Playboy Interview: Dr. Ruth Westheimer

"Hello, I'm Dr. Ruth Westheimer. Our program is called 'Sexually Speaking.' My producer is Susan Brown, my engineer Fred Zeller. The other engineer helping us is Walter Ryan, and the executive producer is Morris Tudick. Our telephone number, toll-free, nationwide is 1-800-635-5483.... And you are on the air-r-r!"

She's toll-free. She's nationwide. She's hotter than Madonna. She's a media darling, someone who sends reporters rushing to their pop-culture thesauruses for cute comparisons (see above): "The Munchkin of the Bedroom" (Time); "the Mary Poppins of the orgasm" (The Washington Post); "Grandma Freud" (Chicago Sun-Times); and according to People, she gets "the kind of respect Golda Meir would've gotten had she been a gynecologist."

Ruth Westheimer is famous because she violates one of the deepest, least recognized taboos in Western culture: talking with an old person/parent about sex. Imagine asking your mother how to perform oral sex or what those ben-wa balls in the drawer are really for. Appropriately for a mother figure, she is a sexual conservative who will always understand you--but this one happens to speak always with delightful directness.

Listen to her radio show and you see that she is a natural: Not a second goes by without a sigh of compassion, a giggle, a cheerful "Have good sex!" She claims, "I was on the show for a year before someone explained to me what dead air was. I didn't know." There isn't any. She fills the air with exclamation points, like a karate expert splitting bricks. She holds your attention. Hers is a holographic personality: You get her entire shtick in a tenth of a second. She can relate to a telephone, to a microphone, to a television camera, to a Smith-Corona typewriter.

Dr. Ruth, as she is universally known, has packaged sex information--the work of Masters and Johnson and Helen Singer Kaplan--and made it safe for the great unwashed. She is for contraception. She is for relationships. She is for religion (she is just as likely to refer someone to a priest as to a urologist). She is the archetypal matchmaker. If a caller mentions that he is in a sexual relationship, she asks, "Are you planning to get married?" If a girl tells her she is seeing a guy who's obviously not serious about her, Dr. Ruth signals her engineer to put on one of her favorite songs: "I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Out of My Hair." (She has no song for guys who are being toyed with by a girl; yes, there may be a hint of a double standard in Dr. Ruth's musical therapy.)

Her accent is the first stroke of the packaging genius that is Dr. Ruth--the last person who made such a career move on the basis of accent alone was José Jiménez, astronaut. With Dr. Ruth, sex therapist, we get a Jewish mother dispensing clitoral instructions with a German accent. She rolls her Rs as if she were dropping marbles down a rain pipe: "ter-r-r-r-rif," "br-r-r-avo," "r-r-r-right."

The other ingredient in the packaging success of Dr. Ruth is the fact that she is a phenomenon that could have gotten its start only in New York. With the first broadcast of her New York City--based radio show, she became the rave of taxi drivers and policemen. People quickly recognized her voice, and once her television appearances began, the combination of her 4'7" height and those trilled Rs made her unmistakable on the streets and on the airwaves of New York. Now, of course, people all over America recognize her from her spots on "Letterman," "The Tonight Show," "Good Morning America" and the cover of People magazine. She has been parodied on "Saturday Night Live." She has appeared in a comic strip, "Bloom County," as Dr. Ruth "Spank 'Em" Westheimer. She is amused, even if she doesn't get the joke. And now the fame has become international, as Dr. Ruth has taken her show to the European airwaves.

She is a 57-year-old mother of two, born in Frankfurt am Main as Karola Ruth Siegel. In 1939, she was shipped to Switzerland with 100 other Jewish children and never saw her parents again. In 1945, she moved to Israel, joined the Haganah freedom fighters and married the first of her three husbands. In 1952, she moved to Paris, enrolled at the Sorbonne to study psychology, met her second husband and had a daughter. She then moved to America. In 1961, she met her third husband, Fred Westheimer, on a ski trip. This one was a keeper. For the next decade or so, she was a graduate student and a home-maker, raising her daughter and son. She obtained her master's degree in sociology and then a doctorate from Columbia University in the interdisciplinary study of the family--that's Dr. Ruth as in Ed.D., not as in M.D., as she is careful to point out when she declines to give medical advice.

In 1980, WYNY-FM, an NBC station in New York, asked her to do a radio show on sex. The rest is media history: That show is now carried in 45 cities, she has a television show on the Lifetime Cable Network and the lady is, well, everywhere.

Her marketing instincts are those of a friendly barracuda: After the Playboy Rabbit Head, she has fashioned for herself the most recognizable logo in the world of sex. There is "Dr. Ruth's Guide to Good Sex," a book. There is "First Love: A Young People's Guide to Sexual Information." There is Dr. Ruth's Game of Good Sex, in which couples move their pieces around a board, accumulating arousal points. They answer such questions as "True or false: The word orgy comes from the Japanese word origami, meaning a folding into beautiful shapes." If you land on the wet spot, you lose a point. If you listen to "Sexually Speaking," you get to roll the dice and move again. And, coming soon in a video store near you, the Dr. Ruth video: "Terrific Sex."

Dr. Ruth makes things happen, but she is also one of those people things happen to: Director Daniel Vigne was making a movie in Paris. He needed a tall American woman (Sigourney Weaver) and a short American woman ("Guess who!"). Dr. Ruth "One Take" Westheimer plays a character called Madame Heffner. (Yes, that's Heffner.) And the band wagon rolls on.

We decided there was only one appropriate interviewer for a subject this close to home: James R. Petersen, the Playboy Advisor, no stranger himself to traveling road shows from his popular campus appearances, and author of "America's most widely read men's sex-education resource" (USA Today). Petersen's report:

"We at Playboy have been giving sex advice for 25 years, so Dr. Ruth struck me as the new kid in town. Who can argue with someone who wants you to have good sex? We haven't settled for good sex in years, but, hey, someone has to do it.

"She may be the new kid, but I got more mothering in the ten days in which we conducted this interview than I have in the past ten years. At our first meeting, she said, 'Hold out your hands,' then promptly filled them with chotchkes--key chains with her logo on them, coffee cups with her radio stations' initials on them--for everyone back at the Chicago office. At the end of each session, she would ask if I had someone looking after me for the night. She introduced me to everyone we met--as she does with everyone who is with her--on the chance that one person might be able to help another. She carries numbers and names around in a little book swelled to the point of bursting with scraps of paper. Her Rolodex must need its own Sherpa. She is tireless and will walk your socks off.

"As we walked along the streets of New York, from one appointment to another, a squad car addressed her over the bullhorn: 'Dr. Ruth!' She signed autographs gladly: 'I love it!' Older matrons came up to her in restaurants, whispering problems into her ear in words they probably had never spoken aloud: 'I love it!' A young couple thanked her for being such a live wire in the sex-therapy profession, usually populated by colorless duds: 'I love it!' She is adored by the city of New York. Walking around with her is like being trapped on the set of a Broadway musical where the erections are as high as an elephant's eye and everyone--as Dr. Ruth always warns--uses contraception.

"She is very agile. She says that she is against confrontation, and when questioned on some of her beliefs, she will acknowledge that she says one thing in her writing, another thing on the air and yet a third in interviews. She is overprotective: She would rather keep one person from bitter disappointment in sexual experimentation than actively encourage a thousand to go for it--caution, not courage, nor for that matter, curiosity. She could charm the nut off a fireplug, and no matter that you disagree with her, within five minutes you'll undoubtedly be promising to do her a favor.

"I put off doing this interview for five years--first I thought she was a local act, that New Yorkers would fall for anything. Then I thought she was a case of terminal cuteness on 'Letterman.' Then I noticed that she was booking 30 lectures a year on college campuses, doing five nights a week on cable, 60 cities on her radio show--and, at my editors' urging, I had to look again. Dr. Ruth is a phenomenon, someone who holds a mirror up to America. The fact that she is famous tells us something about ourselves.

