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Ruth Westheimer, the famed sex expert known as Dr. Ruth, has died at 96.
Westheimer, who was known for her unfiltered advice about sex, died on Friday at her home in New York City, spokesman Pierre Lehu told The New York Times.
She escaped Nazi Germany in the 1930s, she moved to Switzerland as an orphan to live in an orphanage for Jewish refugee children.
She was relocated to Paris in 1950 where she studied psychology, but eventually settled in New York City after emigrating to the United States. There, she attended The New School for Social Research, and eventually became a U.S. citizen.
While working at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Harlem, she decided to pursue studies in human sexuality.
In 1980, Westheimer began offering advice on a weekly radio show in New York called Sexually Speaking. The show surged in popularity and became nationally syndicated in 1984.
After that, she would host talk shows and publish over 40 books, including 1995’s Sex for Dummies.
Westheimer continued to talk about taboo topics into her 90s, revealing to Us Weekly the question she is asked the most about sex. “These days, it’s not so much how to have an orgasm. It’s not so much how to have an erection. It’s more a question about boredom,” she said at the time.
She continued: “‘It’s always the same position. We don’t talk enough about it and we don’t really have enough interest of having sex.’ That’s a big problem. Avoiding sexual activity is a sign that something is wrong in the relationship or that sex has not been satisfactory.”
In November 2023 after feeling isolated amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Westheimer pursued becoming New York’s first loneliness ambassador.
“I still will talk about orgasms,” she had explained to The New York Times. “I still will talk about sexual dysfunction. But I have done that.”
She knew she had more to offer the world than sex advice. “So now I am going to say, let’s go and see how we can help people who don’t have a sexual problem,” she said. “I don’t want to be known only as a sex therapist. I want to be known as a therapist.”
Westheimer is survived by her daughter Miriam and her son Joel, as well as her four grandchildren. Her late husband, Manfred “Fred” Westheimer, died in 1997.
