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Book of Dr. Ruth
The sex therapist talks abortion, sharpshooting and, of course, orgasm.
“In the Jewish tradition,” Ruth Westheimer tells me over the phone from her apartment in Manhattan, “a lesson taught with humor is a lesson retained.” If so, the funny, feisty octogenarian has ensured the retention of countless lessons during her decades doling out sex advice on radio and TV and in her 30-plus books. On Thursday 21, the psychosexual therapist speaks at Planned Parenthood of Illinois’s annual Roe v. Wade event.
It was working at Planned Parenthood in NYC that prompted you to study sexuality?
Absolutely. If I had not started working there, I wouldn’t be Dr. Ruth. I became director of research, but I thought there’s something wrong with these people—all they talk about is sex! And 48 hours later, I said, “What an interesting subject matter.”
This Roe v. Wade event is called “The Future of Choice.” What do you think the future of choice is?
I’m very, very saddened that we have not managed yet to end the debate on abortion. I don’t want anybody to have an abortion, but there will always be some contraceptive failure, so abortion has to be legal, and it should be a public-health issue and not a political issue.
What do you make of Congress’s efforts to ensure that no federally funded health insurers offer abortion coverage?
It makes me very sad. We’re back where we were that women with money, if they need an abortion, can fly to Mexico or to Europe, and the others are going to resort to abortionists and coat hangers.
You were very young when your family sent you from Frankfurt to Switzerland on the Kindertransport.
On January 5, 1939, I was on that train. If my parents hadn’t put me on that train, I wouldn’t be alive. Every January 5, some of my friends and I who were on the train, we talk to each other. I just talked to one in Switzerland.
What did you talk about?
How fortunate we were and how sad that whole period was and how grateful I am to be alive. I’m also grateful to Switzerland that kept me for six years of World War II.
What was your earliest encounter with sex?
A girl in Frankfurt showed me that she was menstruating behind some bushes. So when my father had already been taken to a labor camp, my mother and grandmother wanted to tell me about menstruation before I went to Switzerland, and I said, “I know it all.” [Laughs]
Have you been back to Frankfurt?
I go every year to the Frankfurt Book Fair.
So you’ve seen the house where you lived as a child?
I went back once. That was enough. I have no problems with younger people. The older ones, older than me—I’m now 81 and a half!—I don’t want to know where they were during World War II.
Tell me about training to become a sharpshooter in Jerusalem.
It wasn’t an act of heroism; we were all trained in ’47, ’48. For some reason, I had a talent in sharpshooting. I’ve never killed anybody. And very early in the independence war, I was badly wounded—shrapnel went through both my legs—so that was the end of my military career.
You just suddenly learned you had this talent with a gun?
Just suddenly. I tell everybody, “Watch out if you don’t listen to me! I was a sniper in the Israeli Haganah!”
When was the last time you picked up a gun?
I wouldn’t touch a gun since Columbine. I went once with my grandson to a country fair, and there was a water pistol, and we came home with 14 stuffed animals and a goldfish.
You’ve aligned yourself with a Jewish tradition of looking at sex not as a sin but as a good deed when within marriage. So you’re actually quite conservative.
I’m very conservative. There’s no question I believe the best sexual relationship is based on a relationship.
When you lecture at Princeton and Yale, what do you make of students today, their attitudes to sex?
The language is more explicit, the questions are more or less the same: not finding the right partner, premature ejaculation, inability to obtain or maintain an erection.
What do they make of you?
I think they think this is pretty neat to have a grandmother of the age of 81 talking about orgasm and ejaculation.
You must know people love to hear you say “orgasm.”
That’s why I’m putting it into the sentence myself. I don’t wait for them to ask me! [Laughs]
Westheimer speaks at “The Future of Choice” Thursday 21 at 6pm at the Sofitel Hotel.