"By the way, after our last exhaustive interview session, with Dr. Ruth off to some promotion or other, I went back to my hotel room for the night. I was tired and just wanted to sit back and listen to some music. I ordered room service and switched on the radio. There she was again, answering questions on 'Sexually Speaking.' The waiter arrived, glanced at the radio and didn't bat an eye at me. Just another lonely guy listening to Dr. Ruth."

[Q] Playboy: Not long ago, The Playboy Advisor received a letter that began, "We couldn't get through on Dr. Ruth's phone lines, so we are writing to you." Are you stealing our readers?

[A] Dr. Ruth: I love it. [Claps her hands, bounces up and down in her seat] You are going to put that in the interview, yes?

[Q] Playboy: You're working our beat. We figured it was time we got to know you better. Should we view you as competition?

[A] Dr. Ruth: Listen, people ask me all the time, "Do you know there's somewhere else a show on sex?" They expect me to say, "How dare they do a show on sex!" And I say, "Ter-r-r-rific." There is a big country out there, and a place for all of us.

[Q] Playboy: Well, welcome to the Playboy Interview, Dr. Ruth.

[A] Dr. Ruth: It will be appearing in the Christmas season, yes? Bless my Jewish soul. I love it!

[Q] Playboy: Are you aware of your image as Grandma Freud, pint-sized guru of sex?

[A] Dr. Ruth: Wr-r-rong! [Wags her finger] I'm too young for that! I'm 57 years old. I've never hidden my age. Now, I don't like the Chicago Sun-Times' calling me Grandma Freud. I want them to call me Aunt Freud or Auntie Freud, not Grandma Freud. And I hate the word guru. I don't have any followers! I don't want any followers!

[Q] Playboy: But you do have fans. Each week, thousands of college students listen to your show Sexually Speaking. It's hard not to be charmed by someone who answers her phone with "Are you using contraceptives?" and ends every show with "Have good sex!" So let's get right to the good stuff. What was your favorite phone call?

[A] Dr. Ruth: A young man called and said, "Dr. Ruth, my girlfriend and I are in love with each other very much. We want to get married. In order to be on your good side, I want you to know that we are using contraceptives." And I said, "Good." Then I said, "What's your problem?" He said, "My girlfriend likes to toss fried onion rings on my erect penis."

[Q] Playboy: Fried onion rings?

[A] Dr. Ruth: As I am a good sex therapist, you know that I have to visualize what happens in people's bedrooms, right? That phone call permitted me to say, in a wonderful way, that I believe that anything two consenting adults do in the privacy of their bedrooms, in the living room or on the kitchen floor is fine with me.

[Q] Playboy: You believe that anything goes?

[A] Dr. Ruth: I have some problems with masochism and sadism. I believe that a sex therapist like myself should know her limitations. If a couple walk into my office and say that they are engaged in sadomasochism, that he can have an erection only if he sees blood, that she doesn't mind it, that she gets sexually very aroused by being beaten, I personally cannot treat them. Now, I'm not going to say to them, "Go to prison," because I just stated to you that anything two consenting adults do is OK. But I will use a white lie. I will look at my calendar and say, "I'm so booked up, I'm going to give you the name of a colleague." I couldn't work with S/M. I'm not going to go to a psychiatrist to find out why.

[Q] Playboy: Your view of S/M seems rather extreme. S/M can actually be milder than Saturday-morning cartoons. Most people don't go for blood. But you have dealt with milder versions of S/M on your radio show, haven't you?

[A] Dr. Ruth: A girl told me on the air, "My boyfriend and I are getting into whips and chains." Immediately, I asked, "With contraception?" That made my friends in the control room laugh. But I was serious! You can start pretending with whips and chains and end up having a real baby or an abortion. If I can help prevent just one unwanted pregnancy by persuading someone to use contraception, then all the talking will have been worth while.

[Q] Playboy: And if someone just happens to have good sex along the way?

[A] Dr. Ruth: Ter-r-r-rific.

[Q] Playboy: What's your prescription if sex is just routine--let's say, for a couple with kids who have been married some years?

[A] Dr. Ruth: I suggest that parents pick up a baby sitter and go to a motel. Hopefully a motel with a water bed and some sexually explicit movies, if that is what they like.

[Q] Playboy: You don't think that Debbie Does Dallas is bad for the moral fabric?

[A] Dr. Ruth: If a couple want to watch that, and afterward get sexually aroused--do it. If they have a good sexual episode, that's great. I do suggest to many of my clients, "Go and r-r-rent!" I tell them, "Don't buy those movies, because after you see them five times, you don't want to see them any more. R-r-rent them!"

[Q] Playboy: We assume that you've seen sexually explicit movies. What was your reaction to your first X-rated movie?

[A] Dr. Ruth: I blushed. I looked around to see if anybody else sees what I am seeing. And there is no question that even though I blushed, even though I was embarrassed, even though I thought, What is a good girl like me doing in a place like this? I clearly remember thinking that people are all idiots if they say that only men get aroused by sexually explicit movies. Women do, too. Period.

[Q] Playboy: In your most recent book, you say that one of the dangers of viewing pornography is that it may lead to false expectations.

[A] Dr. Ruth: By pornography, I mean sadomasochism and sex with children.

[Q] Playboy: The critics of porn define it as any sexually explicit material. Is there a danger to viewing sexually explicit films?

[A] Dr. Ruth: People have to realize that females are less likely to cooperate in real life than the way the actresses behave in films. Real women and men have to please each other, and that takes time and understanding. Some men think that because they get this fantastic erection, the women are supposed to be automatically aroused. It doesn't work that way.

[Q] Playboy: What do you say to Women Against Pornography--who say sexually explicit material degrades women?

[A] Dr. Ruth: I'm not excited by all this Women Against Pornography. I think if a woman is permitted to be sexually aroused by some of these things, fine. I say that such movies can enrich people's lives--both men and women.

[Q] Playboy: If you were asked to testify in front of the Meese Commission on Pornography, what would you say about that kind of movie?

[A] Dr. Ruth: I would say, "Don't advertise with big naked pictures outside the movie-house, because there are children passing by." There are people from different moral, ethical and religious backgrounds, and you might offend them. But if a couple want to see a sexually explicit movie, let them see it. I want them to go together, to hold each other when they watch. I don't want them going in raincoats.

[Q] Playboy: Since it hits close to home, we may as well ask you what you think of the recent banning of Congressional funds for the Braille edition of Playboy.

[A] Dr. Ruth: That's outrageous. That's outrageous. [Hits table] Let me tell you what I would like to do. I'm trying to get money to have closed captions for the hearing-impaired on my cable-TV show. I would like to be the first one who has that on a show about sex. Why should the handicapped be deprived, in either case? Talk to Heifer. Maybe we can do that together.

[Q] Playboy: We'll talk to Hef. But back to the interview. Any more suggestions on how our readers can spice up their sex lives?

[A] Dr. Ruth: I certainly do suggest not having sex at a regular time, such and such a date, such and such a day of the week, after the Johnny Carson monolog. I say vary it. I suggest to people to have sex in the morning sometimes. It is not true that women are not sexually aroused in the morning. It is just that society has told women to have their hair combed, their faces made up ... just so, before they have sex. That's nonsense. I say go to different places, not just in bed. I say to married people, "Go to lover's lane." It is very exciting to think that all of these cars have people in them making out.

[Q] Playboy: Are there inappropriate places?

[A] Dr. Ruth: Yes. I think that any public place is inappropriate. I don't say to somebody, "Go to Bloomingdale's, and on the escalator, go behind her and stick it in." But in secluded places, absolutely. Go into the dunes at a secluded beach.

[Q] Playboy: With all the practical advice you give on sex, perhaps we should ask, Does Dr. Ruth have a test bedroom of her own?

