Shere

Coordinates: 51°13′14″N 0°28′07″W / 51.2206°N 0.4687°W / 51.2206; -0.4687

Shere is a village in the Guildford district of Surrey, England 4.8 miles (7.7 km) east south-east of Guildford and 5.4 miles (8.7 km) west of Dorking, centrally bypassed by the A25. It is a small still partly agricultural village chiefly set in the wooded 'Vale of Holmesdale' between the North Downs and Greensand Ridge with many traditional English features. It has a central cluster of old village houses, shops including a blacksmith and trekking shop, tea house, art gallery, two pubs and a Norman church. Shere has a museum which opens most afternoons at weekends.

The Tillingbourne river runs through the centre of the village. More than four fifths of homes are in the central area covering 3.11 square kilometres (1.20 sq mi); the northern area of Shere on the North Downs without any named hamlets, including the public hilltop park of Newlands Corner, covers 6.77 square kilometres (2.61 sq mi).

Shere is also a civil parish, extending to the east and south into hamlets founded in the early Middle Ages which officially, in the 19th century, were consolidated into three villages. These are Gomshall, Holmbury St. Mary and Peaslake. This larger entity has a total population of 3,359 and area of 24.5 square kilometres (9.5 sq mi) (as at the 2011 census).

Shere Hite

Shere Hite (born November 2, 1942) is an American-born Germansex educator and feminist. Her sexological work has focused primarily on female sexuality. Hite builds upon biological studies of sex by Masters and Johnson and by Alfred Kinsey. She also references theoretical, political and psychological works associated with the feminist movement of the 1970s, such as Anne Koedt's The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm. She renounced her United States citizenship in 1995 to become German.

Early life, education, and career

Hite was born Shirley Diana Gregory in Saint Joseph, Missouri to Paul and Shirley Hurt Gregory. She later took the surname of her stepfather, Raymond Hite. She graduated from Seabreeze High School in Daytona Beach, Florida. She received a masters degree in history from the University of Florida in 1967. She then moved to New York City and enrolled at Columbia University to work toward her Ph.D. in social history. Hite says that the reason for her not completing this degree was the conservative nature of Columbia at that time. In the 1970s, she did part of her research while at the National Organization for Women. She appeared nude in Playboy while studying at Columbia University and also posed provocatively in a typewriter ad to earn money for her college fees, but when she read the ad’s strapline, “The typewriter is so smart she doesn’t have to be”, she joined a feminist protest against the ad she had appeared in.