(Washington) American sexologist Ruth Westheimer, who became a cultural phenomenon in the 1980s for her no-holds-barred advice on how to spice up a couple’s life, has died at the age of 96, several American media outlets announced on Saturday.
Known simply as “Dr Ruth,” she died Friday at her home in Manhattan, according to her spokesman Pierre Lehu, quoted in particular by the New York Times.
Ruth Westheimer rose to fame in the 1950s with a pioneering radio show in New York.
She then offers frank discussion on female orgasm, masturbation, homosexuality, consent, and many other intimate subjects to an audience eager for answers on topics considered taboo.
The sexologist took advantage of her rapid rise to host a television show, write around forty books, and appear in numerous films and series.
A petite woman, her appearance was full of maternal good nature, helping her gain the trust of millions of couples of all ages.
Born in Bavaria in 1928 to a Jewish family, Ruth Westheimer’s life was full of many chapters. She left Nazi Germany in 1938, but her parents died in the Holocaust. After the war, she became a sniper in a Jewish paramilitary branch before the creation of Israel, and in 1950 emigrated to Paris and studied at the Sorbonne.
She left for New York in 1956, where she raised her daughter and worked as a housekeeper, before obtaining her doctorate from the prestigious Columbia University and becoming a full-time sexologist.
Ruth Westheimer’s advice was often concise and direct: have sex before dinner, share your fantasies if you want, and be flexible with your partner’s differing sexual appetites.
In particular, she rejected the idea of sexuality as “normal,” arguing that anything that happened between two consenting adults in private was perfectly acceptable. An idea that was far from being shared when the HIV epidemic emerged in the 1980s.
In the wake of the #metoo movement, some have rejected some of the sexologist’s positions on consent. She said in particular to Guardian in 2019: “No one has to be naked in bed, if that person is not determined to have sex.”
Even in her nineties, Ruth Westheimer has remained very active, explaining to the magazine: People in 2023 how to stay full of vigor: “Talk about sex from morning to night! It keeps you young!”