[A] Dr. Ruth: I do not have a test bedroom. One night, Johnny Carson said in the monolog, he wonders where Fred West-heimer goes when his wife has a headache. I would say in all earnest that talking and teaching about sexuality is certainly conducive to a better sex life and not the contrary. Talking about sex has even helped my skiing. It helps me loosen up. But let's face it, if I can't keep a sexual interest alive, then I should get out of this business. So don't ask what positions I am using. I don't speak about myself.

[Q] Playboy: We'll come back to that, but other than what you've already ruled out, what do you find inappropriate in bed?

[A] Dr. Ruth: Well, it is certainly inappropriate for a man to keep asking, "Are you coming?" unless that particular woman gets very sexually aroused by that. Insisting or asking that question will make sure the woman will not be able to have an orgasm.

[Q] Playboy: If he can't tell whether or not she's satisfied, what do you suggest?

[A] Dr. Ruth: Later on, afterward, he can ask. If she doesn't volunteer the information, I want him to ask. Then I want him to use the afterplay to satisfy her manually, orally--or with his big toe. [Giggles] Here is a new position for you!

[Q] Playboy: Judging by the Advisor mail, it's not new to Playboy readers, Dr. Ruth.

[A] Dr. Ruth: Yes, the big toe touching the clitoris might be ver-r-y enjoyable!

[Q] Playboy:The Joy of Sex has more than 200 pages on sex but only a few paragraphs on oral sex. Masters and Johnson wrote two books without mentioning it. Your book gives it one chapter. Why do you think the traditional authorities have so little to say on the topic, and what does Dr. Ruth say?

[A] Dr. Ruth: There is no question in my mind that more younger people than older people are engaging in oral sex. I mention it in First Love, my book of advice for teenagers. I tell girls to experiment, to learn how to perform fellatio by practicing on a banana or a lollipop or a Popsicle. Some men have an aversion to the taste of a woman's vagina. Last night on the show, I came up with a new suggestion. Maybe it's not bad. I told him to just kiss the outer portion, above the clitoris.

[Q] Playboy: Well, we've had to give advice along those lines, and we've suggested to men that they put a cough drop in their mouth to create a taste and a sensation the woman doesn't expect. We've suggested a drop of Binaca on the tongue.

[A] Dr. Ruth: A spr-r-ritz? I love it! I love it! [Claps her hands in delight]

[Q] Playboy: Let's talk seriously about the sexual topic that has become a national obsession--AIDS. What's your current advice to gays who call you about that disease?

[A] Dr. Ruth: I treat homosexuals with the same respect that I treat heterosexual couples with. I am very serious in saying theses days, it has nothing to do with morality. I'd say to any homosexual who crossed my path, or on the phone, "Until we find a cure for AIDS, if you don't have one partner you can trust, don't cruise. Unless you are sure that there are no other sexual encounters, masturbate. Until they find a cure, casual, promiscuous sex is dangerous."

[Q] Playboy: Has homosexual behavior changed?

[A] Dr. Ruth: I think that there are more and more homosexuals who are remaining with one partner, where they would have cruised before. I tell them to keep a black book for the future. You meet Mr. X, you say, "That guy is the first one I'm going to call as soon as we have a cure for AIDS." I think Rock Hudson did a courageous thing by saying, "Let the world know I have AIDS." He knew that there would be all kinds of speculation. I am not interested in whether or not Rock Hudson was homosexual. I admired his courage. He helped other people say, "Hey, hold it. Maybe we ought to wait."

[Q] Playboy: Should Rock Hudson have continued to work once he knew he was afflicted with AIDS?

[A] Dr. Ruth: Yes. My personal opinion, and I'm going to get into trouble. I feel sad for all of the thousands of women who fantasized about being in his arms, who now have to realize that he never really cared about them. I heard one older woman say, "I used to dream about him; too bad that he really didn't like erotic relations with women." But I do believe he should not have kissed anybody. If he knew he had a disease that was communicable, he should not have kissed. He should have found some excuses. He should have let a stunt man do the kissing. I'm sure that there are plenty of stunt men willing to kiss those gorgeous women. And tell the stunt man [waggles a finger], if he does more than kissing, he should use a condom!

[Q] Playboy: Should a child who contracted AIDS be allowed to attend school?

[A] Dr. Ruth: I am not a medical doctor. If a doctor told me there was a reason for that kid not to go to school, I would say fine. But now, I say he can go.

[Q] Playboy: How should heterosexual men and women react to AIDS?

[A] Dr. Ruth: Again, I am not a medical doctor, so I cannot comment on specifics. But good sex is good sex. Be discriminating. Be careful. It is absolutely clear now that this is such an epidemic, nobody can call it just a homosexual problem. It is threatening to I.V. drug users, to people who come into contact with infected blood and, ultimately, to heterosexuals. We cannot isolate the gays. This affects us all.

[Q] Playboy: What do you say about the people who would quarantine gays, prostitutes and AIDS victims?

[A] Dr. Ruth: Coming from Nazi Germany and having survived Hitler and the concentration camps, I am very worried when I hear the word quarantine. Because the next thing they might decide is everyone 4'7" should be quarantined.

[Q] Playboy: AIDS isn't the only source of sexual fear around. What do you tell heterosexuals who are afraid of herpes and other sexually transmitted diseases?

[A] Dr. Ruth: The dangers of sex must not become a fixation. After all, we face germs and the possibility of illness every day in the street. In return for all of our pleasures in life, it isn't too much to behave sensibly. The principle to follow in sex is to do anything pleasurable if there is no harm in it and both partners accept it. But we live in a world of reality, and both men and women should avoid activities plainly marked Danger.

[Q] Playboy: Even before the AIDS hysteria, Time ran a cover story on the herpes fear, claiming that it had stopped the sexual revolution in its tracks. Do you agree?

[A] Dr. Ruth: No, I don't believe in that. I don't believe that what we gained in terms of knowledge, in terms of attitude, is going to disappear. The woman who now feels the right to tell her lover how to stimulate her clitoris just so in order to have an orgasm is not going to give up that right. These gains are going to stay.

[Q] Playboy:Time argued, with its tongue only a bit in its cheek, that the one-night stand was the only significant product of the sexual revolution. What do you say?

[A] Dr. Ruth: Nonsense. Nonsense. Only a very small number of people were engaged in one-night stands. It just hit the headlines, because it made good copy, and everybody bought the papers, including me. I see a story about one-night stands, and who is the first one to buy it? Me. Not in order to do it but to learn about it.

[Q] Playboy: What are the most common problems you treat in private practice?

[A] Dr. Ruth: I see quite a number of women who cannot reach orgasm. I see older men with erectile difficulties. I also see quite a number of men in their 30s who have never had a sexual experience and are scared.

[Q] Playboy: How do you advise men who are afraid to meet girls?

[A] Dr. Ruth: I tell them to open their eyes. I got a phone call from a student recently. He did not know how to meet girls. He was a computer student. I told him that when class began, he should find the most attractive girl there, to make sure he got the computer next to her. I said, "You know how to get your computer to talk to her computer, don't you?"

[Q] Playboy: What about the guys who have a fear of computers?

[A] Dr. Ruth: I tell them to go to Bloomingdale's. To pretend they are shopping for their sister. To find a girl and ask her opinion on a certain sweater as a gift.

[Q] Playboy: You've also become a hit on the lecture circuit. What do you talk about?

[A] Dr. Ruth: I do a combination of telling them about the radio and television show. I talk very seriously about some of the research findings of Masters and Johnson, of Helen Singer Kaplan. I give examples from my private practice of some of the things happening out there. I talk about the need for a sexually literate society.

[Q] Playboy: What is sexual literacy?

[A] Dr. Ruth: Sexual literacy is really very comparable to reading, writing and arithmetic. It is a basic knowledge and understanding of one's own sexuality and human sexuality in general.

[Q] Playboy: Can you give us an example of a sexually literate person?

