Dr. Ruth’s petite frame stood above the rest, as she rose to become the nation’s most visible advocate for a wide range of sexual pleasures in the conservative 1980s. In 1982, when Westheimer was in her 50s, she landed her first radio program (initially, just 15 minutes long, airing at midnight on Sundays). “Sexually Speaking,” as it was called, was a platform that enabled her to share her joyful sexual ethos with the wider American public. It was only then that her career as “Dr. Ruth” began.
Her ethos of sexual acceptance was nothing short of radical in the United States in the 1980s.
As the HIV/AIDS crisis roiled the nation and gay men were falsely blamed for its spread, Dr. Ruth advocated for people with AIDS and insisted on destigmatizing sex between consenting adults, whatever the genders of the partners. She ignored television network prohibitions on sexually explicit language by talking about vaginas, orgasms, and masturbation on Late Night with David Letterman, the Arsenio Hall Show, Good Morning America, and other programs, all with her trademark combination of wit and candor, winking and chuckling as she explained everything from how to do Kegel exercises to the importance of clear communication in sexual relationships.
The nation turned rightward, but Westheimer held her ground. She matter-of-factly discussed the value of masturbation (including recommendations to incorporate vibrators and other sex toys into partnered sex) even as Dr. Joycelyn Elders, the first Black person and the first woman to be the U.S. Surgeon General, was forced to resign in 1994 after suggesting that sex-education programs include mention of masturbation. Critics tried to ban her from their universities and even states (including one attempt at a citizen’s arrest during a talk at Oklahoma State University in 1985), but she was undeterred. There was nothing dirty or wrong about sex, she taught, and refused to concede to anyone who found her advice shocking.
Dr. Ruth also refuted any notion that sex was less important to women than it was to men. “Women need sex,” she explained in 2019. She urged women not to fake orgasm unless they had to, a “little white lie” to protect a man’s feeling—although she recommended that women break off relationships with men who couldn’t handle a little critical feedback about their performance in bed. With her German accent and diminutive stature (she was, at her peak, 4’7''), Dr. Ruth was at once a grandmotherly advice-giver and a sexual-health expert.