Leonore Tiefer

Leonore Tiefer (born February 5, 1944) is an American educator, researcher, therapist, and activist specializing in sexuality, and is a public critic of disease mongering as it applies to sexual life and problems.

Beginning with an Experimental Psychology Ph.D. on hormones and hamsters at the University of California, Berkeley in 1969, Tiefer went on to hold an academic position in physiological psychology at Colorado State University from 1969 to 1977.

She later wrote the history of that group from 1969 to 2009.

In 1972, while working at Colorado State University (CSU) in Fort Collins, Tiefer co-founded the local National Organization for Women (NOW) chapter and the CSU Commission on the Status of Women (CSUCSW).

The CSUCSW invited Gloria Steinem and Ms. Magazine editors to speak at the university on the “myths of feminism” in 1973, and later that same year, Tiefer helped form the CSU Faculty Women's Caucus.

The following year, Tiefer taught an experimental course called “Human Sexuality,” the first on that topic at the university, which was taught from a “non-sexist point of view.”

The New York City Mayor's Task Force on Rape was established in 1973, and opened four borough-wide rape crisis centers in 1977 (the group later changed its name to the New York City Advisory Task Force on Rape in 1980).

She also has been a consulting editor for various journals since 1975.

She continues this work to today.

Responding to the challenge of the feminist movement, she left Colorado and returned to her home state of New York, where her career in New York City sexology included positions at Downstate Medical Center (1977-1983), Beth Israel Medical Center (1983-1988), and Montefiore Medical Center (1988-1996).

Fifteen years after her Ph.D. she returned to graduate school to respecialize as a clinical psychologist with a focus on human sexuality.

After returning to New York City in 1977, Tiefer became active in the anti-rape movement, which had begun in the 1970s with speakouts, publications, and community organizing by groups such as New York Women Against Rape.

The movement largely focused on "…law enforcement behavior and legal changes, hospital practices and counseling, self-defense and community education.”

Tiefer joined the group in 1977, and was co-chair from 1980 to 1982.

Tiefer also joined the Psychiatry Department at Downstate Medical Center (DMC) in 1977 and co-founded the Rape Crisis Elective for Medical Students.

This service has now evolved into a program out of the DMC Emergency Medicine Department.

Tiefer was also a clinical associate professor of psychiatry at the NYU School of Medicine from 1981 to 2017.

Tiefer has held professional offices within both sexological and feminist organizations.

From 1983 to 1986 she was the National Coordinator of the Association for Women in Psychology (AWP).

As part of her activities as National Coordinator of the Association for Women in Psychology (1983-1986), Tiefer co-organized a demonstration at the 1985 meeting of the American Psychiatric Association to protest the addition of "anti-feminist" diagnoses such as "paraphilic rape disorder" and “self-defeating personality disorder” to the DSM-III-R.

This focus on norms continued with her work on Female Sexual Dysfunction nomenclature.

She completed an American Psychological Association (APA)-approved postdoctoral respecialization in clinical psychology at New York University in 1988 with a focus on sex and gender problems.

While at Montefiore, she held an appointment with the Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

Tiefer was also vice-chair of the Board of Directors of the National Coalition Against Censorship during the 1990s-2000s.

Tiefer has held a variety of editorial positions with professional psychology and sexology journals.

Tiefer co-founded the World Research Network on the Sexuality of Women & Girls (WRNSWG) in 1991.

She edited its newsletter from 1991 to 1999, and organized 4 of the 5 WRNSWG conferences, which were timed to precede the annual International Academy of Sex Research meetings in Provincetown (1995), Amsterdam (1996), Baton Rouge (1997), and New York City (1999).

Other notable feminists involved with WRNSWG include Dutch sexologist Ellen Laan.

"In a society where it's your fault if you don't get sex right, and you have to have a lot of it and you have to do it right but nobody teaches you how ... you're looking for a way to excuse yourself from your problems, and biology offers that excuse.'"

She has reviewed small grants for the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and in 1992, she was an invited speaker at the only National Institutes of Health (NIH) Consensus Development Conference ever held on a sexual topic: impotence.

She has been a Book Review Editor for numerous scholarly publications and an Associate Editor for the Journal of Sex Research from 1992 to 1996.

She was elected president of the International Academy of Sex Research (IASR) in 1993, and also served as the IASR representative at the first International Consultation on Erectile Dysfunction in 1999.

Since 1999, Tiefer has condemned the push for “Pink Viagra” by pharmaceutical companies.

In doing so, she uniquely paired activism with research and scholarship to create the New View Campaign, which organized against the harmful medicalization of women's sexuality, including female sexual dysfunction, and female genital cosmetic surgery.

Tiefer started the New View Campaign in 2000 as an educational project to create a new model of women's sexual health.

According to the campaign's website, “Our goal was to expose the deceptions and consequences of industry involvement in sex research, professional sex education, and sexual treatments, and to generate conceptual and practical alternatives to the prevailing medical model of sexuality.” The campaign began with a collaboratively written and vetted manifesto that has been translated in 8 languages and published in many sexology textbooks.

From 2001 to 2002, Tiefer was on the Board of Directors of the International Society for the Study of Women's Sexual Health (ISSWSH), then called the Female Sexual Function Forum.

In 2001, Tiefer co-edited a feminist sexology collection, A New View of Women's Sexual Problems, which grew out of the campaign.

Her 2003 teaching manual is available on the New View Campaign website.

The New View Campaign has held 5 scholar-activist conferences, testified before the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), provided fact sheets and briefings for media, and generated articles and chapters that are influencing the way students and professionals are taught about human sexuality.