[A] Dr. Ruth: A sexually literate mother is a mother who knows that there are things called nocturnal emissions. She doesn't scream at her son when he has spots on his sheets and stickiness in his pajamas. Sexual literacy is talking to a girl about menstruation before she menstruates, so that she doesn't get scared about what is happening to her body when it happens. We know that if a girl at camp has a nosebleed, she goes to the nurse. But if she bleeds from down there, where she doesn't expect any blood, she gets really scared. Something horrible is going to happen.

[Q] Playboy: What's a sexually literate father?

[A] Dr. Ruth: Well, a sexually literate father is one who knows that when he holds his daughter at a certain age on his lap and watches television with her, if a sexy commercial appears on TV or a sexy thought occurs to him, he might have an erectile feeling. It doesn't have to be a whole erection, it can be just an erectile feeling. He doesn't have to be scared about it and push her away. This happens very often and he may not allow himself to touch her for the next ten years.

[Q] Playboy: Given the child-abuse scare, isn't it natural for a man these days to be selfconscious about his response?

[A] Dr. Ruth: No, I'm saying that that is a natural reaction to something that he thinks or sees, and not simply because his daughter is sitting on his lap. And because of the child-abuse scare, I am very concerned that fathers and grandfathers will not understand that their having that kind of erection is not related to their daughter. Let's stop with this scare. Let's tell people that there are some sick people out there, and they should take care.

[Q] Playboy: Our guess is that you didn't hear about this situation from the man.

[A] Dr. Ruth: True.

[Q] Playboy: And how did you explain to the daughter why her father had suddenly stopped showing her affection?

[A] Dr. Ruth: I will tell you what I told the girl. I said, "Do not be angry at your father. He reacted to the best of his knowledge, which meant he avoided touch. He was sexually illiterate. He did not have the chance to talk to me. He could have moved you to one knee. He could have said, 'Just a moment; you're hurting me.' "

[Q] Playboy: When is such a reaction not normal?

[A] Dr. Ruth: I would not want the man to take a bubble bath with his three-year-old daughter and have her touch him to produce an erection. That is intentional.

[Q] Playboy: What do you think of Ann Lander's famous survey of her women readers in which she found that most women would rather be hugged than perform the sexual act?

[A] Dr. Ruth: Someone called me and asked what I thought of that survey. I said it was dangerous. The question was badly phrased. It didn't say, "Do you sometimes--once a week, once a month, once every other week--want to be held rather than do the act?" Now, the 90,000 people who answered prove only one thing: that Ann Landers is read by 90,000 people. The survey is dangerous, because it can get us back into the Victorian age. You remember what the Victorian mother told her daughter on the night of the wedding? "Lie back and think of England. There's nothing in the sexual encounter forou have to survive it, because you need a husband to support you."

[Q] Playboy: So you felt that the survey was misleading. Did you tell the caller that?

[A] Dr. Ruth: Yes, and you know what happened? The headline in the paper the next day read, "Dr. Ruth: Ann Landers Dangerous." I called Ann Landers' office and said, "I never said Ann Landers was dangerous. That would be like saying apple pie and motherhood are dangerous. The service she provides to readers is wonderful. This survey is dangerous." Later, I went to Paris. I picked up a copy of Paris Match, which ran a story headlined, "American women are Frigid." It cited the Ann Landers survey.

[Q] Playboy: Speaking of sex surveys, Playboy did one a couple of years ago that found that the sexual revolution had a greater effect, in terms of liberation, on married sex than on single sex.

[A] Dr. Ruth: Don't say married sex. Say relationship sex.

[Q] Playboy: If you insist. But how do you feel about sex that's not part of a serious relationship--casual sex?

[A] Dr. Ruth: I say that sometimes it might be absolutely delicious. For example, Burt Reynolds was on my show. He told me a story about meeting a woman in an airport before he was famous and how he and she looked at each other and decided on the spot to miss their plane and spend the time with each other--complete strangers. I saw a spark in his eye when he remembered that one night. He wondered if that woman ever watched his movies or watches him on TV. I would say that a one-night stand, properly executed--forget about the ones you do under the influence of alcohol--can provide an erotic experience that will nourish the person for a long time. But in my experience, from the stories I hear, most one-night stands happen from drunkenness. The next morning, the person can't remember how he got there or what they did. [Gestures emphatically] And if you can't remember it, that is not good sex.

[Q] Playboy: We agree. We say, "If you're too drunk to drive, don't park."

[A] Dr. Ruth: I like that!

[Q] Playboy: But we have more respect than you do for the urgency of teenage lust. You advise virgins to wait--

[A] Dr. Ruth: You want to know something very inter-r-esting? I went to a cemetery in Switzerland last summer, and on some of the very old tombstones it said, here lies so-and-so, Virgin. And I wondered, How did they know? I discovered that in the Old Testament, you were considered a virgin until you were 12'1/2. When I tell a virgin to wait, I do so only if she calls me and tells me she is worried. Then I tell her, "Don't give in to pressure." I think it is lucky for us all that there is less of a price attached to virginity these days.

[Q] Playboy: How did Dr. Ruth lose her virginity?

[A] Dr. Ruth: [Beams] I knew that someplace in this interview was going to be buried this question. But I do remember. It was a fantastic experience! In a haystack. In Israel. [She pauses, weighs her words] Oh, boy, let's give it to them already. It happened under a very clear, beautiful Israeli sky with a lot of stars, with stars that shine like that only in that country. With a guy I was ver-r-y much in love with.

[Q] Playboy: A passable evening.

[A] Dr. Ruth: And I am still friends with the guy. I remember that haystack. And you can tell your readers that when I told you about it, I giggled. [Giggles]

[Q] Playboy: You've said that you later got pregnant with your daughter, Miriam, and only then legalized the affair by getting married. How could the queen of contraception fall pregnant?

[A] Dr. Ruth: How? At the time, I did not know that I was the queen of contraception. I was living with the father, and I thought this was the man I was going to stay with. I wanted the child. Maybe if I had known I would someday be talking about contraception from morning to night, I would have legalized the affair fir-r-st!

[Q] Playboy: OK, straight from the hip: Are you in favor of premarital sex?

[A] Dr. Ruth: Never would I say that. I would say that anybody who wants to remain a virgin--when I say virgin I mean boys and girls, young men, young women, older women--anybody who wants to remain a virgin until the night of the wedding should stick to it. But it doesn't matter why people want to remain virgins. For whatever reason. But! Anybody who's engaged in premarital sex has an obligation to use what?

[Q] Playboy: Uh. The Chinese basket trick? No? OK, contraceptives?

[A] Dr. Ruth: R-r-ight!

[Q] Playboy: What are your opinions on extramarital sex? Cosmopolitan has run articles that tell women how an affair can improve their marriage. Do you agree?

[A] Dr. Ruth: That's a catastrophe. But who is the first one to buy that paper? Me. Because I say to myself, My gosh, they're writing something I don't know. Maybe there is something that I don't know.

[Q] Playboy: So you condemn adultery?

[A] Dr. Ruth: I do. I do. Because it is one of the Ten Commandments. I do not believe in open marriages. I don't think it works. Is it inherent in human nature to be loyal and sexually attractive and sexually interested in the same partner for a lifetime? It is a question mark. I do not doubt that there is a desire to experiment and to make your sex life more varied, but that's a different story.

[Q] Playboy: We're listening.

[A] Dr. Ruth: If you have an affair, you have to take the risk of bringing home sexually transmitted disease. At the same time, I also say, if something does happen, you are at a convention or someplace and you do have sex with somebody else, keep your mouth shut. I do not believe in the American ethic of telling all that has happened--except in the case of a sexually transmitted disease. You have to recongnize that there's lust. I say to somebody, "If you can have a spar-r-rkling affair safely, nobody will ever find out, do it. Have fun. At the same time, do know all of these other things that might happen and take precautions." I think it's really common sense. If one of you is expecting a phone call, do it in that person's hotel room. I feel if you have an affair ... look, I'm not a moralist. I wouldn't be able to do a program like I do and talk about sex all day long if I would be saying no. But let's suppose it does happen. Somebody has an affair. I do not believe you should have to tell your partner and ask her forgiveness. You only have to tell your partner if you're getting caught. Because nobody's going to forget. People forgive, but not forget.

