QUESTION AND ANSWER Symbol of sex in America Dr. Ruth says everyone should be sexually literate
By JEANNIE KEVER Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle
Mention Ruth Westheimer, and you're likely to draw a blank.
Mention Dr. Ruth, however, and you've got a conversation.
It's been more than 20 years since Dr. Ruth became one of the nation's first breakout cable TV stars, back when sex talk still had shock value.
There's plenty of sex on TV nowadays, but Dr. Ruth remains an original. Her personal story — born into a Jewish family in Germany in 1928, sent to Switzerland while most of her family died in the Holocaust, a stint in the Israeli military followed by work as a kindergarten teacher in Paris — really takes off with her move to the United States in 1956.
Researchers including Alfred Kinsey, William Masters and Virginia Johnson gave human sexuality an imprimatur of academic gloss, but Dr. Ruth took it to the masses. Instantly recognizable by her tiny stature — she is 4 feet 7 — and an accent that remains even after a half-century of living in America, she symbolizes sex in much the same way Julia Child symbolized food.
On the radio and television or through her 30 books on the topic, Dr. Ruth has brought sex out of the closet. At 78, she maintains a part-time therapy practice and teaches alternate semesters at Princeton University and Yale University. She has her own Web site, www.drruth.com.
She was in Houston recently to speak to couples dealing with erectile dysfunction. Her latest book, Dr. Ruth's Sex After 50: Revving Up the Romance, Passion & Excitement, offers advice on that topic and more.
In an interview at Houston's Hotel Derek, Dr. Ruth talked about plans to sandwich a trip to Holocaust Museum Houston between back-to-back interviews. "It's very nice to be Dr. Ruth," she said. "The Houston Chronicle wants me. All the television stations want me."
Q: What is your message when you talk to couples?
A: Mainly it is, if there is a problem, don't just sit there. Don't suffer. Don't blame each other. Don't make things as if you have to get a divorce.
If the relationship is (otherwise) working, get help. My message is, really, we have in this country the best scientifically valid data about human sexuality in the world. Use it.
We have a graying population. I believe they should be, if they're healthy, sexually active.
Q: Who is more receptive to advice, men or women?
A: It's difficult to say. Women have to learn to have fantasies. They have to learn that it's OK to watch sexually explicit movies. What I say to both is, don't put your sex life on the back burner.
Q: Have attitudes toward sex changed since you started your radio program in 1980?
A: The practices have not changed. The vocabulary has changed. In Sex and the City, the language is very explicit. I have no problem with that, but there are not 20 men in New York City waiting to whisk every woman away to Paris.
People are more aware of help that is available. Women know they have to ... ask for what they need.
A change is people realizing there are other things besides sex in a relationship. You have to have something to talk about. You can't wait until the children are out of the house.
You don't have to have the same hobby, but you have to have something, so you have content to talk about. Take some classes — you don't have to take them together — so that you have something to talk about.
Q: Has sex changed?
A: The one thing that has changed is maybe people are more realistic. They realize that TV and Hollywood give us one picture. And I think the knowledge has changed. Twenty years ago, the attitude would have been (older people) don't need to have sex.
I think people have realized that ... here is an activity, it doesn't cost money, make sure you use it. But there are still many questions out there, so we have to train more sex therapists to (help people) be sexually knowledgeable and sexually literate.
Q: What about Viagra?
A: I have no problem with that magnificent pharmaceutical breakthrough. However, the wife has to be part of it. If he hasn't taken her out to dinner, he hasn't washed the dishes, then it's not going to work.
In our culture, when sports is on television, people don't talk. But now you can Tivo a program and watch it after sex. That's what I suggest.
Q: What about teenagers? You hear about middle schoolers forming oral-sex clubs and all, but is that as common as people think?
A: That is a terrible state. I don't think it happens as much as the media make of it. I say to young people, 'Don't tell me that oral sex is not sex. Anything that has to do with necking and petting and being close is sex. It's not just intercourse.'
But that gives an opportunity for me to say that every school has to have a sex education program. If somebody says, 'I'm going to remain a virgin,' I say, 'Stick to it.' But know what there is to know. ... I'm not anti-abstinence. What's the rush? But still, you should be sexually literate and then use it when it's right for you.
