Full disclosure: I never met or knew Ruth Westheimer.
World-famous sex educator Ruth Westheimer died this month, aged 96.
To virtually every American now over 50 (and millions of young ‘uns), she was known as Dr. Ruth, the funny little old lady who revolutionized the way sex was discussed in mainstream media. From radio to TV, magazines, and even Hollywood films and a record album, she made it OK to talk about sex using plain language to discuss plain things.
It’s hard to remember that back in the dinosaur days before 1980, nobody talked about sex in the media without smirking and euphemisms. Sex was intercourse, women who couldn’t climax from it were “frigid,” and old people weren’t sexual at all. And most TV sitcom couples still slept in separate beds.
Ruth’s first radio show started changing that; in hundreds of TV guest appearances and her own TV show, she kept changing that. She encouraged then-controversial things like sexual fantasy, oral sex, contraception, and “whatever two adults want to do together”—extraordinarily tame now, but how do you think she—and therefore we—got all the way to here? Via traditional thought leaders like Johnny Carson, People magazine, and Live with Regis and Kathie Lee, none of whom could resist her charming shtick.
She didn’t say anything that I or two dozen other sex educators (such as Lonnie Barbach, Mike Carrera, Lynn Leight, Jack Morin, June Reinisch, and Bill Stayton) weren’t saying at the time. But she was given the opportunity of a lifetime, and she made the most of it. At the age of 52, her life’s work became simply encouraging people—with straightforward conversation, mixed with winking grandma humor—to acknowledge, discuss, and pursue their sexual interests.
WHAT SHE DIDN’T DISCUSS MUCH
It being the 1980s and 1990s, there were things she didn’t discuss or promote. She was “waiting for more science” about trans issues, although she did advocate for their civil rights. She considered a lot of BDSM unhealthy. She thought open relationships generally didn’t work, so she discouraged them.
Today, Ruth’s colleagues and fans around the world are celebrating her as they mourn. But inevitably, some of today’s young sex bloggers and influencers will look at her record and sneer.
Ruth didn’t know everything we know now. She didn’t bless everything that identity activists do now. She thought sex within a loving relationship was best (although she was quite progressive about who you could love)—which many people today deride as neo-colonialist or codependent thinking.
And unlike many of today’s “progressive” would-be educators, she never demanded that others’ views be cancelled or deprived of an audience. She never claimed that she was victimized by those who disagreed with her (and if you want to know the real meaning of “victimized,” read her heart-wrenching Wiki bio). She never claimed to be offended on behalf of others, and never urged others to be offended by what they simply disliked or chose to ignore.
And with a heart way bigger than her 4’7” frame, she loved a good joke, enjoyed laughing at herself, and understood that humor, if not taken too seriously, can heal our despair, rather than increase it as some stern identitarians fear.
So how shall we judge a person, ahead of her time but still of her time, who paved the way for today’s sexual activists? Without Ruth saying “clitoris” on TV back then, we wouldn’t have people demanding their special pronouns today. Without Ruth appearing in Pepsi commercials back then, we wouldn’t have Amazon and Walmart carrying vibrators today.
Every revolutionary is simultaneously ahead of their time and of their time. Looking back on any of them, each of us can choose between celebrating their accomplishments (including how they launched succeeding revolutionaries), or angrily decrying their limitations.
Political change is always slower than we want it. And when change comes, it is always incomplete, leaving some people behind.
Remember the U.S. military’s 1993 “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy about homosexuality? Rightfully considered a radical, positive step forward, it was still painfully limited. Just a generation later, the policy was abolished, and openly gay and bisexual people could serve. A mere ten years later, openly trans people could serve.
Notwithstanding the people who suffered during the transition, this constitutes enormous cultural and political change in the relative wink of an eye.
Most of today’s activists and progressives will be seen as conservative or even regressive in just a few years. We should be very slow to condemn our forebears who set the stage for us to do our work—work which will, in turn, both set the stage for the future, while also appearing painfully archaic soon enough.
And that’s a prime reason that progressives should not judge those with whom they disagree too harshly—especially people who are clearly allies.
We can’t know which (if any) of us will ultimately be on the right side of history. But we know who will be wrong—those who denigrate the progressives of the past, and those who scorn allied contemporaries with whom they disagree as insufficiently committed to pleasure, equality, and enlightenment.
Memo to today’s sexual activists: Disagree with Dr. Ruth’s limitations (and Kinsey’s, and Hite’s, and Masters & Johnson’s), but don’t assume you know what those omissions MEAN (i.e., “transphobic,” “anti-queer,” “anti-child,” etc.). A bit of humility when approaching the past will go a long way toward humanizing our views of the present—which people in the future will appreciate as they scrutinize our naïve ideas.
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