[Q] Playboy: You seem to have a European attitude toward fooling around: You disapprove of it officially but tolerate it unofficially, as long as it's done discreetly.

[A] Dr. Ruth: Do you think it is European? Perhaps that explains why so many Americans listen to what I say. Or do you think they agree with it?

[Q] Playboy: Honesty has been one of the principles of America's sexual revolution. Do you think we carry it too far?

[A] Dr. Ruth: Yes.

[Q] Playboy: Do you think a lover should tell the details of his or her past?

[A] Dr. Ruth: For some crazy reason now, people have the idea that they must tell each other everything, every detail of their past, every thought in their heads. This is not good sense. It isn't sensitive about the other person's feelings. Your lover doesn't want to know some things you know about yourself. And if you tell everybody everything, you will be sorry. You must realize that every person has private territory.

[Q] Playboy: Our advice might be to treat sex like ethnic dishes: Enjoy the flavor, but don't insist on knowing what went into it.

[A] Dr. Ruth: I like that! Can I use it?

[Q] Playboy: Sure, but the logic of your position leads to the conclusion that if people followed your advice and talked less about their sex lives, you would be out of a job.

[A] Dr. Ruth: No, because my callers are anonymous. I never ask last names. And by the time your voice goes over the radio, no one can recognize you. So we have a kind of privacy. The radio show has created a community of listeners, people with the same interests. Sometimes they call up to give one another advice.

[Q] Playboy: You say lovers shouldn't share the details of their sexual pasts; what about their sexual fantasies?

[A] Dr. Ruth: Unless you are sure that that fantasy will be eagerly accepted by your partner, keep your mouth shut. It's a little bit like your affairs. At the first fight, it will be thrown at that other person's head that he fantasized about the centerfold in playboy while he made love to her. Some people get off on spinning fantasies, but let me say, they should spin fantasies that will not offend or upset the other person.

[Q] Playboy: What if someone gets turned on by hearing the details of past love affairs?

[A] Dr. Ruth: She should make up stories. Don't give the real details.

[Q] Playboy: You've mentioned the gains of the sexual revolution; where do you think it has failed?

[A] Dr. Ruth: It ought to have produced a sexually literate society, but it didn't. I don't think the sexual revolution did enough to get the message out about the need for and importance of contraception. I come back to you with a question. We have 1,500,000 teenagers pregnant who don't want to be pregnant. That's why I always ask, "Are you using contraceptives?" I know I sound like a broken record, but until you answer that, you are not having good sex, responsible sex.

[Q] Playboy: There are some people--the Moral Majority, Phyllis Schlafly, Jerry Falwell--who believe that the sexual revolution only gave us license. The people who bomb Planned Parenthood centers, who are against sex education in the schools, believe that information about sex leads to sex. How do you answer them?

[A] Dr. Ruth: I don't agree. People have always been sexually active. Maybe not as many at an early age, because we have more facilities; people are going to coed colleges. But I do believe that there is more knowledge. People will make up their own minds. They will not succumb to pressure. The ones who are sexually active would be sexually active with or without this knowledge. If you are against the 1,500,000 unwanted pregnancies, you have to be in favor of contraceptives. And yet, these same people won't allow condom ads on TV. We are a nation of hypocrites!

[Q] Playboy: Do you think Jerry Falwell has good sex?

[A] Dr. Ruth: If Jerry Falwell has good sex or not, I don't know. Let me put it another way: When I hear of a woman screeching, being unhappy, being miserable, I don't want people right away to say, "Aha! She didn't get laid. All she needs is a good lay." I would be very careful about saying that those people who are against sex education do not have good sex. Maybe they have excellent sex, but it fits into their political views to be against sex education.

But if Jerry Falwell wants to meet with me, I would be willing--pr-r-ivately--to discuss his sex life.

[Q] Playboy: Have there been other failures of the sexual revolution? Are there pitfalls?

[A] Dr. Ruth: There are pitfalls. If it is misused--if people start to think that to be sexually liberated must mean group sex, it must mean all kinds of touchy-feely seminars--then, yes, it does have pitfalls. If it means that the mother is supposed to come home with an encyclopedia of sexual knowledge and force that on her son or daughter when that child is not ready or not interested, then it has certain pitfalls.

[Q] Playboy: Are you saying permission is OK, as long as it doesn't become pressure?

[A] Dr. Ruth: Exactly.

[Q] Playboy: Can you give us an example of harmful pressure?

[A] Dr. Ruth: All this emphasis on the G spot. The people who wrote about it are very angry with me, because I haven't come out and endorsed the G spot. I see women in my private practice saying their husbands are lousy lovers because they can't find the G spot. They complain they are not normal. They have been trying to find it for two and a half months. So let me be the old-fashioned one. Surely, there would be some institution, some hospital, some university that would say, "We have done a study; the G spot exists."

[Q] Playboy: Can you give us another example?

[A] Dr. Ruth: The other night, a woman called in and said her husband wanted to try a threesome. She said, "I am happily married. We have three children, 11 years married, and my husband would like a threesome." My first question was, "What would he like? Another woman or another man?" I knew the answer to that. But I purposely asked that because I wanted to hear from her. She said, "I'm not sure." So I said that they should try a plastic doll. There are some inflatable dolls. Go out and buy one. It's a little bit of a joke, but it is also a way of first saving face. She can buy the doll, blow it up. The doll has a vagina. The doll has breasts. And she can say, "Look, honey, I bought you another woman." Maybe that would bring about good laughter and a good sexual experience. Maybe he is going to get the message that she really isn't interested.

[Q] Playboy: Our advice would have been to go for it, that the reality might not live up to either the fantasy or her fear. We'd have said, "Try it if you feel secure about the relationship and a satisfy your curiosity. Curiosity is important to a growing sexual relationship, but satisfy it only if you forgive yourself ahead of time. At most, you may end up feeling silly or ridiculous."

[A] Dr. Ruth: I don't agree. I don't think people will feel silly or ridiculous. I think they are going to feel very angry at the partner for subjecting them to a situation like that. I don't think that people will walk away and say, "Poof, poof, that was nothing."

[Q] Playboy: Then perhaps we need anger education, not sex education. Are you against experimentation?

[A] Dr. Ruth: No. There comes in my being old-fashioned and square and maybe a Jewish mother, because if a couple comes in and the husband wants to try a position and the wife doesn't, I say, "What is the big deal? Try it once, and if you don't like it, then you say no the next time." But a third person is not the same as a position.

[Q] Playboy: You seem to be saying that all sex is negotiation. Isn't that what you do in your counseling?

[A] Dr. Ruth: Yes. I tell couples, "I can't do sex therapy if the two of you are still angry at each other."

[Q] Playboy: What sex advice did you give your children?

[A] Dr. Ruth: I told Miriam where babies come from when she was five. Not with explicitness. I realized then that there was so much to learn. My philosophy is that parents should stay out of their adolescents' sex life. It's not their business. And adolescents should stay out of the parents' sex life. What I mean by staying out is, I don't want a mother to ask her son, "Did you touch the girl's breasts?" when he comes home. Or "Are you sexually satisfied?" I would never ask my children a personal question, ever. But I was very fortunate. They are very open. We have had good discussions.

[Q] Playboy: You have no trouble talking to teenagers on the radio. Is it more difficult with your own children, face to face?

[A] Dr. Ruth: When we talk about sex, it is very difficult. You just wait until you become a parent. It is very difficult for parents of adolescents not to be curious, because their own sexuality, their own sexual force, is waning. The young people's is just at its height, and very strong, and I think there are a lot of problems there.

[Q] Playboy: What do you think of the quality of sex education in schools?

[A] Dr. Ruth: Terrible. They don't put enough money into training teachers. There was a cartoon in The New Yorker that showed a fifth-grade teacher walking into a classroom, her hair tightly pulled back. She said, "Today I have been mandated by the Board of Education to talk about the birds and the bees and other filthy things." And that teacher, don't let her touch my child! Parents have to have a voice in what their children learn.

