NEW YORK — Ruth Westheimer, the diminutive sex therapist who became a pop icon, media star and best-selling author through her candid discourse on topics that were once taboo in the bedroom, has died. She was 96 years old.
Westheimer died on 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 encouraged open dialogue about previously closed issues that affected her audience of millions. Her only recurring theme was that there was nothing to be ashamed of.
“I still maintain 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 still, it’s a subject we should talk about.”
Westheimer’s giggly, German-accented voice, along with her 4-foot-9 frame, made her an unlikely — and sonorous — outlet for “sexual literacy.” Contradiction was one of the keys to her success.
But it was her extensive knowledge and training, along with her humorous and even-handed attitude, that catapulted her local radio show, “Sexually Speaking,” into the national spotlight in the early 1980s. She addressed without judgment what two adults consenting parties did in the privacy of their home.
“Tell him you won’t initiate,” she told a concerned caller in June 1982. “Tell him Dr. Westheimer said you won’t die if he doesn’t have sex for a week.”
Her radio success opened new doors, and in 1983 she wrote the first of more than 40 books: “Dr. Ruth’s Guide to Good Sex”, demystifying sex with rationality and humor. There was even a board game, Dr. Ruth’s Good Sex Game.
She soon became a regular on the late-night television talk show circuit, bringing her personality to the national stage. Her rise coincided with the early days of the AIDS epidemic, when frank talk about sex became a necessity.
“If we could talk about sexual activity in the same way that we talk about diet – the way we talk about food – without it having this kind of connotation that there’s something wrong with it, then we would be a step forward. But we have to do it tastefully,” she told Johnny Carson in 1982.
She normalized the use of words like “penis” and “vagina” on radio and TV, aided by her grandmotherly Jewish accent, which the Wall Street Journal once 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 even turned 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 advocated for the right to abortion, suggested that elderly people have sex after a good night’s sleep, and was an outspoken supporter of condom use. She believed in monogamy.
In the 1980s, she advocated for gay men at the height of the AIDS epidemic and spoke out loudly for the LGBTQ community. She said she defended people considered “subhuman” by some far-right Christians because of her own past.
Born Karola Ruth Siegel in Frankfurt, Germany in 1928, she was an only child. At age 10, she was sent by her parents 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 were killed in the gas chambers at Auschwitz.
At age 16, he moved to Palestine and joined the Haganah, the underground movement for Israeli independence. She was trained as a sniper, although she said she never shot anyone.
His legs were seriously injured when a bomb exploded in his dormitory, killing many of his friends. She said it was only through the work of an “excellent” 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 while she studied. Although she did not complete high school, Westheimer was accepted into the Sorbonne to study psychology after passing the entrance exam.
The marriage ended in 1955; the following year, Westheimer went to New York with her new boyfriend, a Frenchman who became the second husband and father of her daughter, Miriam.
In 1961, after a second divorce, she finally met her life partner: Manfred Westheimer, a fellow refugee from Nazi Germany. The couple was 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 went on to teach at Lehman College in the Bronx. While there, she developed a specialty – instructing teachers on how to teach sex education. Eventually, this would become the core of her resume.
“I soon realized that although I knew enough about education, I actually didn’t know enough about sex,” she wrote in her 1987 autobiography. Westheimer then decided to take classes with renowned sex therapist Dr. Helen Singer Kaplan.
It was there that she discovered her calling. Soon, as she once said in a typically folksy comment, she was dishing out sexual advice “like good chicken soup.”
“I came from an Orthodox Jewish home, so sex for us Jews was never considered a sin,” she told The Guardian in 2019.
In 1984, his radio show was syndicated nationally. A year later, she debuted on her own television show, “The Dr. Ruth Show,” which won the Ace Award for excellence in cable television.
She also wrote a nationally syndicated advice column and later appeared in a line of videos produced by Playboy, preaching the virtues of open sexual discourse and good sex. She even had her own board game, “Dr. Ruth’s Good Sex Game” and a series of calendars.
His rise was notable for the culture of the time, in which then-President Ronald Reagan’s administration was hostile to Planned Parenthood and aligned with pro-conservative voices.
Phyllis Schlafly, a staunch antifeminist, wrote in a 1999 article “The Dangers of Sex Education” that Westheimer, as well as Gloria Steinem, Anita Hill, Madonna, Ellen DeGeneres and others were promoting “provocative” and “unrestrained sexual talk.” immorality.”
Father Edwin O’Brien, communications director for the Catholic Archdiocese of New York who would become a cardinal, called her work disturbing and morally compromised.
“It’s pure hedonism,” O’Brien wrote in a 1982 opinion published by The Wall Street Journal. “’The message is just indulge; everything that looks good is good. There is no higher law that surpasses morality and there is no responsibility either.”
Westheimer has made appearances 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 performed in episodes of “Quantum Leap” and “Love Boat: The Next Wave.”
His books include “Sex for Dummies,” his autobiographical works “All in a Lifetime” (1987) and “Musically Speaking: A Life through Song” (2003). The documentary “Ask Dr Ruth” aired in 2019.
During her time as a radio and television personality, she remained committed to teaching, with positions at Yale, Hunter, Princeton, and Columbia Universities and a busy schedule of college lectures. She also maintained a private practice throughout her life.
Westheimer received an honorary doctorate from the Hebrew Union College-Institute of Religion for his work on human sexuality and his 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 the degree of Doctor of Letters, honoris causa, from Trinity College.
Ryan White, director of “Ask Dr Ruth”, told Vice in 2019 that Westheimer was never one to follow trends. She has always been an ally of gay rights and an advocate for family planning.
“She has been at the forefront of both of those things her entire life. I met her friends from the orphanage saying that even when she met gay people throughout her life in the 30s, 40s and 50s, she always accepted those people and always said that people should be treated with respect.”
She leaves 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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