Front Burner - Remembering Sex Ed legend Sue Johanson

Episode Date: July 7, 2023

Canadian nurse and sex educator Sue Johanson, who died last week at 93, was best known for her unapologetic and taboo-breaking advice on radio and TV shows like ‘Sunday Night Sex Show’ and ‘Talk Sex with Sue’ From opening a birth control clinic in a Toronto high school in the ‘70s and traveling school to school teaching sex ed seminars, to becoming a media sensation, Sue made it her mission to destigmatize sexual desire and health, one question at a time. We take a look back at her iconic life and career with her daughter, Jane Johanson, and sex advice columnist, Dan Savage, and explore why her work is even more relevant today. For transcripts of this series, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. My wife and I think you're the coolest lady ever. Oh, thank you. My mother and I both love your show.

Isn't that cute? You watch it together? Hi, I'm Tamara Kandaker. Before we start, today's episode has some kind of graphic discussions about sex. Hello and welcome to Talk Sex. I'm your host, Sue Johansson, and my mission in life is to promote sex education, to dispel myths and misconceptions so you can enjoy being the sexual human being that you were born to be. being the sexual human being that you were born to be. Okay, let me take you back in time for a second. So, you're 14, your parents are asleep,

it's way past your bedtime, and you're flipping through channels looking for something to watch. You flip past the reruns. You want bread? Yes, please. Three dollars! What? No soup for you! The infomercials.

Hi, Billy Mays here for the original Quick Chop. And then you come across an old lady who looks like a grandma. And she's sitting at a table and talking into the camera. And you're about to change the channel again. And then she says this. Oh, honey, honey, don't take the whole penis in your mouth. You're going to gag for sure. Never, never. Look, the sensitive part of the penis is right there and right around there and right around the tip here. That was the voice of beloved Canadian sex educator Sue Johansson.

She died last week at the age of 93. Sue was frank, unabashed, she never judged. And for decades, she gave out no-nonsense sex advice to people who called in to her long-running radio and TV shows. We have a Susie on the line. Hi, Susie. Hi, Sue. Hi, you've got a question. Oh, yes. Today on the show, we're going to talk about the boundary-pushing life and career of Sue Johansson with her daughter, Jane Johansson. And later, Dan Savage, sex advice columnist and host of the podcast

Savage Lovecast, is on the show to share his best memories of Sue and to explain why the fight for quality sex ed is just as relevant today as it was in the 80s and 90s. Hi, Jane. Thank you so much for being here, and I'm very sorry for your loss. Hello, and thank you. Thank you. Your mom was a pretty remarkable person, wasn't she? Yeah. To put it lightly, that's being very gentle and gracious. My mom was remarkably huge.

She was. She was. She was an icon. The news of your mom's death, it was met with an absolute outpouring of tributes. People just adored her. What kind of stories have people been telling you about Sue since she passed? Well, first off, I can't believe the amount of outpouring. I think the morning after my mom passed, it felt like my phone was going to explode, like blow up completely. I was overwhelmed by just the response that people, you know,

were giving to me and the feeling like she was everybody's mom. So I feel like everybody felt like they lost their mother or their grandmother. So it was a really mutually shared experience. And just on that note, there was, you know, something just came through today on a text. They were talking about listening to my mom in the car, driving down Queen Street, windows wide open as she's talking about penis size. And they wanted everybody on Queen Street to hear what they were listening to as they're laughing and enjoying her banter. Amazing. On camera, Sue seemed like the kind of person that anybody could talk to. She put the caller so at ease. Is that what she was like in person too? 100%. My mom was what you saw is what you got. She did not try to be anything than

what she was. And I think it was really important to her that she feel like people could be comfortable with her so that if they were comfortable, then they were more at ease talking about a subject that we usually are uncomfortable talking about. Her audience is more than double the competition. They tell her things they'd never tell another living soul. She says the reason is simple. Because they're desperate. than double the competition. They tell her things they'd never tell another living soul. She says the reason is simple. Because they're desperate. They can't find anybody else that they can really open up to who will trust, who will not put them down. Do you remember your first introduction to your mother as a sex educator? I don't know if it was really my first, but I do

remember her talking to my friends. And so I would come home from school, I'd bring friends home from school, or boyfriends that I was dating at the time, I would leave the kitchen, they would stay. So I knew that there was something going on there that I was maybe not aware of, but she was just so comfortable sitting and talking to my friends or boyfriends about anything that they wanted to talk about. And she became like a friend to them. So, and if I wanted to know anything, I would just go to them. But yeah, I think I overheard her talking to my friends or overheard her at the birth control clinic talking to teenagers.