[Q] Playboy: You began your career as a teacher, didn't you?

[A] Dr. Ruth: Yes. I was an associate professor at Brooklyn College. Every day, I would drive out in my little Toyota. I loved that car, because my hands could reach the steering wheel and my feet the pedals at the same time. But I was teaching a course in how to teach sex education in high schools, and I was fired. I went to arbitration. I had two children to support. I lost the arbitration. I was told that it was a political football, that they couldn't let me win, because then it would open the floodgates for a lot of other cases of people who were unjustly let go. But a few weeks after I was fired, WYNY offered me 15 minutes of radio air time on Sunday night.

[Q] Playboy: And the rest is history.

[A] Dr. Ruth: If I had won my arbitration, I would now be a little full professor at Brooklyn College. Those people did me the biggest favor. I now have the whole world as my classroom. [Laughs] But only in New York could something like this happen, what happened to me. I drink to Mayor Koch's health.

[Q] Playboy: Didn't you recently appear with him in public?

[A] Dr. Ruth: Yes. I was invited to a dinner where Mayor Koch took on journalists. There was a skit. The mayor got eaten by this huge plant. I came out and performed the "Westheimer maneuver." A deep black voice said, "More! More!" so I kept tickling the plant, and I guess it had an orgasm and spit out the mayor. I love it!

[Q] Playboy: With everything you've lent your name to--cassettes, radio and TV broadcasts, a game--you've become a business unto yourself. What's next, a Dr. Ruth float in the Thanksgiving parade?

[A] Dr. Ruth: No. I would not allow it. And I won't allow bookstores to put up cardboard Dr. Ruths to promote a book.

[Q] Playboy: Will there be a Dr. Ruth movie?

[A] Dr. Ruth: Someone has approached me. I said no. I did not want to sit down and answer questions, though I am talking here to you. I did not want to be psychoanalyzed. It hit me wrong. I mean, somebody else is going to play me?

[Q] Playboy: Whom would you cast in your movie? Whom do you find sexy?

[A] Dr. Ruth: Burt Reynolds. He's such a good kisser. Gérard Depardieu. He's a good hugger. Zubin Mehta. When he conducts, I feel he is making love to the orchestra. Look, I'm going to tell you something per-r-rsonal, and you have to publish it.

[Q] Playboy: Well....

[A] Dr. Ruth: I want your wife to realize that I'm a married woman and I have no intentions on you, but I want you to know something. You are a very sexy man.

[Q] Playboy: Gee, thanks. We bet you say that to all your interviewers.

[A] Dr. Ruth: It's called co-opting. [Giggles] Now, where were we?

[Q] Playboy: Let's talk about some of the sexual myths we both encounter over and over. What are they?

[A] Dr. Ruth: The most dangerous myths are about contraception. If you don't have an orgasm, you are not going to get pregnant. If you douche with a soft drink, you won't get pregnant. If you do it standing up, you won't get pregnant. You can't get pregnant the first time you have sex. If you pull out, you won't get pregnant.

[Q] Playboy: Germaine Greer wrote a book on the history of fertility. She suggests that coitus interruptus--pulling out--is a good method. Do you believe her?

[A] Dr. Ruth: It is a fantastic book, an intellectual history of fertility. Then she says, on page whatever, that coitus interruptus has been practiced across the world for many centuries. That is true. Then she says it is a perfect method of contraception. She says there are no spermatozoa in the pre-ejaculatory fluid. She is wrong, and I am worried. I am worried that people are going to say, "Look at Germaine Greer. She is a famous intellectual, yet she says, 'Pull out.'" All it takes is one sperm.

[Q] Playboy: One very fast sperm. Any other myths?

[A] Dr. Ruth: Penis size. I don't know why in our society it is such a tremendous concern. Maybe when little boys see their fathers in the shower, they see a big penis and they think, I will never have that. One thing I do suggest is, I tell a man to have an erection and to stand in front of a full-length mirror, because maybe the perspective is different then from when he looks down. I suggested that once on television, and my floor manager, Dean, fell to the floor laughing. But there are incredible myths about penises, believed by women, not just by men. You know the other myths: Can you tell the size of a penis by the nose, by the thumb, by the big toe?

[Q] Playboy: Dr. Ruth, about your fixation on big toes.... Oh, never mind. In First Love, you suggest that women keep a fantasy journal in which they write about being sought by men who will "swim mountains and climb rivers" for them. Doesn't that create false expectations?

[A] Dr. Ruth: Climb rivers and swim mountains. What's wrong with that?

[Q] Playboy: Well, to be practical about it, how can a guy climb rivers and swim mountains and still get an erection? Isn't that performance pressure epitomized?

[A] Dr. Ruth: Have the erection fir-r-rst!

[Q] Playboy: Have you ever tried to run with an erection?

[A] Dr. Ruth: Seriously, I understand what you mean. I think fantasy is important and needed, but one has to learn what is fantasy and what is reality. As long as a woman knows that dreaming about Prince Charming coming on the white horse is only for arousal, she can't be unhappy that it didn't really happen.

[Q] Playboy: Are men better at fantasy than women?

[A] Dr. Ruth: I don't think that men have inherently better fantasies than women. I think it's just education. Women don't permit themselves to have fantasies, to think about another man making love to them. We were constrained growing up. We think of ourselves as a mother, a wife, not a mistress. I think men have been permitted to let their eyes wander--to look at women, to let their behinds arouse them. Women have not been permitted to do that. Women have been sitting there with their eyes closed, like this.

[Q] Playboy: Why do many women have trouble reaching orgasm?

[A] Dr. Ruth: Some women have an investment in not letting go, in not losing consciousness even for that split second. There are women who are so scared of having that feeling of powerlessness. In general, I think most women are capable of having an orgasm--not during intercourse, necessarily, but having an orgasm in response to proper stimulation, either by themselves or by a partner. So it's about both things. One is the woman's psychological makeup, the other is some technique of stimulation. I tell people to read Playboy, Nancy Friday's books--Men in Love, My Secret Garden, Forbidden Flowers. I say use explicit material to spin off your own fantasies. I do believe that for some people, this is precious and necessary.

[Q] Playboy: In your book, you suggest that a woman light a candle, put on soft music, get into a tub, maybe even with a glass of wine, and spend an hour or two pleasuring herself. Is that accurate?

[A] Dr. Ruth: That is right. First to teach herself how to have an orgasm in order to teach him.

[Q] Playboy: Doesn't that just link romance to masturbation? For guys, masturbation is a lot simpler: It teaches them eye/hand coordination; it gets their hearts started in the morning.

[A] Dr. Ruth: You're being realistic. I'm talking about fantasy. I tell you why fantasy is important to a woman: If she doesn't fill her head with fantasies, then she is going to be a spectator. Then she is going to be watching herself with anticipatory anxiety, saying, "I am never going to come, never going to come." Then you can be sure that she is not going to come. The reason that I am suggesting candles and music is to put her mind on something else. So I tell women, "Think about Burt Reynolds. Think about Prince Charming."

[Q] Playboy: In your books, you describe orgasm as a reflex, something akin to a sneeze. We place more value on it than that. No one ever asks a person who sneezes, "Did the earth move for you?"

[A] Dr. Ruth: I like that!

[Q] Playboy: But you also say orgasms should not be a "salary." What do you mean?

[A] Dr. Ruth: Sometimes, people just work toward the orgasm. They don't enjoy the foreplay. They don't enjoy the plateau. I say, "Enjoy the build-up. Don't just work for an orgasm." But sometimes I see women who are educated, who are in business, who are in the arts, who do not have orgasms. And that's in 1985, with all of the literature available.

[Q] Playboy: What do you say when two partners have unequal levels of desire?

