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Instead of Dr. Ruth, a Nurse Called Sue
February 19, 2004
By MIREYA NAVARRO
With typical bluntness Sue Johanson tells older men and
women to get over body image: the "turkey neck," the "wear
and tear," the hormonal deficiencies. But in her cheerful,
no-nonsense style she adds that there are creams, patches
and pills to help them, and if all else fails, that they
can always kiss and cuddle.
"You can still have a great deal of fun," she said recently
in a rare speech before a United States audience, a group
of sex-toy saleswomen at a conference in Las Vegas.
Ms. Johanson, who won't reveal her age but looks like a
70-something grandmother who knits and makes sourdough
biscuits (she does both), is having a lot of fun herself
just talking about sex.
A registered nurse from Toronto, Ms. Johanson became known
as a sex educator on Canadian radio and television before
the Oxygen Network began an American version of her live
call-in show in 2002. Now in its second season, "Talk Sex
With Sue Johanson," at 11 p.m. on Sundays, has become one
of the most popular shows for Oxygen, a cable channel whose
target audience is women 25 to 45. (During the rest of the
week Oxygen broadcasts reruns of "Talk Sex" or of her
Canadian show, "The Sunday Night Sex Show.")
One indication of Ms. Johanson's rising profile in the pop
culture landscape: just last month "Saturday Night Live"
lampooned her in a skit in which a Sharon Osbourne
impersonator crowed over "this sexy old lady." She has also
made the late-night talk show rounds, appearing with David
Letterman and Conan O'Brien. Late-night channel surfers may
find her in the middle of untangling the contents of a
"fantasy restraint kit" as she rates new sex products. Or
looking deep into the camera through wire-rimmed glasses as
she tells the dissatisfied Linda from Gloucester, Mass.:
"Hey, I got to be honest with you. Most guys won't last 15
minutes. Sorry!"
Ms. Johanson, better known as Sue, may remind viewers of
another sex adviser of a certain age, Ruth Westheimer, who
proselytized for healthy sex on her own television and
radio shows in the 1980's and early 90's. But Ms. Johanson
functions in a changed cultural landscape, where the
Internet and television have made sex talk ever more bold.
Yet even in these sex-saturated times her brand of sex
education is still the exception, some sex experts noted,
perhaps because of more conservative government policies in
the United States and an entrenched reluctance among
Americans to talk about sex as a normal activity.
"There's a bit of a cultural schizophrenia around sex and
sexuality," said Tamara Kreinin, president and chief
executive of the Sexuality Information and Education
Council of the United States, a nonprofit organization
based in New York. "American culture, which has become more
open, still has a hesitancy around sex that other cultures
don't have."
Ms. Johanson said she could not ride the subway or stand in
a grocery line in Canada without being approached to answer
the kind of question that would make even the frozen
chicken blush. But in the United States, a much bigger
market, her growing fan base seems almost bashful but
mostly grateful. "I find that Americans are so polite and
so respectful that being recognized is wonderful," she
said. "People will look at me and say, `Hi, I love your
show.' And that's where it ends."
Shame, fear, guilt and ignorance all get in the way of good
sex, Ms. Johanson said, adding that based on the calls she
receives, many Americans lack basic knowledge. Some young
women, for example, still ask whether they can become
pregnant through oral sex, and they have more than a few
misconceptions.
A common one, she said, is "that women always have to have
an orgasm every time they have sex."
A sampling of recent shows indicates that viewers in both
countries ask her about rashes and discharges, about sexual
dysfunctions and positions, about performance anxieties and
relationships. Anal sex and G-spot orgasms are the topics
of the day.
On a recent show a woman asked: "I'm having these dreams
that I'm having sex with women or I'm watching women have
sex. Why is that?"
A man asked: "If condoms are left in a car and they freeze,
are they still good?"
On television Ms. Johanson's creased face may register
concern, empathy, surprise, even horror, but never
judgment. Despite her grandmotherly image, she can be
graphic enough to make readers of a family newspaper
squeamish. Her repertory of reactions includes funny
dramatizations of ecstasy or disgust, as well as folksy
terms like "tatas" (for breasts) and clinical explanations.
("Can we pull up a female frontal on the screen, please?")
The author of three books on sex, Ms. Johanson is married
to a retired electrician and has three grown children and
two grandchildren. She found her calling as an educator in
the 1960's when a friend of one of her two daughters
thought she was pregnant and sought her help. Ms. Johanson
ended up opening a birth control clinic for adolescents at
her daughters' high school in 1970; she ran it for 18
years.
She entered graduate school for courses on human sexuality
and counseling (she does not have an advanced degree),
became the host of a sex call-in show on Canadian radio in
the mid-1980's and later started a show on public-access
cable. Nine years ago she gained a national audience in
Canada with "The Sunday Night Sex Show" on the W Network.
In 2001 she received the Order of Canada, the country's
highest honor for lifetime achievement. Ms. Johanson
travels at least three times a week to give talks in
schools and colleges throughout Canada but says she also
finds time to sew, knit, walk, swim and make bread and
biscuits from a sourdough culture she has used for more
than 35 years.
So does a woman who travels to presentations with a "hot
stuff" bag, who jokes that she always carries condoms in
her purse "in case I get lucky," have a healthy sex life
herself?
"I will just say yes," she said with the emphatic speech of
a teacher, "and leave it at that."
"Sex Talk," which moved to 11 p.m. from midnight for its
second season on Oxygen, has done well with its intended
audience but also attracts male viewers, said Debby Beece,
the network's president for programming. In January "Sex
Talk" tied with Oxygen's 8 p.m. movie as the network's
top-rated show, attracting a total of 4.2 million viewers
that month.
Ms. Johanson receives 80,000 to 100,000 calls each show,
her producer, Julie Smith, said, though only 12 to 20 go on
the air. (The show has a Web site: www.talksexwithsue
.com.) The behind-the-scenes crew of 17 includes screeners
who weed out drunks and repetition, as well as a few
volunteers who try out sex toys for Ms. Johanson's reviews.
Ms. Johanson said she relied on constant research and a
bank of specialists for the questions that stump her.
But Deborah Tolman, director of the Center for Research on
Gender and Sexuality at San Francisco State University,
said the short-answer television format could be
misleading. (Ms. Johanson sometimes elaborates on an answer
or corrects herself on later shows after being alerted by
viewer e-mail messages.) And Ms. Tolman said some of Ms.
Johanson's answers were too limited to the individual
questioner and did not take into account broader issues
like sex roles and cultural expectations.
Still, she praised the show for "defusing the taboo nature
of just speaking about sexuality." Ms. Johanson said she
intended to encourage people to know what they were doing
and never to "let sex just happen - always practice safer
sex."
"I regard sex as a gift from God," she added. "We're the
only ones that really are able to enjoy sex, so we have an
obligation to learn about it and enjoy it."
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/19/arts/television/19SEX.html?ex=1078218851&ei=1&en=8fb63bf09d3ed864
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