Penis. Vagina. Boobs. Balls. Dirty Sanchez. Eiffel Tower. Cleveland Steamer. Rusty Trombone. Jack Hammer. Reverse Cowgirl. Skeletor. Leap Frog. Italian Chandelier. Black Bee. Harvey Wallbanger. Drilling for Oil.
By Eiffel Tower, most people would be blushing or giggling, but the ever calm, collected, accepting and informative Sue Johanson can go on for longer than you can hold your breath. While in town to speak at the University of Calgary’s Sexual Health Awareness Week, the sage of the Sunday Night Sex Show sat down for a powwow with the Gauntlet.
Gauntlet: You started your work as a sex educator during the ’70s, when there was a lot of focus on sexual liberation, how did that influence you?
Sue Johanson: I don’t think we thought about it in the terms of sexual liberation. Young people were being involved in sexual activity at an earlier age: with the advent of the birth control pill, with the advent of a lot more education, information and ideas and people talking about sex for the first time.
G: How exactly did your career as a sex educator start?
SJ: I started because I ran a birth control clinic for kids and realized these kids hadn’t a clue what they were doing, so I decided I better teach it. I went back to university–it was all in the states–got the papers I needed to teach sex and started traveling around the country teaching primarily in high schools in those days and then high schools got a budget crunch, so we moved on and up to universities, which I prefer, because you are adult now I can talk very explicitly, and your parents aren’t going to freak out. In fact they’re probably going to say “thank you god.”
G: What topics do you come across most often in a university setting?
SJ: The presentation changes every year and it’s based on the ‘Dear Sue’ question cards and you can write out questions about sex and I use those to put together next year’s presentation, so it does change. Last year the presentation was primarily about non-stop birth control, being able to go on the pill, stay on the pill, not go off it and never have a period. Like hello? Is this great? This year, unfortunately, it’s anal sex.
G: I understand you aren’t a big fan of anal sex.
SJ: I don’t really care, it really doesn’t bother me one way or the other as long as you know what you’re doing. As long as you’re practicing safer sex and as long as there’s no power control exploitation of either partner then it’s up to you. It’s very much up to you but I want you to have the right to say “Nuh uh, no way, we’re not going there. I don’t want to do that, if you want to do that, find yourself someone else, it ain’t gonna be me.”
G: What, for you, is the most important message to get out there?
SJ: I think probably to know what you’re doing, think ahead, plan ahead, never let sex just happen and always practice safer sex.
G: You have your own line of sex toys, the Royal Toy Line. How active was your role in the project, is it just an endorsement deal or did you design them?
SJ: We designed them and a man approved them. Part of them is made in Germany, part of them is made in Japan and they’re put together in the United States for Cal Exotica. We designed them because we really felt a lot of the sex toys out there are designed by men who haven’t got a clue! They don’t have an idea of what females really want or what females enjoy. So it was designed by a group of us who do the show. The idea was decent advertising–so the packaging hasn’t got blondes with big hair and big boobs with a come fuck me look on their face, we don’t do that at all–also they must be waterproof, they must be easy to clean, they must be quiet because people have kids or parents, and they must be durable.
G: You always manage to stay so calm during your shows, you take everything with a grain of salt. How good are you at keeping a straight face, how long can you swear without cracking a smile or losing your calm?
SJ: I work in prisons, it’s a volunteer job I do in Toronto. I work with guys, and they’ll put me together with 60 inmates. The first thing they’re going to do is take a look at me, they’re going to look at my age and then they’re going to let out a stream of bad language. Now I’m a nurse, and my husband says I can swear for 20 minutes straight and never say the same thing twice: so I just give it back to them and they go “oh my God,” and that’s it. They settle down, they’re just like pussy cats and I’ll never have a problem. Nothing phases me after that.
G: Last year at the U of C’s Sexual Health Awareness Week strippers were hired to perform and the Gauntlet printed a photo of one of them naked, there was huge uproar. What do you think of that?
SJ: Naked!? How naked was she? You know what I would rather ask the students what they thought because that’s more appropriate. What I think doesn’t matter, I’m not a student here. I would much prefer to know what the kids think. Were they embarrassed? Were they curious? Were they repulsed? Were they thinking it was the greatest thing going since sliced bread? I would loved to have heard a conversation between males and females on their attitudes towards it because I’d be willing to bet half of the guys were just as embarrassed as the females were and didn’t know how to deal with it and because they’re guys and the expectation is if you’re a guy you’re going to have a “hehehe go for it” attitude and that may not have been how they were feeling.
G: You were recently in the States doing a couple of talk shows, I was wondering what you think of the reemergence of family values and the conservative right?
SJ: I’m very concerned about it. Family values? Whose family? Whose values? We all have our own family we all have our own values and so what’s right for you may not be right for me and you’ve got to decide what’s right for you and I cannot impose my values on you, that’s not right. So what I want to do is give you information so you can talk to your friends, find out how they feel, What’s going on with them and then you decide what’s right for you.