[A] Dr. Ruth: I say, "Do you two always have the same appetite? Or do you sometimes want a steak and you just want an egg-salad sandwich?" It is nice if they turn each other on, and a simultaneous sexual experience is wonderful, but where is it written that it has to be like that? Why can't he satisfy her without having an erection, without feeling sexually aroused? And the same for her. The main thing is not to be frustrated. If the man wants sex and she doesn't, she should just pleasure him.

[Q] Playboy: Have you ever met a man who could just passively receive pleasure?

[A] Dr. Ruth: It's very difficult for an American male to lie back passively and be stroked and pleasured to orgasm, but I certainly do advise it. Men sometimes get very scared when their nipples get erect. They think that something is wrong, that they are homosexual. For an American male who has been trained to constantly be the assertive one, it is very difficult to lie back, but that is what I do teach.

[Q] Playboy: What do you say to a man who reaches orgasm before his partner?

[A] Dr. Ruth: Use afterplay. Most people don't use the afterplay, because they don't know that the sexual-arousal curve for women is slower. I say, "Use afterplay." The woman complains that he falls asleep; that is just a bad habit. He can sit up and be awake or pinch himself or take a needle into bed and prick himself--not her but himself. The afterplay, properly executed, is going to provide a prelude to the next foreplay, even if that is a week later.

[Q] Playboy: Earlier, you said you don't speak about yourself, but that's not fair. "You agreed to the interview, and that means personal background.

[A] Dr. Ruth: So ask! [Huge grin]

[Q] Playboy: You seem to be the product of several societies. You were a German for the first ten years of your life, a Swiss until you were 16, an Israeli until you were 21, a Frenchwoman for the next five, and then an American. What nationality were you when you learned about sex?

[A] Dr. Ruth: I remember that I must have learned about sex before the age often. I was an only child. My parents lived in Frankfurt am Main. I remember that I was always very short, that I climbed on a chair. I knew where the key to the book cabinet was, and in that cabinet was a book on sex. That I do remember. I don't remember which book it was. It must have been one my parents liked. This was 1938, so perhaps it was Van De Velde's Marriage Art.

[Q] Playboy: What is your next memory?

[A] Dr. Ruth: That very same year, all of the Jewish men in Frankfurt am Main were rounded up and put into concentration camps. There was a conference that Roosevelt and other people attended, to see if they could save German Jewry. Out of that conference came the cry "Let's at least save the children." So 300 children were taken by England, 300 by France; the remaining ones went to Switzerland. You had to either be an orphan or have one parent in a concentration camp. By chance, there must have been space on that list. I don't know how I got on that list. I was sent to Switzerland. I didn't want to go. I was home with my mother and my grandmother, also my mother's parents. Everybody loved me, and I didn't want to go on a trip like that. But they said I had to go in order to get my father out of the concentration camp.

[Q] Playboy: What was the departure like?

[A] Dr. Ruth: It was a rainy Monday morning. We thought we could see our parents within six months, because that's what we were told. We were told our parents would have time to get their papers in order, to emigrate to Palestine, the United States, any country that would take them. Then the war broke out in 1939, and almost all of the 100 children who left on that train together became orphans. The last time I saw my mother and my grandmother was at the railroad station. I still have troubles at railroad stations. You know how much I travel. I don't like to see people separated. It makes me sad.... Not sad to the point that I can't talk about orgasms. [Giggles]

[Q] Playboy: What was the orphanage like?

[A] Dr. Ruth: There was a dorm for boys and a dorm for girls. I was also very interested in boys, very early. You could go out on the food in the snow and knock on the boys' window, which of course I did. The window broke, someone snitched on me, and one of the directresses took a paddle to my behind. I do remember that it was I who told many of the other girls about menstrution. That I do remember. Why? I don't know. Maybe it was just because I took it upon myself to be a big leader.

[Q] Playboy: Did you have a boyfriend?

[A] Dr. Ruth: Thank God I had a boyfriend there. He helped me a great deal. He made life easier. First of all, he sneaked into my bed. It was just hugging and kissing, but it was very nice. By that time, I was 13. I thought we would get married.

[Q] Playboy: How did he make life easier?

[A] Dr. Ruth: Because he was a boy, he was permitted to go to school. I was not. All of the girls were taught by one teacher for 40 children of different ages. It was a catastrophe. But my boyfriend brought the books home. Every night he came to hug and kiss, he also brought a book. We were not permitted lights in the rooms. When he fell asleep--under the bed or under the covers--I took the book and went out on the staircase to read.

[Q] Playboy: We see where sex, books and advice might come together for you. After the war, you moved to Israel. What was life on the kibbutz like?

[A] Dr. Ruth: It was a different life, not a bourgeois life. I stayed in a tent with three young men. I thought that was great. Me and three guys. I didn't sleep with them. There was a philosophy of not separating young men from young women.

[Q] Playboy: Americans have a romanticized view of life on the kibbutz. Was it at all like Sal Mineo and Jill Haworth in Exodus?

[A] Dr. Ruth: Some of the left wing tried a little bit of free love. First of all, it doesn't work. It just does not, because there's jealousy, and then there's possessiveness. Interestingly, they tried to have children shower together until the age of 18. They wanted to instill that equality, the idea that there is nothing wrong with your body. It didn't work. As soon as the girls started to develop pubic hair, breasts, the secondary sexual characteristics, it changed. Six girls would go into the shower and leave a seventh at the door to watch, so no boys would come in. Maybe in the western culture, there's something inherent. In Hebrew, it's called tzniut. It's modesty.

[Q] Playboy: And the boys?

[A] Dr. Ruth: The boys didn't want girls in there, either. You know that kids in this country who go to nudist camps with their parents, who grow up in nudist camps--when they reach puberty, they do not want to go to nudist camps.

[Q] Playboy: How deep does this modesty go? Would you ever have posed for Playboy?

[A] Dr. Ruth: No.

[Q] Playboy: Would you let your daughter posed for Playboy?

[A] Dr. Ruth: Let me say, I would be profoundly disappointed and upset.

[Q] Playboy: Why?

[A] Dr. Ruth: I am a hypocrite. When you have a daughter, you'll be a hypocrite, too.

[Q] Playboy: You forget we know these girls. If our daughter grew up to be like one of our centerfolds, terrific. If she grew up to be like Phyllis Schlafly or Squeaky From me, then we'd be upset. What did you do on the Kibbutz?

[A] Dr. Ruth: For one year, I picked tomatoes and olives, because I was so short. After that year, I didn't want to see a tomato again. I was very idealistic. I believed Jews needed a country of their own. I still believe that. But I also believed that the Jews didn't need intellectuals, that they needed people to work the ground. So I did that for a year. I was very board. I said, "I cannot do this for a lifetime." I needed to learn something. I studied Hebrew.

[Q] Playboy: You were torn from a traditional family and spent your formative years living in one collective or another. Does some of your compassion come from that?

[A] Dr. Ruth: So you ask where the sensitivity comes from. From the age of ten, I was on my own--not only on my own but always having to help the others. The home was set up in such a way that I was responsible for the six-year-olds. I already had to play the role not of mother but certainly of older sister to a six-year-old. He's now a professional in Haifa. I still talk with him. But maybe a little bit of compassion, of interest in others, came from that experience. Because I didn't grow up just in a nucleus with the family, mother, father and me. I grew up in a children's home. Not always a happy children's home.

[Q] Playboy: Did you fight in the war for Israeli independence?

[A] Dr. Ruth: I was a member of the Haganah; that is the underground. That was before the Israeli army, in 1948. I know how to throw hand grenades. I can put a Sten gun together in the dark.

[Q] Playboy: Now we find out what Dr. Ruth does by herself in the dark.

[A] Dr. Ruth: Watch it. If this interview does not turn out nice, I can put five bullets into the red--you know, the red thing?

[Q] Playboy: The bull's-eye? We'll watch it.

