Sue Johanson, who spoke about sex with aplomb, dies at 92

A beloved radio and television host, first in Canada, then in the United States, she tackled the hottest topic with compassion and humor.

< p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0">Sue Johanson, the outspoken, debauched and beloved Canadian sex educator and host of the long-running Sunday Night Sex Show and of her American counterpart, "Talk Sex With Sue Johanson", died on June 28 in a North Toronto care facility. She was 92 years old.

Her death was confirmed by her daughter Jane Johanson.

Sue Johanson dressed demurely, often in blazers and wire-rimmed glasses, but she had the timing and instinct to 'a comedian, which defused the hot topics she brought up. (At demos, she had a way of stretching out condoms - she was an evangelist to them - that was reminiscent of a clown making balloon animals.)

And like Dr. Ruth Westheimer, Holocaust survivor and former Israeli sniper turned sex therapist, Ms. Johanson, a registered nurse and mother of three who led a birth control clinic at a public high school for nearly two decades, became a media star in her 40s.

"I wasn't young," she said in "Sex With Sue," a 2022 documentary about her directed by Lisa Rideout, with Jane as her mother's talker and the film's creative consultant. "I wasn't beautiful. I didn't have bodacious tatas. I was a mother with a lot of information."

Is it weird to put body glitter on your boyfriend's testicles? Is it safe to have sex in a hot tub? Could a Ziploc bag be used as a condom? If condoms are left in a car and they freeze, are they still good? Answers: No. No (chlorinated water is too hard on the genitals, especially for women). Definitely not. And yes, once thawed.

Every Sunday night the questions poured in about straight sex, gay sex, masturbation, and all kinds of fetishes, fantasies and fears. At the show's peak in the early 2000s, nearly 100,000 calls were answered and screened by operators, although only 10 or 12 were broadcast on any given night.

Manufacturers of sex toys shipped their goods by carton. Ms. Johanson divided them among her young crew for test drives – "Canada's Unofficial Sex Toy Testing Facility", she called them – and demonstrated their features at her desk, rummaging through her "hot" bag. », a black tote. emblazoned with flames, to release the latest deals. "The good, the bad and the ugly", she liked to say. (Manufacturers tended to gild the lily, like the company that made a vibrator with a camera on its end. "It gives a whole new meaning to 'I'm ready for my close-up,'" Ms. Johanson deadpanned. )

A child of the Great Depression, she was thrifty and cost-conscious, and often offered homemade alternatives. Why not set your cell phone ringer to vibrate, slip it into your underwear, and have your friends keep calling?

" I remember she was jerking off a cucumber," Russell Peters, the Canadian comedian, said in the documentary. "I've never looked at a cucumber the same way."

ImageMs. Johanson in 1995. “I was not young. I was not beautiful,” she once said of her call. "I was a mother with a load of information." Credit...Ron Bull/Toronto Star, via Getty Images

Ms. Johanson began his radio career with a wildly popular show on a rock station that lasted over a decade. "Sunday Night Sex Show" first aired on Canadian television in 1996. In 2002, the Oxygen Network commissioned an American version, which aired right after the Canadian show, so American callers could have their luck. READ....