Dr. Ruth Westheimer, 1928-2024
"Dr. Ruth" is gone at 96.
NPR, “Pioneering sex expert Dr. Ruth Westheimer dies at 96“
Internationally acclaimed sex therapist Dr. Ruth Westheimer, who tore down taboos with her open, nonjudgmental and good-humored public conversations about human intimacy, has died. She was 96 years old.
According to her longtime publicist Pierre Lehu, Westheimer died peacefully on Friday at her home in New York City. The cause of death was not publicly shared.
Westheimer became a household name in the early 1980s when she was in her 50s, for her frank approach to discussing sex on her popular late-night radio show, Sexually Speaking.
She continued her work on TV with The Dr. Ruth Show, which by 1985 attracted 2 million viewers a week. She also shared her knowledge in dozens of books including Dr. Ruth’s Guide to Good Sex and Sex for Dummies, on the web and in the classroom. She taught at Yale, Princeton and Columbia Universities as well as Hunter College.
Westheimer was a proponent of safe sex who normalized the use of words like “penis,” “vagina” and “condom,” at a time when few dared use these terms in public settings.
She was also an outspoken supporter of gay and abortion rights, catching fire from conservatives during the Reagan era for her stance.
Anti-feminist leader Phyllis Schlafly criticized Westheimer, along with Gloria Steinem, Anita Hill, Madonna, Ellen DeGeneres and others for promoting “provocative sex chatter” and “rampant immorality” in her 1999 essay “The Dangers of Sex Education.”
Catholic firebrand the Rev. Edwin O’Brien was also a Westheimer detractor, labeling the sex therapist’s work as upsetting and morally compromised.
With her German-tinged English (The Wall Street Journal once described Westheimer’s voice as “a cross between Henry Kissinger and Minnie Mouse”) and diminutive stature (she was well under five feet in height) Westheimer approached her work with gusto and a sense of fun. She focused on reminding people that there is nothing to be ashamed of when it comes to discussing sex. Her cheeky catchphrase was “Get Some!”
“I certainly believe in the need for sexuality education, I do believe that it has to be taught based on scientifically validated data, and it has to be taught with some kind of humor,” she told NPR in 2007.
Westheimer came to national prominence when I was in high school and from my perspective then there was something weird, if not creepy, about an old woman talking about sex, in fairly graphic fashion, on television. She was younger then than I am now.
Whether for good or ill—or perhaps both—American culture remains more prudish about sexuality than most of the Western world. Westheimer helped change that, if ever so slightly. In hindsight, there was a profound weirdness—to say the least—of reluctance to use the word “condom” at the height of the AIDS epidemic.
And I had been completely unaware of this until this morning:
Westheimer’s global success and joie de vivre belied a difficult past.
She was born into an orthodox Jewish family as Karola Ruth Siegel in Frankfurt, Germany, in 1928. Her mother was a housekeeper and father a salesman. At 10, her parents sent their only child to Switzerland to escape Kristallnacht, a wave of antisemitic violence perpetrated by the Nazis. Westheimer believed her parents were murdered at Auschwitz, since she never saw them again.
She would keep these early tragedies under wraps for most of her career, only speaking openly about her past in 2019 with the release of the Hulu documentary Ask Dr. Ruth.
Given the enormity of the Holocaust, it shouldn’t be shocking that Westheimer was impacted so personally.
And, if I knew any of this, I’d long forgotten:
After the war ended, she immigrated to Palestine, which was under British control at the time. There she trained as a scout and sniper for Haganah, the Jewish militia. She sustained a serious injury during a mortar attack.
Westheimer moved to Paris two years later, and studied psychology at the Sorbonne, before immigrating to the United States in 1956.
In New York, she worked as a maid while studying for her master’s degree in sociology at the New School and went on to earn a Doctorate of Education from Columbia University’s Teacher’s College.
It was her post-Ph.D. job at Planned Parenthood in Harlem teaching women sex education that led her to study sexuality in a deeper way.
A remarkable journey, to be sure.
I’m just going to point out that the sex therapist lived to 96 and the fitness guru lived only to 76.
Behave accordingly.
I’d heard something bad had happened yesterday while I was too busy cooking.
Because there’s no stereotype for a dirty, old lady.
I don’t like talking about sex much, but I prefer it be discussed more openly. And the basics of what sex is and what it’s for,should be taught early and universally (I read a book about it, not a good one, when I was seven).
@Kathy: it was a combination of my age and the sensibilities of the era — which she helped change.
Dr. Ruth had a life. You can’t really feel bad for a person who experienced, and did and was all that, and made it to 96. That’s a win.
I know there’s more important issues today, but can someone clear up immigrated vs. emigrated? She immigrated to Israel, but emigrated from Germany. Do we have a flammable vs. inflammable issue here?
@Tony W: Wait, y’all want to live till 96?!
@Michael Reynolds:
You already have it: you immigrate to somewhere and emigrate from somewhere. When you move from the US to Portugal (that’s the leading candidate at the moment IIRC) you will emigrate from the US and immigrate to Portugal
I’m about your age, James, and had a similar thoughts about Dr. Ruth from my youth.
I think we’ve come a long way and she helped to make sex much less taboo. It’s therefore ironic that kids today have less sex than our generation did.
And thanks for the additional details of her life which I didn’t know or had forgotten. Quite a remarkable journey.
@Andy & @James Joyner:
You are completely right about how far we have come on this topic. And that speaks to Doctor Ruth’s work.
I suspect that rapid evolution has also helped create some of the backlash that is fueling the MAGA movement. It’s hard not to connect Project 2025’s call to ban pornography* and return sex to just being about procreation as being a direct reactionary response to the current status quo.
*-Note that I also think that Dr Ruth’s Jewishness was a critical factor in the reaction to her and the pushback against her. There is a long-standing perception (which the Nazis played into) of Jews as purveyors of deviant sexual behavior.
Having been raised in a pretty conservative environment, at first I thought it was hilarious that an “old” lady was talking like that. Later I kinda realized how disarming it was. But I feel the message would have largely ignored if it was somebody else, younger or of the opposite sex.
Personally I wasn’t aware of any stereotype of Jews and “deviant” sex that Matt mentions. But there was always going to be pushback. My generation’s parents didn’t seem to talk about sex much. The whole thing was taboo and there is a societal reaction to breaking that.
I got the joke, even if Kathy skimmed over it.
You are overdue for starting a fairly graphic podcast about sexual wellness. Get to it!