You can be a university president 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 was a tough lesson for University of Wisconsin-La Crosse President Joe Gow, 63. He was recently canned after it was discovered that he and his wife, Carmen Wilson, 56, were living a double life as an online porn star with a special proclivity for selective meat consumption.
They advertised themselves as a “passionate couple who cook, talk, and film extraordinary sex scenes with top adult stars” powered by plants.
Surprisingly, Gow was stunned to hear of his dismissal.
After all, he never mentioned his school and made the video in his off time.
I haven't seen the video myself, so I can assume that the only identifiable information he shared was: his face.
In a ridiculous interview with the London Times, he complained that he had lost friends and that his glowing profile in the local paper had been scrapped and replaced with an article about his dismissal.
“It's interesting. I used to be someone you looked up to and now I'm someone you criticize, which is really unusual,” he told The Times.
Granted, he's not that stupid.
Friends can be fickle, but employers rarely are.
A respected leadership position like his requires credibility and a certain level of professionalism. He has built trust with his students, colleagues and parents, many of whom may see porn production as incompatible with the task of shaping young minds.
You can break taboos and live a free-spirited lifestyle for as long as you want. But when you put your performances online and establish an Internet footprint dedicated to your own physical pleasure, you can't expect anonymity.
From the first post, your online alter ego and real life are on an inevitable, self-inflicted collision course.
why? Because you can't regulate who watches, and you certainly can't control their intentions. But you are the one who effectively invited them.
Mr Goh's case is becoming increasingly common.
We live in a creator economy, where people can upload with abandon. Some people want to make extra money with a side hustle, while others are desperate for recognition from strangers.
Although motivations vary, platforms like OnlyFans have grown exponentially since the pandemic, attracting more creators and more voyeurs.
In March, a New York City administrative judge was fired for having an OnlyFans profile. In one case, Susannah Gibson, a candidate for the Virginia House of Delegates, was defeated after it was revealed that she had sex with her husband online.
This fall, it was revealed that two female teachers at the same Missouri high school, Brianna Coppage and Megan Gaither, had at one point produced online pornography together.
Copage was suspended after someone posted about her extracurricular activities on her Facebook community account.
Even though she resigned and is making a lot of money with her racy content, she still foolishly thought that what happened on my porn page would stay on my porn page.
“This was not intended for students to see, and students should not see this. Just as adults are still posting both mine and Megan's in local Facebook groups.” [Gaither] It's something to show a child, and that's not appropriate,” Copage said.
There's the age-old movie trope of a horny teenager going to a strip club only to see her math teacher take center stage.
Embarrassed, she buys the students' silence by giving them a lap dance, but it's hard to tremble enough to silence the internet.
Gaither shot the video only from behind, using an alias, and porn's Hercule Poirot pieced it together.
“There's nothing in our contract that was violated other than me being a role model,” she said without a hint of self-awareness.
Certainly, we live in a more permissive culture, and there are those (probably not parents of teenage children) who are trying to normalize sex work.
There's a reason Chris Rock tried to keep his daughter away from telephone poles. This Paul is a stand-in for his pre-Internet Only Fans.
Gaither wants to return to the classroom, but admitted, in the biggest understatement of the century, that it would be “weird.”
Online, we can fabricate a reality where morality, shame, and standards don't exist. In the real world, the effects are very obvious. Don't just vote no. You'll probably get fired.
All is not lost for Gou. His wife said that they were held in the erati of desire.
“It's really refreshing because people in the industry are reaching out to us and inviting us to work with them,” Wilson said.
I'm sure Gau will bounce back and breathe new life into the naughty professor genre.
But it's his story, not his movie, and it should be a teachable moment. You can't write your own happy ending.
