A University of Wisconsin professor is still raking in more than $90,000 a year, despite being demoted over X-rated “vegan cooking” videos he and his wife make with high profile porn stars.
Joe Gow was fired last year from his role as chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, but allowed to stay on as a communications professor. His annual income dropped from $263,000 to approximately $92,000.
And despite other educations making bank from adult videos, Gow says his XXX career isn’t paying the bills — calling it a hobby.
Gow, 64, is currently not allowed to set foot on campus and The Post has confirmed he is still on paid leave.
He will face a hearing later this year to decide whether he can return to the classroom. In the meantime, he is collecting his professor salary — and still pumping out X-rated content at a rapid clip.
Last month the interim chancellor, Gow’s replacement, filed three charges against him, accusing him of unethical conduct, failing to cooperate with an investigation and using the school’s computers to produce pornographic materials.
The charges are connected to two racy e-books Gow and his wife wrote under pseudonyms: “Monogamy with Benefits: How Porn Enriches Our Relationship” and “Married with Benefits — Our Real-Life Adult Industry Adventures.”
Gow insists the videos and the books never mentioned UW-La Crosse or his role at the university.
He believes the Regents Board violated his free speech rights when they fired him from being chancellor, and that being relieved of his teaching duties will further harm his career.
“They want to fire me as a tenured faculty member,” Gow told The Post.
“But what I do with my wife — on my own time and using my own equipment — is none of their business.”
Gow is married to former UW-La Crosse professor Carmen Wilson. Known online as the “Sexy Happy Couple,” they promote themselves as a “sex-positive couple promoting free expression.”
While many of their videos are one-and-one sessions, they often make threesome or group videos with porn stars.
Gow insists the content is as ethical as possible. “Nobody is cheating on anybody,” he says. “This is us enjoying our sex life openly and honestly.
“We are in love, and we have fun together. People don’t understand it, and it makes them uncomfortable; that’s why they want me gone.”
But his removal has divided the student body and the city of La Crosse, sparking a debate over whether a porn actor — who once paid a veteran porn star thousands of dollars to speak to students on campus — is fit to teach young adults.
Some students say Gow is a good teacher who shouldn’t be judged for his porn movies. “Sex work is real work,” student Hannah Hogan wrote on an online petition. “Let the man live.”
But in a letter to the editor of the La Crosse Tribune, resident Liza Gilbert said Gow is unfit to mold the malleable minds of college students.
“The porn industry would not exist without sex trafficking,” Gilbert wrote. “Gow is perpetuating and profiting from an industry that victimizes both women and men, many of them minors.”
Gow will face a hearing later this year. He says he has not hired an attorney and intends to represent himself.
“The burden of proof is on them to prove that I did something wrong,” he says, “And I don’t know how they’re going to do that.”
Mark Pitsch, a spokesperson for the UW system, did not return The Post’s requests for comment.
Gow acknowledges his sex work isn’t lucrative, but is more of a “hobby” to enhance his marriage. His porn work has not come close to replenishing the lost income from his demotion.
But Gow insists he is proud of his on-camera sex adventures.
“I love what we’ve created,” he says. “This has brought my wife and I a lot of openness. It has enhanced our relationship. Why would I feel shame about that?”