[A] Dr. Ruth: In June 1948, I was wounded. It was my 20th birthday. I had just been given a book. I came back that morning from being on the roofs. There was a barricade; we had to stop the cars. I said, "I am not going to sit down and be in that shelter again land waste time." I went upstairs to pick up that book. As I passed through the hall, some shrapnel nearly took off my legs. I was very lucky. I could have ended up without two feet. I would have been shorter than I already am. The doctor did a good job. I can still ski and water-ski.

[Q] Playboy: Did you fall in love with him?

[A] Dr. Ruth: No, the male nurse. I still smile when I think of him. There was a shortage of beds, so they put me in a shelter that used to be the cloister. They put me on a shelf in the library. I made believe there was something wrong with my hands, that I couldn't eat. He would feed me. The height of my happiness was during a cease-fire. He took me down off the shelf in his arms and took me out to a tree in the garden and read to me. Of course, I fell madly in love with that male nurse.

[Q] Playboy: Did the kibbutz allow romance?

[A] Dr. Ruth: The social pressure in the kibbutz was tremendous. In that free society, what was free? If you were seen two weeks in a row with a girl, there was pressure on; say, "Do the two of you want a room?" Once you had a room, forget it.

[Q] Playboy: Were you happy on the kibbutz?

[A] Dr. Ruth: I was so short. In my diary, it says, "I'm so ugly and so short, nobody's going to ever love me." [Laughs] Look at me now.

[Q] Playboy: Did you learn to talk about sex on the kibbutz?

[A] Dr. Ruth: I don't think so. I was rather uptight. I don't remember a conversation about it at all. I married the first guy who offered to marry me. He went to study medicine in Paris. I worked very hard. I was the director of a kindergarten. I went to the Sorbonne to study psychology. The first marriage didn't last. It was scrubbed for lack of interest. Maybe it was Paris. The city was very exciting. There was talking in the coffeehouses. There was the Comédie Française. I was in a town where Jean Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir were sitting in a coffeehouse. We were so poor, we had to share a cup of coffee. I might have gone once to the Folies-Bergère. Somebody took me. I remember the shock to see it and watch those women. They told me they were prostitutes. I was very shocked. But we didn't talk about sex. I had an affair with a fantastic Frenchman--Miriam's father--and legalized that. Shortly afterward, we moved to America, but we divorced. There were intellectual differences. I kept Miriam and gave him the car. I met Fred on a ski trip. He was the only person on the slope as short as I was. We rode the T-bar together. We've been married for 24 years.

[Q] Playboy: What does Fred think today of all this celebrity and attention?

[A] Dr. Ruth: Luckily, we had been married for many years before all this happened. Also luckily, he is a professional with a job that he loves. He's an engineer in telecommunications. So what I think is happening at this latest stage in his life is that it's rather amusing and interesting and very, very unexpected.

[Q] Playboy: Do his friends know that he is Mr. Dr. Ruth?

[A] Dr. Ruth: Yes, and of course they tease him a little bit. "You must have very good sex!" He has a famous response: He says the shoemaker's children don't have shoes. I don't let him go to any of my lectures, because when he used to, he would wait until I asked for questions at the end of a lecture and raise his hand, and he would say to everybody in that assembly, "Don't listen to her. It's all talk."

[Q] Playboy: When did you first hear the words clitoris and orgasm said out loud?

[A] Dr. Ruth: Here in America. I was hired as a director of a Planned Parenthood project in Harlem. In the beginning, I thought, These people are crazy, because they talk only about sex. I said, "Hey, let me outside. Talk about something--economics, philosophy, literature."

[Q] Playboy: Did your experience at Planned Parenthood affect any of your ideas? How do you feel about abortion?

[A] Dr. Ruth: I tell people that there can be no law against abortion. I remember when only wealthy women could have abortions. They would fly to Sweden. If you were poor, you had to go to the closet abortionists or use coat hangers. I don't want to see that again.

[Q] Playboy: Why did you decide to study sex?

[A] Dr. Ruth: I was teaching at the university. I realized that I didn't know enough. I was teaching through the department of education, how to teach sex education from kindergarten through grade 12. I realized that people were asking all kinds of questions. I decided that I was going to be a sex therapist as well as a sex educator, so I shopped around. I saw Helen Singer Kaplan at a lecture and it clicked. I studied with her for two years, twice a week.

[Q] Playboy: Where did you get your clinical experience?

[A] Dr. Ruth: Charles Silverstein, the one who wrote Joy of Gay Sex and Family Matters, saw me at a seminar and said, "Look, if you want to volunteer your time at the Institute for Human Identity"--that's a counseling service for homosexuals and bisexuals--"we will give you supervision." I said, "Great." He said, "You have to be supervised by a lesbian in order to learn about the lifestyle." There I had a few nightmares, because I said, "My gosh." I was very naïve. I didn't know anything. I thought they were going all over New York City to find a lesbian with a whip and boots to train me.

[Q] Playboy: When fame and fortune hit, what was the first thing you bought?

[A] Dr. Ruth: I took my entire family to Utah for a week of skiing. Then I bought Fred a day sailer. But tell me, how is it that you don't ask me how much I make? You are the first interviewer who hasn't.

[Q] Playboy: It would only make us sad.

[A] Dr. Ruth: [Laughs] Well, I never talk about money. And I won't tell you the names of my lovers.

[Q] Playboy: How do you explain your fame?

[A] Dr. Ruth: I have a very good friend. He says, "Hey, you are really good. But let's face it, if there weren't such a need in our society for such a program, you could be as good as you would want to be and you wouldn't be on the air." The reason for my being successful is that I'm well trained. I have guts. I'm willing to speak directly and not around the issues. And there's a need in our society. I was at the right place at the right time. I don't have any false modesty. I knew how to take an opportunity when it was presented to me--with two hands. Small hands, but it's two hands, with a firm grip.

[Q] Playboy: You are a regular on Late Night with David Letterman. We have to ask: What is David Letterman like? And is he really nervous about sex?

[A] Dr. Ruth: A little bit. But I don't know what David Letterman is really like, even with all my expertise as a very good therapist. He's polite. He always thanks me when I come on his show. But I have never had a conversation with him. During the commercials, I cannot talk with him, because Paul Shaffer's music is so loud. I've given up. I don't hear myself, I don't hear him. David certainly has done me a tremendous favor, because I think that by my being on his show, that's how I got to be known on the college campuses. But with David, I think a little bit he plays that he can't say the words I mention, and a little bit I think he really is embarrassed.

[Q] Playboy: For all the fun you have talking about things explicitly, do you think there are people who tune in to your show because they actually find it prurient?

[A] Dr. Ruth: When I talk on TV or my radio show, it does provide stimulation--intellectual and also maybe sometimes sexual--for those who listen. I say that if people get aroused by watching The Good Sex Program or by playing The Good Sex Game or by listening to Sexually Speaking, and then have a good sex experience with their spouses, I think that is ter-r-r-rific. But I tell them not to do it during the show, because that might lower the ratings!

[Q] Playboy: OK, but aren't you playing into the hands of critics who find that any sexual information is bad and should be stamped out, because it is arousing?

[A] Dr. Ruth: I would hope that the show turns people's brains on--to put some candles on the dinner table, have some champagne. Maybe they hear about some position that they would like to try. If that show turns them on, a sexually active couple, just exactly like the Playboy reader might file away an idea that becomes a sexual turn-on, then you--the Playboy Advisor--and I are doing a service.

[Q] Playboy: How will history view Dr. Ruth?

[A] Dr. Ruth: Let me tell you. That cemetery I visited in Switzerland, where they had tombstones from the 15th Century, some with the word Virgin on them, others saying, Mrs. so-and-so was a good housewife? It will never say that on mine. [Giggles] Never! Hopefully it will say that I helped alleviate some unnecessary suffering because of sexual ignorance and helped people become more aware of--

[Q] Playboy and Dr. Ruth: Contraception!

[A] Dr. Ruth: Ter-r-r-rific! We are a great team, yes?

"Rock Hudson should not have kissed anybody. He should have let a stunt man do the kissing."