And I thought, oh, look at that. Look what she's doing. Wow. oh, look at that. Look what she's doing. Wow. Yeah. And clearly your friends felt comfortable enough opening up to her and talking to her about these things. They did, which I think kind of surprised me. I think they were probably a little ahead of where I was at because, you know, everyone wants to know, well, what was it like to talk to your own mom about sex? And quite honestly, that was not an area of comfort for me. Nobody really wants to hear it from your parents. So I was fine with everybody

else going to her, but I didn't really want to hear it coming out of my mom's mouth. Yeah. I mean, I guess she was still your mom at the end of the day. Yeah. And that's the thing is that people think, wow, you live with Sue Johansson, but really at home, you close the door, mom was a mom. You know, that's who she was. She was a mother who took care of us, drove me to ballet classes, drove my sister to gymnastics, my brother to boy cups, you know, like all that kind of stuff. And she was just a mom and a homemaker, really.

I want to play you a clip from CBC's archives. This is from 1986, and this is Sue talking to an auditorium of teenagers. Let me tell you, she's so old, she hasn't done it in 30 years. She couldn't talk to her own kids about sex, but now Sue talks to other people's kids by the hundreds. I figure I've got about 15 seconds to establish credibility, to prove to you that I know what I'm talking about. Today, it's grade 9 and 10s in Kitchener. One stop on a lecturing tour that takes her across the country. She made it fun and different from health class or something like that where you have to learn it and then write a test on it.

But here it was something that you could just listen to and think about. So clearly she did manage to establish that credibility and win over those kids. What do you think made Sue so good at getting through to young people? Oh my God, you know, listening to that clip, well, A, of course it brings a tear to my eye because I get to hear her voice again and, you know, I can just go online and watch my mom and she will you know she will always be with us but honestly when I hear her teaching kids at that level with that response she's like a rock star yeah she's standing with a microphone yelling like a rock star so that she could be heard but also she realizes I've got to have kind of like a, she was almost like a politician really and an advocate for sex and sexual health. You know, vote for sexual health. Wow, that was incredible. how valuable this must have been because this was before you could easily Google something

and find a reputable source or even a thread of shaky advice. These kids just had sex ed and word of mouth, and that's kind of how they were learning about this stuff. Yeah, and who wouldn't want a teacher coming into the class and teaching your kids about safe sexual health? I say, you know, parents really see this as a gift. Allow your kids to have sexual health education as much as possible while they're still in the early years of it because they're going to have sex. You can't be in denial about that. And would

you rather they learn about it from a sexual health educator or would you rather they learn about it from a sexual health educator, or would you rather they learn about it through experimentation, peer pressure, and possibly an uncomfortable situation of not being able to say no? Let's talk about your mom's career trajectory a bit. So before your mom got into public sex ed, she was a registered nurse. And I read that she trained under nuns in Winnipeg who never talked about sex. But in the 1970s, she did something that was quite radical, and she opened a birth control clinic at a high school in Toronto. What do you think inspired her to do that? Well, this is in the documentary, and I've probably mentioned this many times, but it's, you know, really, it was a teenager that had come to our house and was seeking some assistance in

dealing with the fact that she had become pregnant at a very young age, and she had nobody to turn to, and she could not tell her parents, whether it was for religious reasons or um she was scared of uh the ramifications or um you know how it was going to be dealt with so she i not sure why i believe my sister brought her home and felt that mom would be safe to talk to about this because she was a nurse and because she was uh comfortable talking to her friends and she um was really helpful in guiding this girl just to know that there was someone who would listen and someone who cared and someone who could possibly help her make an informed decision about how she moved forward with this, with privacy and with respect. And I know you worked there as a teen. Do you remember what kinds of issues kids were coming in to talk about?

a while a couple young teenage couple would come in the girl would come in with her boyfriend and they were looking for a form of birth control because they were curious they wanted to be sexually active and they wanted to make sure that they didn't get pregnant you know at a untimely time so mostly it was about um finding some form of birth control that suited them, that were safe to take. And, you know, there was access to a doctor who volunteered their time in terms of getting a pap smear, talking to them about what kind of birth control they would like. And so there was also free giveaways of these products so that the kids could try it out and say, does my body function okay being on the pill?

