Dr. Ruth Westheimer, America’s petite and groundbreaking sex therapist, dies at 96

NEW YORK (AP) — Dr. Ruth Westheimer, the petite sex therapist whose candid discussions about once-taboo bedroom topics turned her into a pop icon, media star and best-selling author, has died. She was 96.

According to publicist and friend Pierre Lehu, Westheimer died Friday at her home in New York City, surrounded by her family.

Westheimer never advocated risky sexual behavior. Instead, she encouraged open dialogue about previously suppressed issues that affected her millions of viewers. Her one recurring theme was that there was nothing to be ashamed of.

“I still hold on to old-fashioned values ​​and am a bit of a square,” she told students at Michigan City High School in 2002. “Sex is a private art and a private matter. But it is still a topic we need to talk about.”

Westheimer’s giggling, German-accented voice and her 4-foot-10 height made her an unusual-looking—and sounding—outlet for “sexual education.” This contradiction was one of the keys to her success.

But it was her extensive knowledge and training, coupled with her humorous, nonjudgmental manner, that catapulted her local radio show, “Sexually Speaking,” into the national spotlight in the early 1980s. She had an open approach to what two consenting adults did in the privacy of their home.

“Tell him you’re not going to take the initiative,” she told a worried caller in June 1982. “Tell him Dr. Westheimer said you won’t 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 over 40 books: “Dr. Ruth’s Guide to Good Sex,” in which she demystified sex with rationality and humor. There was even a board game, Dr. Ruth’s Game for Good Sex.

She soon became a regular on late-night television talk shows and rose to national prominence. Her rise coincided with the beginnings of the AIDS epidemic, when open conversations about sexual issues became a necessity.

“If we could get around to talking about sexual activity the way we talk about nutrition – the way we talk about food – without it having the connotation that there’s something wrong with it, then we’d be one step ahead. But we have to do it with good taste,” she told Johnny Carson in 1982.

She normalized the use of words like “penis” and “vagina” on radio and television, helped by her Jewish grandmother’s accent, which the Wall Street Journal once said was “a cross between Henry Kissinger and Minnie Mouse.” People magazine included her in its list of “The Most Fascinating People of the Century.” She even made it into a Shania Twain song: “No, I don’t need proof to show me the truth/Not even Dr. Ruth will tell me how I feel.”

Westheimer defended abortion rights, recommended that older people have sex after a good night’s sleep, and was an outspoken advocate of condom use. She believed in monogamy.

In the 1980s, she advocated for gay men at the height of the AIDS epidemic and was a vocal advocate for the LGBTQ community, saying she defended people who were viewed by some far-right Christians as “subhuman” because of their own pasts.

She was born Karola Ruth Siegel in Frankfurt in 1928 and was an only child. At the age of 10, her parents sent her to Switzerland to escape Kristallnacht – the Nazi pogrom of 1938, which was considered a precursor to the Holocaust. She never saw her parents again; Westheimer believed they were murdered in the gas chambers of Auschwitz.

At 16, she moved to Palestine and joined the Haganah, the underground movement for Israeli independence. She was trained as a sniper, but said she never shot anyone.

Her legs were badly injured when a bomb exploded in her dorm, killing many of her friends. She said it was only through the work of a “brilliant” surgeon that she was able to walk and ski again.

She married her first husband, an Israeli soldier, in 1950 and they moved to Paris, where she pursued an education. Despite not having a high school diploma, Westheimer was accepted to study psychology at the Sorbonne after passing an entrance exam.

The marriage ended in 1955; the following year Westheimer moved to New York with her new boyfriend, a Frenchman who became her second husband and father of her daughter Miriam.

In 1961, after a second divorce, she finally met her life partner: Manfred Westheimer, a 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.

After receiving her doctorate in education from Columbia University, she taught at Lehman College in the Bronx, where she developed a specialty: teaching professors sex education, which would eventually become the core of her curriculum.

“I soon realized that while I knew enough about parenting, I didn’t really know enough about sex,” she wrote in her 1987 autobiography. Westheimer then decided to take courses with renowned sex therapist Dr. Helen Singer Kaplan.

There she discovered her calling. Soon, as she once said in a typically popular comment, she was giving sexual advice “like good chicken soup.”

“I come from an Orthodox Jewish home, so sex was never considered a sin for us Jews,” she told The Guardian in 2019.

In 1984, her radio program began broadcasting nationally. A year later, she debuted her own television show, “The Dr. Ruth Show,” which won an Ace Award for Outstanding Achievement in Cable Television.

She also wrote a nationally syndicated advice column and later appeared in a series of Playboy videos preaching the virtues of open sexual discourse and good sex. She even had a series of calendars published.

Their rise was notable in the culture of the time, as the administration of then-President Ronald Reagan was hostile to Planned Parenthood and sided with pro-conservative voices.

Phyllis Schlafly, a staunch anti-feminist, wrote in her 1999 article “The Dangers of Sex Education” that Westheimer, along with Gloria Steinem, Anita Hill, Madonna, Ellen DeGeneres and others, promoted “provocative sex talk” and “rampant immorality.”

Father Edwin O’Brien, communications director of the Catholic Archdiocese of New York and later cardinal, described their work as disturbing and morally questionable.

“This is pure hedonism,” O’Brien wrote in a 1982 op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal. “The message is: Just indulge yourself; whatever feels good is good. There is no higher law of overriding morality, and there is no responsibility.”

Westheimer has appeared on “The Howard Stern Radio Show,” “Nightline,” “The Tonight Show,” “The Ellen DeGeneres Show,” “The Dr. Oz Show” and “Late Night with David Letterman.” She played herself in episodes of “Quantum Leap” and “Love Boat: The Next Wave.”

Her books include Sex for Dummies, her autobiographical works All in a Lifetime (1987) and Musically Speaking: A Life through Song (2003). The documentary Ask Dr. Ruth aired in 2019.

While she was a radio and television personality, she remained committed to teaching, holding positions at Yale, Hunter, Princeton, and Columbia Universities, as well as a full teaching schedule in college. She also maintained a private practice throughout her life.

Westheimer received an honorary doctorate from the Hebrew Union College-Institute of Religion for her work on human sexuality and her commitment to the Jewish people, Israel, and religion. In 2001, she received the Ellis Island Medal of Honor and the Leo Baeck Medal, and in 2004 she received an honorary doctorate of letters from Trinity College.

Ryan White, the director of “Ask Dr. Ruth,” told Vice in 2019 that Westheimer was never one to follow trends. She was always an ally of gay rights and an advocate for family planning.

“She was at the forefront of both areas her whole life. I met her friends from her orphanage and they told me that even when she met gay people in her life in the ’30s, ’40s and ’50s, she always accepted them and always said that you should treat people with respect.”

She leaves behind two children, Joel and Miriam, and four grandchildren.

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This story has been updated to correct Westheimer’s maiden name. It was Siegel, not Seigel.

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Mark Kennedy is at http://twitter.com/KennedyTwits

Mark Kennedy, Associated Press