Dr. Ruth Westheimer, America’s diminutive and pioneering sex therapist, dies at 96

Dr. Ruth Westheimer, the diminutive sex therapist who became a pop icon, media star and bestselling author through her frank talk about 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 behaviour. Instead, she encouraged open dialogue on previously closeted issues that affected her audience of millions. Her one recurring theme was there was nothing to be ashamed of.

“I still hold old-fashioned values, and I’m 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 is a subject we must talk about.”

Westheimer’s giggly, German-accented voice, coupled with her 4-foot-7 frame, made her an unlikely looking — and sounding — outlet for “sexual literacy.” The contradiction was one of the keys to her success.

But it was her extensive knowledge and training, coupled with her humourous, nonjudgmental manner, that catapulted her local radio program, “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 initiate,” she told a concerned caller in June 1982. “Tell him that Dr. Westheimer said that you’re not going to die if he doesn’t have sex for one 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 both rationality and humour. There was even a board game, Dr. Ruth’s Game of Good Sex.

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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 sexual talk became a necessity.

“If we could bring about talking about sexual activity the way we talk about diet — the way we talk about food — without it having this kind of connotation that there’s something not right about it, then we would be a step further. 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 TV, aided by her Jewish grandmotherly 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 Intriguing 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 is gonna tell me how I feel.”

Westheimer defended abortion rights, suggested 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 stood up for gay men at the height of the AIDS epidemic and spoke out loudly for the LGBTQ+ community. She said she defended people deemed by some far-right Christians to be “subhuman” because of her own past.

Born Karola Ruth Siegel in Frankfurt, Germany, in 1928, she was an only child. At 10, she was sent by her parents to Switzerland to escape Kristallnacht — the Nazis’ 1938 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, she 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 at anyone.

Her legs were severely wounded when a bomb exploded in her dormitory, killing many of her friends. She said it was only through the work of a “superb” surgeon that she could 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 wed for 36 years until Fred, as she called him, died of heart failure in 1997.

In 1984, her radio program was nationally syndicated. A year later, she debuted in her own television program, “The Dr. Ruth Show,” which went on to win an 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 a series of calendars.

Her rise was noteworthy for the culture of the time, when President Ronald Reagan’s administration was hostile to Planned Parenthood and aligned with conservative voices.

Phyllis Schlafly, a staunch antifeminist, wrote in a 1999 piece called “The Dangers of Sex Education” that Westheimer, as well as Gloria Steinem, Anita Hill, Madonna, Ellen DeGeneres and others, were promoting “provocative sex chatter” 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 in October.

Survivors include two children, Joel and Miriam, and four grandchildren.