Because it can have some reactions to some people aren't as comfortable with it as others. And also if they felt like they were bumping up against something that could possibly be sexually transmitted, whether it was a yeast infection or chlamydia or something that they thought something's going on and it's not right. So eventually she transitioned to working in radio and then, of course, became a TV sensation with a live call-in show, Sunday night sex show. And then she broke into the U.S. with Talk Sex with Sue. Tens of thousands of people would call in. It became this international sensation.

But in the early days of the show, there really was nothing like it on TV. So what kind of pushback did she get as she got started? Was there a backlash? I think the only backlash she got was people phoning in saying, you can't say that on the radio. Initially, I think people did call in and say, you know, you can't say that on the radio. Initially, I think people did call in and say, you know, you can't use those words. You know, all those what we consider swear words, you can't use those. And you shouldn't be talking about such intimate or unusual sexual practices on the air that other people have access to. And, you know, mom was, she she was she was aware of all these phone calls or anyone that was um you know pushing back against this and she went well um this is how it needs to be told

and this is how we hear it and um not defiantly but i think in her way just try and stop me like you know and and people were like well she's way too popular to try to stop her. I think people looked around and went, well, this is going over so well. Everybody needs this. Everybody loves Sue. My pushback is not going to go anywhere. It's just not. And she soldiered forward and broke the ice with a lot of taboo words and topics. What do you think your mom would say about what's

happening in the U.S. today around access to abortion as well as gender affirming and sexual health care? Oh, it is not just so disheartening. Like even the fact that we have to talk about it, even the fact that it has to be a question is, it just makes my heart sink because I know when I talked about it with mom a few years back I was saying you know this is turning around a little bit mom it's going against all the stuff that you were so uh fighting for and I remember my mom shaking her head and just dropping her chin to her chest like uh in a form of defeat and in a form of, I think she was a little bit heartbroken, actually. And then when the Roe versus Wade was overturned, it just, I think she would have almost wanted to

pass then, quite honestly. And I don't mean that jokingly. I mean that she just felt like we were taking so many steps back and that, you know, Canada is not, you know, very good in that either. And she just felt like, helpless because now she couldn't, there's nothing that she could do because she had retired at that point and she's, you know, not able to get out there and be a warrior for that. you know, not able to get out there and be a warrior for that. Yeah, she really was a trailblazer. Jane, thank you so much. I'm so sorry for your loss, but thank you for sharing your mom's story with us. Oh, you are most welcome. It was my pleasure. Bye-bye. In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection.

Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization. Empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. You may have seen my money show on Netflix. empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. No, their own household income. That's not a typo. 50%. That's because money is confusing. In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples. Well, you know what? They couldn't leave well enough alone.

And what they've done is put a tiny camera into the end of the dildo yes you heard right a camera that hooks up to your TV it gives a whole new meaning to I'm ready for my close-up now mr. Demille here let me show you I going to use my hand for this one. And you put it in there and it comes up on the camera. Well, all I can say is thank God it's in black and white. That was Sue checking out a new sex toy, something she did regularly on the show. Companies would send them to her all the time, and she became kind of a huge influencer in that space. Almost nothing was too taboo to talk about with Sue. This was her on Conan O'Brien back in 2006. And what you can't see is he gets so embarrassed.

His face turns bright red. I was told that the first thing you want to do is dispel some common myths. Is that true? Well, so many people have such bad ideas, wrong ideas about human sexuality. Men are convinced that to be a good lover, they've got to have this humongous penis with an erection that is so rigid you can strike matches on it. Sue Johansson normalized having awkward conversations. And I wanted to talk about the value of that

and Sue's legacy with sex advice columnist Dan Savage. Hi, Dan. It's great to have you. Thank you for having me. Do you remember your first time seeing Sue Johansson in action on TV? I caught her on a Sunday night. I was up in Vancouver snowboarding with my then boyfriend, now husband. And I just turned on the TV and a little bit like how we stumbled over Just for Laughs, which we'd never heard of in America.

