Tuppy Owens

Tuppy Owens (born 1944) is a British sex therapist, consultant, campaigner, and writer. Tuppy Owens was born in Cambridge. She gained a degree in zoology from Exeter University, and then worked in ecology in Africa and Trinidad during three years as a scientific administrator at the Natural Environment Research Council. She settled in London, where at first she continued that work. 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 and attention-grabbing 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, Owens also began lecturing on the subject of sex.

In 1979, Tuppy Owens started Outsiders, for people with disabilities seeking new friends and partners.

From 1984, the 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.

Also in the 1980s, 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 the 1990s, after more than 30 years living in London Dr Tuppy Owens moved away and has, since then, lived in a croft in the North of Scotland.

In 2005, Tuppy Owens founded the Sexual Health and Disability Alliance (SHADA) to bring together health professionals interested in sex and disability. In November 2009, a conference with the title "Disability: Sex, Relationships and Pleasure" was held by SHADA with the Royal Society of Medicine.

Dr Tuppy Owens remains active in running Outsiders. She also runs the Night of the Senses to fund Outsiders, and is the founder and a judge for another fundraiser, The Erotic Awards. She is agony aunt for INSIDE, the magazine for Outsiders members, and Foreplay. She is the chair of the Sexual Freedom Coalition also runs the Sex and Disability Helpline.