a charismatic educator as well as feminist, that is, until she passed from corticobasal degeneration at the age of 77 on September 9, 2020. From what we can tell, she left behind her second husband of eight years Paul Sullivan — she and Friedrich had divorced in 1999 — along with an estate/net worth of roughly $3 million considering her decades worth of hard work.
