Dr. Westheimer encouraged America to talk about sex

Dr. Ruth Westheimer and the Sex Therapy Career: A Memoir with a New York City Supervising Professor and a Skier

I had never interviewed an author before, but I spent the afternoon interviewing Dr. Ruth Westheimer at her place of business. We met at her New York City office. She mingled her pocketbook into my hands as she fished for her keys. She kept many footstools beneath each chair in her cluttered space. At 4-foot-7 Dr. Ruth used them to keep her feet from dangling when she sat down.

We were talking about a book that she had written about sex and Jewish spirituality and she asked me questions about my studies and my love life. She began to try to fix things she had heard about. She contemplated about job interviews she might arrange for me, as well as where I could find young men who would be accepted by B’nai Jeshurun. She was concerned, connected, and she encouraged me to connect with other people. Fostering connection was one of her special talents.

Dr. Ruth’s office testified to her own engaged and connected life. The many photographs lining the walls and crowding the tabletops showed her posing with family members as well as with numerous celebrities and dignitaries. Several pictures showed her smiling on some mountaintops. Dr. Ruth, it turned out, was an avid and accomplished skier, a fact that should not have surprised me but did. She didn’t seem like a type. And that was always the point.

The diminutive sex therapist who became a pop icon and media star through her frank talk about once-taboo bedroom topics has died. She was 96.

After she graduated from Columbia University, she worked as a teacher at Lehman College. She taught professors how to teach sex education. It would eventually become the core of her curriculum.

Her radio success opened new doors and in 1983 she wrote the first of more than 40 books on sex, demystifying it with both rationality and humor. There was even a board game, Dr. Ruth’s Game of Good Sex.

Dr. Ruth Westheimer, Who Encouraged America to Talk About Sex, Dies at 96, A Tale of Two Faces

Westheimer 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 played herself in episodes of “Quantum Leap” and “Love Boat: The Next Wave.”

In a opinion written 30 years ago by The Wall Street Journal, O’Brien described it as “pure hedonism”. “’The message is just indulge yourself; whatever feels good is good. There is no higher law of overriding morality, and there’s also no responsibility.”

Father Edwin O’Brien, the director of communications for the Catholic archdiocese of New York who would go on to become a cardinal, called her work upsetting and morally compromised.

In 1999, an anti-feminist wrote in a piece about the dangers of sex education, she claimed that Westheimer and other women were promoting sex chatter and immorality.

Her rise was noteworthy 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.

In 1984 her program was syndicated all over the country. She won an Award for excellence in cable television for her show, The Dr. Ruth Show.

She had discovered her calling there. Soon, as she once said in a typically folksy comment, she was dispensing sexual advice “like good chicken soup.”

Source: Dr. Ruth Westheimer, who encouraged America to talk about sex, dies at 96

A true story of a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany: A conversation with Dr. Beth Westheimer, aka The Sexually Speaking Radio Director Ryan White

In 1961, after a second divorce, she finally met her life partner: Manfred Westheimer, a fellow refugee from Nazi Germany. Their son, Joel, was a married boy. They were wed for 36 years beforeFred died of heart failure.

She married her first husband, an Israeli soldier, in 1950, and they moved to Paris as she pursued an education. Although not a high school graduate, Westheimer was accepted into the Sorbonne to study psychology after passing an entrance exam.

Her legs were severely wounded when a bomb exploded in her dormitory, killing many of her friends. She said that it would take a’superb’ surgeon to allow her to walk and ski again.

At the age of 16, she moved to Palestine and joined the Haganah, the underground movement for Israeli independence. She was trained as a sniper and did not fire at anyone.

Born Karola Ruth Seigel in Frankfurt, Germany, in 1928, she was an only child. Kristallnacht, a pogrom by the Nazis in 1938 that served as a reference to the Holocaust, was at 10 when she was sent to Switzerland by her parents. She never saw her parents again after that, and she thought they were killed in the gas chambers.

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 that she supported people being deemed to be subhuman because of her past.

Ryan White, the director of “Ask Dr Ruth,” told Vice in 2019 that Westheimer was never someone following trends. She was a supporter of gay rights and an advocate for family planning.

The Wall Street Journal once said that her Jewish grandmotherly accent made her a cross between Henry Kissinger and Minnie Mouse when it came to her usage of words like penis and vagina. She was included in the list of most intriguing people of the century. She wrote a song that said, “No, I don’t need proof to show me the truth.” Dr. Ruth is going to tell her how she feels.

But it was her extensive knowledge and training, coupled with her humorous, nonjudgmental manner, that catapulted her local radio program, “Sexually Speaking,” into the national spotlight in the early 1980s. She had a nonjudgmental attitude to what two consenting adults did at home.

She became a regular on the late-night talk show circuit, showing her personality to the national stage. Her rise coincides with the start of the AIDS epidemic.

Source: Dr. Ruth Westheimer, who encouraged America to talk about sex, dies at 96

The Importance of Sexuality: The Case of the Westheimer Abuse Divorce, and the Inability to Initiate

“Tell him you’re not going to initiate,” she told a concerned caller in June 1982. Tell him Westheimer said you are not going to die if you don’t have sex for a week.

Westheimer received an award for her work in human sexuality and her commitment to the Jewish people, Israel and religion. She received many honors in 2001 and 2004, including the Ellis Island medal of honor, and the degree of Doctor of Letters from Trinity College.