Dr. Ruth Westheimer, the diminutive sex therapist who became a pop icon, media star and bestselling author thanks to her frank discussions of once-taboo bedroom topics, has died. She was 96.
Westheimer died Friday at her home in New York City, surrounded by her family, according to publicist and friend Pierre Lehu.
Westheimer never advocated risky sexual behavior. Instead, she promoted open dialogue about previously hidden issues that affected her audience of millions. Her recurring theme was that there was nothing to be ashamed of.
“I still hold old-fashioned values and I’m a little bit conservative,” she told students at Michigan City High School in 2002. “Sex is a private art and a private matter. But still, it’s a subject we need to talk about.”
Westheimer's cheerful, German-accented voice, coupled with her 1.40-metre height, made her an unlikely source of “sexual literacy” – both in appearance and sound. Contradiction was one of the keys to her success.
But it was her extensive knowledge and training, coupled with her humor and nonjudgmental attitude, that catapulted her local radio show, “Sexually Speaking,” into the national spotlight in the early 1980s. She took an open-minded approach to what two consenting adults would do in the privacy of their own home.
“Tell him you’re not going to make the initiative,” she told a concerned caller in June 1982. “Tell him that Dr. Westheimer said you’re not going to die if he doesn’t have sex for a week.”
Her success on the radio opened new doors for her, and in 1983 she wrote the first of more than 40 books: “Dr. Ruth's Guide to Great Sex,” in which she demystified sex with rationality and humor. She even published a board game, Dr. Ruth's Great Sex Game.
She soon became a regular on late-night television talk shows, and her personality reached the national stage. Her rise coincided with the early days of the AIDS epidemic, when openly discussing sexuality became a necessity.
“If we could talk about sexual activity the same way we talk about diet, the same way we talk about food, without it having that connotation that there’s something wrong, then we’d be a step ahead. But we have to do it in good taste,” she told Johnny Carson in 1982.
She normalized the use of words like “penis” and “vagina” on radio and television, aided by her Jewish grandmotherly accent, which The Wall Street Journal said was “a cross between Henry Kissinger and Minnie Mouse.” People magazine included her on its list of “The Most Intriguing People of the Century.” She was even included in a Shania Twain song: “No, I don’t need proof to show me the truth/Not even Dr. Ruth is going to tell me how I feel.”
Westheimer advocated abortion rights, suggested that older people have sex after a good night's sleep, and was a strong advocate of condom use. She believed in monogamy.
In the 1980s, he defended gay men at the height of the AIDS epidemic and spoke out loudly on behalf of the LGBTQ+ community. He said he was defending people who some far-right Christians considered “subhuman” because of their own past.
Born Karola Ruth Siegel in Frankfurt, Germany, in 1928, she was an only child. At age 10, her parents sent her to Switzerland to escape Kristallnacht, the 1938 Nazi pogrom that served as a precursor to the Holocaust. She never saw her parents again; Westheimer believed they had been murdered in the gas chambers at Auschwitz.
At the age of 16, she moved to Palestine and joined the Haganah, Israel's underground independence movement. She was trained as a sniper, although she claimed she never shot anyone.
His legs were badly injured when a bomb exploded in his bedroom and many of his friends were killed. He said it was only thanks to the work of a “magnificent” surgeon that he was able to walk and ski again.
In 1961, after a second divorce, she finally met her life partner: Manfred Westheimer, a fellow refugee from Nazi Germany. The couple married and had a son, Joel. They remained married for 36 years until Fred, as she called him, died of heart failure in 1997.
In 1984, her radio show was broadcast nationally. A year later, she debuted her own television show, “The Dr. Ruth Show,” which won an Ace Award for excellence in cable television.
She also wrote a nationally syndicated advice column and later appeared in a series of videos produced by Playboy, preaching the virtues of open sexual dialogue and good sex. She even had a series of calendars.
Her rise was remarkable for the culture of the time, when President Ronald Reagan's administration was hostile to Planned Parenthood and aligned itself with conservative voices.
Phyllis Schlafly, a staunch anti-feminist, wrote in a 1999 article titled “The Dangers of Sex Education” that Westheimer, as well as Gloria Steinem, Anita Hill, Madonna, Ellen DeGeneres and others, were promoting “provocative sex talk” and “rampant immorality.”
Westheimer’s books include Sex for Dummies and her autobiographical works All in a Lifetime (1987) and Musically Speaking: A Life Through Song (2003). The documentary Ask Dr. Ruth aired in 2019, and a new book, The Joy of Connections, is due out in October.
He is survived by two children, Joel and Miriam, and four grandchildren.
(This story has not been edited by News18 staff and is published from a syndicated news source – Associated Press)