We stumbled over Sue Johansson. And I was equal parts impressed and thrilled and in love with her and equal parts jealous because for years people had been asking me in America, like, do you want to do TV? And I was like, yeah, I want to do a call-in sex show. I want to give advice without seeing the people because that always ruins sex advice when you have to look at the people asking for it. And it's such an inhibition for people to go on TV and ask for sex advice that you get exhibitionists. And I was told that it would never work. And then I turned on the TV in Canada on a Sunday night at random and find that Sue Johansson is already doing it and that it works. And then it came to America. And she wasn't just the first

to do it. She was really good at doing it. And there was something about her that really resonated with people, right? What do you think that was? That she didn't judge or shame, that she didn't wrinkle her nose, that she didn't feel obligated as so many people do to engage in a kind of performative disgust before moving on to giving the advice. She accepted that when it came to human sexuality, variance was really the norm. And her show modeled something that we all kind of know to be true, that even if we are lucky enough to have comprehensive sex education in school, there are still going to be things that we have questions about. And ongoing sex education, once you become sexually active, is just feeling empowered to ask the question. And that's really what Sue's show did. And Sue did. That even if your call didn't

make it onto her show, because so many people were calling in, that you felt empowered after watching other people ask their questions to go out and find the answer to yours. Right. And people would call into her show with questions about all kinds of stuff, fetishes, things their partners were asking them to do, things that were happening in bed that they were embarrassed about. Actually, I wanted to play you this clip. I just called to ask when my girlfriend and I have sex, either with a dildo or with her fingers yeah um when i'm getting ready to have an orgasm i often have like vaginal farts or queefs yeah wondering is there any way to stop doing that no why vaginal farts are wonderful things it's something we can do. Guys can't do it. And ours don't stink.

I guess it's embarrassing. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. You just let fly. I'm blushing listening to that. It's just so funny. But she doesn't even flinch. She just keeps it moving. Can you talk about how she'd handle those really embarrassing or revealing questions? By telling people that they were humans and they had nothing to be embarrassed about. And sex is glorious and messy and fun. And bodies sometimes do strange and fascinating things that we can't control. And so rather than, you know, be at war with our bodies or be at war with our desires, we should accept them and roll with them and be in love with our bodies and in love with

our desires, so long as you can act on them in a consensual way with somebody else who wants to be there. But so many people enter into partnered sex, not understand, you know, having this image of sex in their head that, you know, may have been shaped by porn or shaped by certain assumptions that are incorrect. And they just need to hear from a trusted authority figure or a good friend. And Sue, I think for so many people was both that what their bodies are doing or what they want is normal and that they shouldn't feel ashamed or conflicted about it. And you said that she wanted to make people feel like sex was a beautiful thing. And she was sex positive way before that was a mainstream thing. And beyond sexual health, something that she talked about a lot on the show was pleasure. And she really prioritized that. How groundbreaking was that aspect of her show? groundbreaking was that aspect of her show? Oh my God, that was hugely important because most people most of the time have sex for pleasure. And yet that's the thing we're not

allowed to talk about in most sex education courses. You can talk about disease to scare people. You can talk about reproduction. You can talk about contraception, but you can't talk about pleasure, negotiating pleasure, asking for pleasure, figuring out what it is that pleases you and how to ask for that thing, which is ridiculous, you know, because pleasure is why people have most of the sex they're having most of the time they're having it. And to center pleasure and to also tell people that if it's not pleasurable, then there's a problem. You know, there's a lot of people out there when Sue was just getting started who were having sex that didn't feel good. And

they didn't know that that was a problem because no one had ever told them sex was supposed to feel good. And now people, when they have questions, they can go to the internet. But when Sue was starting out, they really didn't have that at all. No, no. And people do go to the internet. And because, again, like I said, Sue and others put it in people's heads that if they had questions, they had a right to go get the answer that they needed to be pleasured, to give pleasure, to feel safe, to do or not do what they wanted to or weren't comfortable doing. And that habit of mind, I have a question, I'm going to go get an answer. Yeah, the internet has really facilitated the getting of those answers, and that's great. But what set people up to feel empowered to go ask the question and get the answer were groundbreaking pioneers like Sue Johanson. There was one thing that I wanted to talk about,

which you talked about in this documentary that was made about Sue last year. There was a whole generation of young people coming up at the height of Sue's fame in the late 80s and the early 90s who were on the front lines of the AIDS epidemic. And can you talk a bit about the role that Sue played in that? Well, I'm a 58-year-old gay man who came out in 1980 right into the HIV-AIDS buzzsaw. And what all of us needed at that moment was reassurance and information. And that information was,

