Media Releases

Sexual diversity centre at U of T to give citizenship award to renowned Oxygen network sex educator Sue Johanson

September 9, 2010

TORONTO, ON — The Mark S. Bon­ham Cen­tre for Sex­u­al Diver­si­ty Stud­ies, locat­ed at Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege, Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to, is pleased to announce renowned sex­u­al edu­ca­tor and coun­sel­lor Sue Johan­son as the recip­i­ent of its 2010 Cit­i­zen­ship Award. The award will be pre­sent­ed to Sue Johan­son at a recep­tion to be held on Sep­tem­ber 22nd, 2010 at Croft Chap­ter House, Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege, 15 Kings Col­lege Cir­cle, Toron­to, event to begin at 4:30pm and award pre­sen­ta­tion at 5:30 pm.

The Cit­i­zen­ship Award was estab­lished by the Bon­ham Cen­tre in 2007 to rec­og­nize an indi­vid­ual or group that has made a sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tion to the advance­ment and edu­ca­tion of issues sur­round­ing sex­u­al edu­ca­tion in Cana­da.  Past award recip­i­ents have includ­ed film­mak­er John Greyson, lawyer Bar­bara Find­lay, and Cana­di­an Union of Pub­lic Employ­ees (CUPE). .

“Sue Johan­son embod­ies the essence of the Cit­i­zen­ship Award. Her ground­break­ing work in sex edu­ca­tion has cre­at­ed new space in the pub­lic sphere for open and engaged dis­cus­sions of sex and sex­u­al­i­ty,” says Bren­da Coss­man, Direc­tor of the Bon­ham Cen­tre. For the last 35 years, Sue Johan­son has pro­vid­ed frank and hon­est sex­u­al edu­ca­tion to thou­sands of Cana­di­ans through her lec­tures, radio pro­grams, and the Sun­day Night Sex Show on tele­vi­sion. Johan­son first achieved pop­u­lar­i­ty as a sex edu­ca­tor and ther­a­pist on rock radio sta­tion Q107 in Toron­to with a two hour phone-in show ded­i­cat­ed to advice on sex. The show was called Sun­day Night Sex Show and exist­ed for four­teen years between 1984 and 1998. In 1985 this radio pro­gram was turned into a TV talk show with the same name on the com­mu­ni­ty access tele­vi­sion, Rogers Cable. In 1996 it became a nation­al show on the Women’s Tele­vi­sion Net­work The U.S. ver­sion of Sun­day Night Sex Show, called Talk Sex with Sue Johan­son, pro­duced espe­cial­ly for Amer­i­can audi­ences, debuted in Novem­ber 2002 on Oprah Winfrey’s Oxy­gen tele­vi­sion net­work.  It rapid­ly became the U.S network’s most watched tele­vi­sion pro­gram.

Though retired from radio and tele­vi­sion today, Sue Johan­son remains active as a pub­lished author of sev­er­al books on sex­u­al edu­ca­tion and lec­tures wide­ly at uni­ver­si­ties across Cana­da and the U.S. Johan­son’s work edu­cat­ing and inform­ing the pub­lic about birth con­trol and sex­u­al health earned her Canada’s high­est hon­or, appoint­ment to the Order of Cana­da in 2001.

The Mark S. Bon­ham Cen­tre for Sex­u­al Diver­si­ty Stud­ies (SDS) at Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege, Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to offers an under­grad­u­ate pro­gram, a col­lab­o­ra­tive grad­u­ate pro­gram (M.A. and Ph.D.), hosts aca­d­e­m­ic and com­mu­ni­ty events, and pro­motes research into sex­u­al­i­ty. Cre­at­ed in 1998, the SDS pro­gram has estab­lished itself as one of the pre­mier such pro­grams and cen­tres in the world forg­ing con­nec­tions among fac­ul­ty, under­grad­u­ates, grad­u­ate stu­dents, and com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers inter­est­ed in ques­tions about how we under­stand sex­u­al diver­si­ty and sex­u­al prac­tices in soci­ety.

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For more infor­ma­tion, please con­tact:

Wendy Koslow
Mark S. Bon­ham Cen­tre for Sex­u­al Diver­si­ty Stud­ies
Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to
416–978-6276
sexual.diversity@utoronto.ca
www.utoronto.ca/sexualdiversity

Chris­tine Elias
Fac­ul­ty of Arts & Sci­ence
Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to
416–946-5499
christine.elias@utoronto.ca