Tuppy Owens

Tuppy Owens
Tuppy Owens in 1998
Born	Rosalind Mary Owens (1944-11-12) November 12, 1944 (age 72) Cambridge, England
Occupation	Writer, therapist, campaigner
Years active	1970–present

Rosalind Mary Owens (born 12 November 1944), known as Tuppy Owens, is an English sex therapist, consultant, campaigner, writer and former adult model.

Tuppy Owens was born in Cambridge. She gained a degree in zoology from Exeter University, and then worked in ecology in Africa and Trinidad. She settled in London, and worked as a scientific administrator at the Natural Environment Research Council. Then, in the late 1960s, she established a sex education book publishing company, for which she wrote and published The Sex Maniac’s Diary successfully between 1972 and 1995, and which she operated as a thriving business from her Mayfair flat — for example, the 1975 Sex Maniac's Diary was launched in August 1974 with a reception at the Bristol Hotel in London which was reported on the following day in the Financial Times.

From 1974, Tuppy Owens also began lecturing on the subject of sex. In 1975, she appeared in the Dutch pornographic film Sensations. In 1979, she started Outsiders Club, for people with disabilities seeking new friends and partners. From 1984, the Sex Maniac's Diary was published as The Safer Sex Maniac's Diary and provided the first visual instructions to the public on how to put a condom on securely; it also reviewed condoms and offered safer sex advice, all at the beginning of the outbreak of HIV.

In 1979, Owens started the Outsiders Club for socially and physically disabled people to find partners. She was helped by Nigel Verbeek, who had recently lost his sight. Both worked voluntarily, which Tuppy continues to do today. Outsiders is a warm and friendly club providing peer support to members, a beautiful online Clubhouse, and lovely monthly lunches around the country.

In order to ensure that she answered the members' questions with accuracy, Owens trained as a sex therapist at St George's Hospital Medical School in London, where she gained a diploma in Human Sexuality in 1986. She was also subsequently awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the Institute of Advanced Study of Human Sexuality in San Francisco. In 2009, Owens was named one of the Family Planning Association‘s 80 most influential achievers in the field of family planning.