You can either be the chancellor of a university or a vegan porn star.
But you can’t have your plant-based cake and eat it too. At least not at the same time.
That’s the hard lesson for University of Wisconsin-La Crosse chancellor Joe Gow, 63 who was recently canned when it was discovered that he and his wife Carmen Wilson, 56 were leading double lives as online porn stars with a particular kink for selective meat consumption.
They billed themselves as “passionate plant-powered couple cooking, conversing and shooting extraordinary sex scenes with top adult stars.”
Astonishingly, Gow was stunned over his firing.
After all, he never mentioned his school and made the videos in his off time.
Having not seen the videos myself, I can assume the only identifiable information he shared was his face.
In a ridiculous interview with the Times of London, he complained that he lost friends and went from being the object of a glowing profile in his local paper to having it scrapped and replaced with a story of his firing.
“It’s fascinating — before this I was someone you admired and now I’m someone who is reviled, it’s just a really unusual thing,” he told the UK Times.
Surely, he can’t be that daft.
Friends can be fickle, but employers rarely are.
An esteemed leadership position, like his, requires credibility and a level of professionalism. He’s building trust with students, colleagues and parents, many of whom might find porn production incompatible with the task of shaping young minds.
You can lead a taboo-bucking, libertine lifestyle all you want. But when you put performances online, establishing an internet footprint dedicated to your own carnal pleasure, you cannot expect anonymity.
From that initial posting, your online alter ego and real life are on an inevitable, self-inflicted collision course.
Why? Because you can’t regulate who tunes in — and you certainly can’t control their intentions. But you were the one who effectively invited them.
Gow’s case is becoming increasingly common.
We’re living in a creator economy — which allows people to upload with reckless abandon. Some want to make extra scratch with a side hustle and others are desperate to receive validation from perfect strangers.
The motivations differ but since the pandemic, platforms like OnlyFans have grown exponentially —drawing more creators and more voyeurs.
In March an administrative judge in NYC was fired for having an OnlyFans profile. There’s the case of losing Virginia House of Delegates candidate Susanna Gibson who was outed as performing online sex acts with her husband.
This fall, it was discovered that two female teachers at the same Missouri high school, Brianna Coppage and Megan Gaither, were making online porn — at one point, together.
Coppage was suspended after someone posted her extracurricular activities in a community Facebook account.
She resigned and is making bank with risqué content, but she still foolishly thought what happens on my porn page stays on my porn page.
“It was never meant for students to see, they shouldn’t be seeing this, and like adults are still posting in the local Facebook group both mine and Megan’s [Gaither] stuff for kids to see, which is not appropriate,” said Coppage.
There’s the age-old movie trope of horny teens going to a strip club only to see their math teacher taking the main stage.
Embarrassed, she gives the students a lap dance to buy their silence — but it’s tough to jiggle enough to silence the internet.
Gaither filmed her videos with an alias and only from the back, but some Hercule Poirot of porn pieced it together.
“There’s nothing in our contract besides being a role model that I have violated,” she said without a stitch of self awareness.
Sure, we live in a more permissive culture where some — likely not parents of teens — are trying to normalize sex work.
There’s a reason why Chris Rock did a bit about trying to keep his daughter off the pole. The pole being a pre-internet stand in for Only Fans.
Gaither wants to return to the classroom but in the understatement of the century, admitted that it would be “strange.”
Online, we can fabricate our reality where morals, shame or standards don’t exist. In the real world, consequences are very tangible. You don’t just get downvoted. Likely you get fired.
All is not lost for Gow. His wife said they’ve been embraced by the lust-erati.
“People in the industry have reached out to us to invite us to work with them, so that’s really refreshing,” Wilson said.
I’m sure Gow will land on his feet and breathe new life into the naughty professor genre.
But it’s his story, not his movies, that should be the teachable moment: You don’t get to write your own happy ending.