Dr. Ruth Westheimer, a sex therapist and media personality, died on Saturday at age 96. The German-born academic, whose death was confirmed to The New York Times by spokesperson Pierre Lehu, reportedly died at her Manhattan home in New York City.
Westheimer, better known simply as Dr. Ruth, lived a long and adventurous life. As a young girl, she escaped the Holocaust and trained as a sniper for a Jewish paramilitary group in Palestine. Decades later, she became a household name in the U.S., revolutionizing how we discuss sex and pleasure.
Dr. Ruth burst onto the air with her own radio show, “Sexually Speaking,” in 1980, bringing with her years of expertise as a researcher and professor of human sexuality. The 15-minute program originally aired every Sunday at midnight in New York City and quickly became popular, running for a decade. Her tag line: “Get some!”
“She can seemingly say things on the air that no one else can these days,” a writer for The New York Times described Westheimer in 1985. “Even on Sunday nights, when men of the cloth are preaching hellfire and brimstone up and down the radio dial. This could be because she is short and sweet and takes her subject seriously.”
Four years after its inception, “Sexually Speaking” was syndicated by NBC Radio and broadcast across the country. It was redubbed “The Dr. Ruth Show.”
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During the 1980s and ’90s, Westheimer hosted several TV shows centering on human sexuality and pleasure, including “Good Sex! With Dr. Ruth Westheimer” (which later became another “Dr. Ruth Show”) and “Ask Dr. Ruth.” She also made dozens of guest appearances on late night and network TV shows. She became a cultural icon for her frank and funny ability to talk about sex ― in a thick German accent, no less.
“When it comes to sex, the most important six inches are the ones between the ears,” she famously said.
Westheimer was a regular guest in the early and mid-2000s on the PBS children’s series “Between the Lines,” appearing as “Dr. Ruth Wordheimer,” a humorous therapist who helped children read and spell long words. In 2019, Hulu created a documentary about her life titled “Ask Dr. Ruth,” in which she publicly opened up about her early life for the first time.
Over her long life, Westheimer published 45 books ― all of which discussed gender, sexual health and pleasure. Moving with the times, she eventually boasted a large social media following, too, with more than 100,000 Twitter followers.
In her later years, Westheimer made some controversial comments about sex and consent. During a 2015 press appearance to promote one of her books, she said that women can’t take back consent once they’re in bed with a man.
“I am very worried about college campuses saying that a woman and a man … can be in bed together and at one time naked, and at one time he or she ― most of the time they think she ― can say, ‘I changed my mind.’ No such thing is possible,” Westheimer said.
She later clarified her comments in some equally controversial tweets.
“I am 100% against rape. I do say to women if they don’t want to have sex with a man, they should not be naked in bed [with] him,” she tweeted, adding: “That’s risky behavior like crossing street against the light. If a driver hits you, he’s legally in the wrong but you’re in the hospital.”
Born Karola Ruth Siegel on June 4, 1928, to Orthodox Jewish parents, Westheimer grew up in Wiesenfeld, Germany. Her mother sent her to an orphanage in Switzerland in 1939 when she was 11 years old, not long after her father was taken away by the Nazis. He would be murdered at the Auschwitz death camp in 1942. Her mother was also killed during World War II, although the exact circumstances of her death are unknown.
“People like me have to make a dent. In Hebrew, there’s a sentence that says, ‘To repair the world.’ We have to make a dent in society,” Westheimer told The Cut in 2015 of why she believed she had survived the Holocaust. “Many of the girls who were in the orphanage with me became either nurses or social workers. Though nobody became a sex therapist ― I’m the only one who did that!”
After the war, Westheimer, then 17, settled in what was known as Mandatory Palestine, a territory controlled by the British. She joined the Haganah, the main paramilitary organization for the Jewish residents, and due to her height ― she stood just 4 feet, 7 inches ― was trained as a sniper.
“I never killed anybody, but I know how to throw hand grenades and shoot,” Westheimer told USA Today in 2013.
She was severely wounded by shrapnel in both legs in 1948 and it was several months before she could walk again. Two years later, she moved to Paris to study and later teach psychology at the University of Paris.
In 1956, Westheimer immigrated to the U.S. where she earned a degree in sociology from The New School and a doctorate in education from Columbia University. She made New York City her final home, becoming an American citizen in 1965.
She married three times and had two children, Miriam and Joel. Her last husband, Fred Westheimer, died in 1997.
Throughout her life, Dr. Ruth insisted on one important rule that will likely be her lasting legacy: “Never forget that you have every right to have a satisfying sex life.”
