August cheers. A University of Wisconsin-LaCrosse crowd cheers for Joe Gow and his wife when he announnced plans to retire this spring. Surprise: The UW Board fired him three months later for explicit videos promoting “healthy sexuality.”
Regents accused of igoring free speech values
LACROSSE, Wis. – University regents who fired Joe Gow as chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-LaCrosse are hypocrites who talk a good line about free expression but don’t walk the talk, Gow said. “I thought at least the board, given their staunch support of free speech, would be a little more understanding,” Gow told a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter. “Clearly that’s not the case.” Gow was fired for producing sexually explicit videos with his wife on enjoying post-prime sex. He’s 63, she 56. In recent years, Gow noted, the Regents have championed freedom of expression in producing annual reports, conducted a student survey and held free speech events across the state. “I thought at least the Board, given their staunch support of free speech, would be a little more understanding. But clearly that’s not the case.”
Until now: A closet sexuality advocate
Gow and his wife wrote about their sex lives in books in 2017 and 2018 under pen names and calling themselves “the sexy happy couple.” Although advocating a robust “sex-positive” life, the books weren’t salacious. Then they decided to make the same statement about sexuality in explicit videos for online audiences, again not using their names. They described themselves “in executive positions at two well-known organizations in the U.S.” They explained they had come together in mid-life following divorces from “spouses who didn’t share their need to continue growing sexually.” There was no mention of LaCrosse or of Wisconsin. not even a hint. The scenes were shot professionally at far-away places — like exotic vacation spots. In at least one video they were in the La Vegas home of a well-known porn performer. Indeed, over eight years of shooting there were polygymous scenes with porn stars. In cooking episodes, which were frequent, they had porn-star guests helping prepare vegetarian meals.
Suited for campus. Chancellor for17 years. Kept sex books and videos apart from campus duties.
Gow: “I had assumed better of regents”
In the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel interview, Gow said he misjudged the 18-member Board of Regrnts. The regents had been on record supporting free expression, and Gow decided the time was right to come out. “I felt a little bit more open about ‘let’s raise these free speech issues and see how the Board responds,’ and now we know,” he said. In one sense, thee risk seemed low. Gow had only a few months left in his chancellorship and was planning g to return to the relative obscurity of professorship.”I felt very confident that these videos and books could be in the world and people would not take issue with it,” he said. That was a misjudgment, he conceded: “I did not expect that we’d end up where we are now.”
Citizen rights
“I would say that anything that I do or my wife and I do, we do as citizens in the United States, who have the freedom of First Amendment to the Constitution, to create and publish books and videos that explore consensual adult sexuality,” he said. U.S. courts have confirmed that nudity as well as sexual expression are protected as artistic expression, albeit for allowable shields for children. Gow said he didn’t know how the regents became aware of the videos. The videos had been posted on commercial web platforms about two months, including the YouTube channel Healthy Sexual Cooking. No one at UW system higher-levels or on the Board of Regents had asked him about the videos, Gow said. Through the grapevine he learned that the regents, tipped to the videos, were convening an emergency meeting December 27 about them but didn’t invite him.