Is She the Most Shocking Woman on Television?
By Lise Funderburg
O the Oprah Magazine
January 2003
Eager fans line up outside the Mohawk College auditorium in Hamilton, Ontario.
They're in this year's college uniform: baseball caps and exposed bellies, flip-flops
and piercings, backpacks and bottled water. When the doors open, they pour in,
filling the room's 1,100 seats. The announcer asks them to give Sue Johanson
a warm welcome, and they clap wildly. And whoop. And holler.
Johanson takes the stage, a lone, grandmotherly figure in creased navy shorts
and a green linen button-down she bought at a yard sale. The curly hair she's
fought all her life is short and gray and just-combed. She's sock-less, wearing
lace-up Camper knockoffs that she bought in New York— shoes with a slightly
corrective look. She's propless but for the microphone clipped to her shirt,
a stool in the middle of the stage, and a table next to it holding a show-and-tell
tote bag filled with her favorite dildos and vibrators.
In the world of Canadian sex education, Johanson is a superstar. A registered
nurse, she has been talking about how to make sex safe and pleasurable since
1970 —in high schools and colleges, on the radio, and, for the past seven
years, on the television call-in program Sunday Night Sex Show. In January 2002,
Oxygen TV began airing episodes of SNSS on cable and satellite stations in the
United States. Then the network convinced Johanson to do an American version
of the show (airs Sunday at midnight). "We have to cover more basic information," she
says. "Your sex ed isn't as far along as ours." Much of Canada's progress
on the subject is thanks to her—as was acknowledged in 2001 when she received
her country's equivalent of knighthood: an appointment to the Order of Canada.
Johanson spends summers at a lakeside cottage north of her Toronto base, but
during the academic year she gives about four talks a week and tapes 30 episodes
of SNSS, which airs to about 300,000 Canadian viewers each week. She talks to
some audiences about HIV/AIDS and others about sex in one's later years, but
the college crowd is her core constituency. Johanson can't call a cab without
the dispatcher recognizing her voice (he loves her show); she can't walk through
a mall without a deluge of hugs and requests for advice; she can't pass through
the halls of Mohawk College without a ripple of turning heads and "Hi, Sue" and "Look,
it's Sue!" and "I love your show."
"We're going to spend the next hour talking about my favorite subject," she
says to the Mohawk students. "Sex."
Collective scream.
"I said talk." she clarifies. "Not have."
For almost two hours, she gives a basic anatomy lecture, talks about penis size
(doesn't matter), sperm counts, orgasms (highly overrated), tampons, clitoral
versus penile sensitivity (2 to 1!), and continuous birth control (taking a monophasic
pill for three months nonstop, with no menstruation). She presents and describes
her favorite sex toys, including price and battery requirements. Her delivery
style is Lucille Ball crossed with C. Everett Koop, and when she imitates a man's
self-admiration session in the bathroom mirror, you can practically see the penis
flopping about as she bounces, pelvis first, across the stage.
Her language is bawdy, which serves both to shock and entertain—a sleight
of hand on her part to distract while she delivers solid, lifesaving information. "I'd
love if you could learn about sex at home, as you were growing up," she
tells the audience. "That would be ideal. But I'm a mother. I can talk to
anyone else about sex because I don't give a f — what you do. But when
it comes to my beautiful daughter, I don't want her to be a slut, sleaze-bag,
ho, the local bicycle—everyone gets a ride."
Huge laugh. But they hear her. They're listening.
People clearly feel comfortable opening up to Johanson. "My age makes it
so much easier," she says. "I'm older, married, have kids—I've
been there, done this. I'm almost like Grandma, and because I'm a nurse, I'm
comfortable with medical information. You tell me a sex fact and it sticks. Also,
I always look slightly disheveled, and that suits me just fine. People say, 'I
don't look so bad. Look at her: She's got turkey neck, wrinkles, crow's-feet.
Hoary old broad, isn't she?'"
Johanson won't reveal her age beyond saying she grew up in Canada's Dirty Thirties.
For nearly ten years, a dust bowl-like drought plagued the nation and marked
those who lived through it with a hard-scrabble attitude toward life. Johanson
lost both her mother and stepmother early on and had a spirited but alcoholic
father who couldn't support the family. An unexpected inheritance changed her
life; as a young wife and mother, Johanson became independently wealthy. Her
earlier deprivations stayed with her, and to this day she is unrepentantly cheap.
On her shows, she suggests less expensive homemade versions of sex toys (one
involves bubble wrap and lubricant). Her bathroom is filled with not one but
two baskets full of hotel toiletries, and when she has lunch after the Mohawk
talk, the last, half-eaten piece of chicken on her KFC platter is carefully wrapped
in napkins and dropped into her purse for later.
Wealth also didn't take away Johanson's drive to work, which she believes is
prompted largely by ego. "People say, 'You're a savior.' No. Work primarily
meets my need for attention, which is not necessarily healthy, but as long as
it is under control and provides a service to the world, it's okay."
Although Canada's sex curricula have advanced since Johanson started, she still
finds that most educational programs focus on anatomical facts, not sex. "I
have never yet had a question about fallopian tubes or luteinizing hormones.
I get: 'Will it hurt the first time? How old do I have to be before I have sex?
Is it okay to jerk off five times a day?'"
She's virtually unflappable and as open to questions about how to get semen out
of silk ("a good dry cleaner...and tell him to aim better") as she
is to whether Depo-Provera is harmful ("I worry about being on it for long
periods, since it decreases the absorption of calcium"). When callers pose
a problem, Johanson sits back in her chair, rests her chin on her hand, and knits
her brow as she tries to come up with a solution. "Have you tried having
her bend over the end of the couch?" she says to Jerry from Ottawa in the
same voice you'd expect her to discuss unmolding Jell-O.
Johanson doesn't always take a caller's question at face value. Someone wonders
about low sex drive and Johanson asks how the relationship is going. Another
person complains that her boyfriend's penis is too big; she advises the woman
to use more lubrication, engage in more foreplay, and try being on top during
sex. "You're not powerless in this situation," she encourages. "You
can do this."
At the end of the Mohawk talk, Johanson is besieged by autograph seekers, broadcast
majors who beg for internships, and people who just want to be near her. Five
high school girls from the nearby town of Guelph have skipped school to come
hear Johanson, and they take pictures with her in rotation.
Johanson seems satisfied that the session went well. The college radio station
begs 15 minutes more of her time, and station staff want photos, too. After the
hourlong drive back home (in her sporty blue Celica), she is showing signs of
wear. But she'll get a good night's rest and be back at it tomorrow. As flexible
as she is about other people's sex lives, she has rigidly assumed her own favorite
position—the missionary.