before the internet existed, very hard to come by. And it certainly wasn't something that anybody was talking about on the radio or talking about in a matter-of-fact way on TV. A lot of the information that a lot of young gay men were getting in the 80s and into the 90s was that you just shouldn't be a gay man. That you didn't have a right to be who you were, you didn't have a right to intimacy or pleasure, and that you should be able to forego sex and the kinds of connections that sex brings into our lives. And Sue spoke matter-of-factly about risk, about HIV, about condoms, about anal sex, and also embraced callers who

were in gay relationships. And there wasn't a lot of affirmation at that moment. There wasn't a lot of embracing of gay people, gay sex, gay relationships at that moment. And for gay people to feel seen and affirmed by this authority figure on television at a time when most of the media pretended we didn't exist or it would have been better for everyone, including us, if we didn't exist. And at a time when some people on the religious right were celebrating our deaths, that was huge. She saved lives. She saved lives. Sue retired before the rise of OnlyFans and the height of Pornhub. And on the one hand, it feels like there's more information than ever online for people to go and find. But it also feels like there's a lot more toxic stuff, garbage, misinformation to wade through.

How do you think the work of sex educators has changed since Sue's time? We have to be conscious, particularly those of us who are old enough not to have grown up with ubiquitous online pornography, of what young people are arriving at sex ed classes with. The fact that in many places sex ed has been taken out of the schools and porn has rushed in to fill the void. Porn functions tragically, unfortunately, as sex ed, which is not something porn ever wanted to do. And that's what we have to bring to the conversations we have with young people about sex now. We can't assume that there's the kind of ignorance of the variety, variance, kink, the different kinds of sex acts, because most people arriving at sex education, most people who are not yet sexually active, have witnessed a great deal of sexual activity. And you have to talk with them about what they've seen and how

that contrasts with what will be expected of them when they become sexually active and what porn is versus what sex is. You know, porn is, you know, an action movie and sex is a Tuesday and you can't function as an adult if you assume every Tuesday is going to be an action movie. You know, I always ask young people, you know, you've watched this pornography, you've watched this particular clip, what do you think happened right before they started filming? And a light bulb goes off.

Oh, they talked about it. Exactly. Right. And you have to be able to talk about it. And that's what's, you know, still relevant about like what Sue did. Like she got people talking about it. It's just there are slightly different and more things we need to talk about now, particularly with young people who've been exposed to a lot of pornography.

What do you think Sue's influence was on the work that you do today? Oh, my God. Well, I think maybe Sue's going to have more impact on my work as I continue to do this work and get older. You know, one of the things I think that made people feel comfortable about Sue was because of her age and how she played into her age, she felt like a referee who wasn't a part of the game. No, but I think it's invaluable and I think that it's good that it is someone like you. wasn't a part of the game. No, but I think it's invaluable. And I think that it's good that it is someone like you. Yes. You know that this is one time age gives you a real bonus because you have credibility. I'm not seen as cute and bodacious. 28A won't make it, dear. Which is not to say that, you know, people aren't sexually active into into you know

their 60s 70s they certainly are but there's a sense with younger people that you're not you're outside the game and so you are can be a fair adjudicator um and as i you know i'm almost 60 now i'm almost getting close to the age I was when I first saw Sue on TV. And I can feel that shift in me. And I feel like Sue is a good role model for me for that position if I want to keep doing this kind of work. We had a lot in common, like just an ability to talk about sex. Both of us not freaked out or shocked. I always thought that was because I was gay that nothing could shock me. And then I saw Sue's show and like, oh, here's this straight lady and nothing shocks her either. So maybe it's not just about being gay. But that wise, affable, humorous elder that Sue was,

I can sort of feel myself becoming and I might do a deep dive on some of her shows now to help set me up for what's coming. I love that. Dan, thank you so much. It was such a pleasure. My pleasure. Sorry to Canada for your loss. That's all for this week. FrontBurner was produced by Derek Vanderwyk, Lauren Donnelly, Imogen Burchard, Shannon Higgins, Joyta Sengupta, and Dennis Kalnan. Our sound design was by Mackenzie Cameron and Sam McNulty. Our intern is Rachel DeGasperis.

Our music is by Joseph Shabison. Our executive producer is Nick McKay-Blokos. And I'm Tamara Kendacker. Thanks for listening. FrontBurner is back next week. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.