[2] Tiefer's mother, Rosalind Crost, of Dutch Jewish Sephardic heritage, was a gifted musician who performed widely.
[8] The CSUCSW invited Gloria Steinem and Ms. Magazine editors to speak at the university on the “myths of feminism” in 1973,[9] and later that same year, Tiefer helped form the CSU Faculty Women's Caucus.
[10] 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.”[11][2] 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.
[14] 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.[15][16] This focus on norms continued with her work on Female Sexual Dysfunction nomenclature.
[17] 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).
[24][2] Tiefer started the New View Campaign in 2000 as an educational project to create a new model of women's sexual health.
[28] 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.
Tiefer used her experience as a clinical psychologist, sexologist, and feminist activist to critique, resist, and transform medical models of sexual health and dysfunction.
[24] At the same time, Tiefer expanded her activism from focusing exclusively on the medicalization of sex to a larger perspective on overtreatment and overdiagnosis.
"[33]It began in 2008 with a street demonstration[33] and scholary paper,[34] followed in 2009 by an arts and crafts exhibit and political event in Brooklyn, NY called “Vulvagraphics:An Intervention in Honor Of Female Genital Diversity”.
[35] In 2010, New View organized a conference in Las Vegas called “Framing the Vulva”[36] which included activism titled “Talking back to Cosmetic Genital Surgeons”.
[38] In conjunction with her anti-medicalization scholarship and activism, Tiefer was interviewed by The New York Times,[39] The Washington Post,[40] The Nation[41] and other newspapers and magazines.
[43] She has given provocative grand rounds in psychiatry, urology, and obstetrics & gynecology at medical centers, universities, and public audiences.
Most notably, she wrote a weekly column in the New York Daily News from 1980 to 1981, some sections of which are reprinted in the first edition of her book Sex is Not a Natural Act and Other Essays.
She also served as vice chair of the board of directors of the National Coalition Against Censorship and on the steering committee of the Shelter for Homeless Men at the Community Church of New York - Unitarian-Universalist.
[6] The "Leonore Tiefer Collection, 1948-Present", consisting of over 900 monographs as well as other materials is held in the Archives of Indiana University, Bloomington and The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction.