Sue Johanson, beloved Canadian sex educator, dies aged 93 as fans pay tribute to ‘trailblazer’ sex guru
Canadian sex educator and broadcaster Sue Johanson has died on the age of 93.
A consultant confirmed to CBC News on Thursday 29 June that the enduring sex professional died in a long-term care house in Thornhill, Ontario, surrounded by family members.
Sue Johanson gained prominence along with her call-in radio present and Canadian tv programme, Sunday Evening Sex Present. Following the present’s success, she led a US spinoff referred to as Speak Sex with Sue Johanson from 2002 to 2008.
All through her profession, Johanson helped destigmatise sex by providing callers recommendation on every thing from sex toys to fetishes. She started as a nurse, opening a contraception clinic at her daughter’s Toronto highschool in 1970 – only one yr after contraception turned authorized in Canada.
She travelled all through Ontario, providing sex training in faculties, earlier than her radio present hit the airwaves. Her books – Speak Sex: Solutions to Questions You Can’t Ask Your Mother and father, Sex Is Completely Pure however Not Naturally Good, and Sex, Sex, and Extra Sex – helped train a complete era about protected sexual practices.
Following the information of her passing, many fans took to social media to pay tribute to the enduring sex professional. Lisa Rideout, the director of a 2022 documentary on Johanson titled Sex With Sue, honoured Johanson’s legacy with a touching Instagram submit.
“Sue was an unimaginable, unstoppable pressure. She paved the best way for a way we discuss sex and sexuality in the present day, unafraid of shattering taboos and toppling conservative viewpoints,” Rideout wrote. “Her attain wasn’t simply on stage, whether or not strolling down the road or sitting in a restaurant Sue would cease what she was doing to have significant conversations with anybody who needed to discuss to her, and there have been loads.”
In the meantime on Twitter, sex recommendation columnist Dan Savage wrote: “She was an enormous, and had such a optimistic influence on the lives of so many individuals.”
“A loss for Canada on a par with Gordon Lightfoot,” one other individual tweeted. “She was a instructor and a trailblazer.”
“Sue Johanson raised a era of youngsters to be snug speaking about protected sex with their companions and I’m so grateful we had that,” a 3rd particular person stated.
Even fellow Canadian Drake paid tribute to Johanson. The rapper referred to as the sex educator, who appeared in two episodes of Degrassi Junior Excessive and two episodes of Degrassi: The Subsequent Technology, the “goat” on his Instagram Story and shared a photograph of her guide cowl, Sex Is Completely Pure however Not Naturally Good.
(Instagram / champagnepapi)
Amidst the success of Speak Sex with Sue Johanson, she turned a favorite visitor amongst late-night discuss exhibits within the US. Johanson made a number of appearances on the Late Present with David Letterman, The Tonight Present with Jay Leno, and Late Evening with Conan O’Brien – typically making the male hosts uncomfortable along with her informal discussions of sex.
Whereas chatting with David Letterman in 2003, she gave the viewers a lesson on the anatomy of feminine pleasure, saying: “What individuals don’t realise is that penis dimension doesn’t matter, as a result of the highest two-thirds of the vagina has no nerve endings, there’s no one house up there.”
She additionally made host Conan O’Brien and actor Ray Romano uneasy in 2006, along with her candid confessions about sex toys.
In 2001, Johanson’s work educating and informing the general public about contraception and sexual well being earned her Canada’s second highest civilian honour, the Order of Canada, for being “a powerful, profitable advocate for sex training”.
