Carmen Wilson
Appearances
Campus Files
Hot for Chancellor - Part 2
We would make maybe one video a year occasionally. I think there was once where we had two in a calendar year, but they were nine months apart. I mean, so this is not something that we did all the time.
Campus Files
Hot for Chancellor - Part 2
If I were still pursuing a career in academia, we never would have posted them anywhere. But once we had made that decision, it's like, OK, well, we could post them behind paywalls because that's the safest place.
Campus Files
Hot for Chancellor - Part 2
Three people cared. Literally, we had like three followers. And so, you know, we would sell one a day or two a day and like, ooh, that's exciting. We made $1.20 or something like that.
Campus Files
Hot for Chancellor - Part 2
And we had over a million views of, I don't know, we had three or four videos, so combined over a million views.
Campus Files
Hot for Chancellor - Part 2
I didn't really process what that meant. We know that Joe is very recognizable. Wherever we go literally in the world, we're likely to have somebody come up and say, oh, Joe Gao. You know, we're in Mexico and there were three couples at the resort. Oh, Joe from La Crosse, you know. And so we know he's recognizable. So there was this sense that, yeah, probably somebody's going to see it.
Campus Files
Hot for Chancellor - Part 2
But if they're there, if they're on Ex Hamster, they're going to Ex Hamster to watch porn. So what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.
Campus Files
Hot for Chancellor - Part 2
He gets an email that you've been fired as chancellor and the president said he was filing a complaint to have him removed of his tenure position.
Campus Files
Hot for Chancellor - Part 2
You know, I was shocked. It was immediate, like, crisis mode. Like, how do we deal with this right now? Because this is going to be a big story, and we have families, right? And so we needed to address that. Very early the next morning on the 28th, we called our families. So I called my daughter first because I knew she would be up because she's got little ones.
Campus Files
Hot for Chancellor - Part 2
And then I waited to call my mom, and she lives in a little town north of here, and she walks with her lady friends in the morning time. And so I called her, and she was walking with her lady friends. And I said, well, I can wait till you get home, and you can call me back. She's like, no, you can tell me now. And so I told her and she was shocked, but she's like, we'll get through this.
Campus Files
Hot for Chancellor - Part 2
Well, she gets off the phone and her lady friends had already heard.
Campus Files
Hot for Chancellor - Part 2
Yeah. It's crisis mode. It was just... Constant responding to emails in the airport, on the plane before they shut the door, on the plane after you land, in the Delta lounge. I clearly remember going through Joe's phone, his email, and all of the people that we had not responded to. And I would click on one and I would call them and I would say, Hi, I'm Carmen Wilson. I'm Joe Gao's wife.
Campus Files
Hot for Chancellor - Part 2
He can talk to you now if you want. and handing the phone to him. And then he would say his bit and then we'd do the next one and the next one and the next one. And by the time we got home, we had gotten through everybody, but it was a long day.
Campus Files
Hot for Chancellor - Part 2
Not like that, no. I mean, it was just so sudden and overwhelming and unexpected. I mean, you know, we both lost a parent, but it was that you have some preparation for this. There was no prep, right? It was just like the 27th, he gets like eight o'clock, gets the letter. The 28th at eight o'clock, the phone starts ringing and doesn't stop.
Campus Files
Hot for Chancellor - Part 2
We haven't made any content since well before this whole thing broke. And I would say that people, I think, sometimes think that, oh, we make all this content. The reality is, is we would make maybe one video a year and we funded it all. And I don't know that we will continue to make sexual content. We might do other things like the cooking piece. We really enjoy that.
Campus Files
Hot for Chancellor - Part 2
I would say at this point, between OnlyFans and LoyalFans, you know, we're looking at $2,000 to $3,000 a month.
Campus Files
Hot for Chancellor - Part 2
Good. You know, we're doing well. I think in many ways, this whole experience has brought us even closer together, you know, just because we've had to, stand unified against the critics, but we have a lot of support too. In the very beginning, we got actually snail mail from alumni and other people that we didn't even know saying, we support you, we think you're getting a raw deal. One alum said,
Campus Files
Hot for Chancellor - Part 2
sent a picture of her family Christmas card and on it she wrote, you know, my husband's from Germany and he doesn't understand what the fuss is about, right? We go out into the community and people come up to us all the time and say, you know, we're standing behind you. And so they've started to see us, you know, as an interesting couple.
Campus Files
Hot for Chancellor - Part 2
So the fact that their parents or legislators think we're corrupting the young minds That's not been our experience when we interact with students. And so that's fun.
Campus Files
Hot for Chancellor - Part 2
I would say losing my career. Actually, I don't know if it's traumatic, but really sad. It's something that I had to grieve. You know, we're putting the videos out was shocking. I mean, well, the fallout was shocking and we dealt with it and we're great. But losing that career goal, that was sad.
Campus Files
Hot for Chancellor - Part 2
In many ways, I would say yes. Again, we think of what we're doing as sex positive. We'd like to have good conversations about it in whatever of this whole complex story ranging from vegan cooking to positive sexuality to navigating sexuality with your partner to free speech to whatever it is. We enjoy that conversation. And if we can continue to have those conversations
Campus Files
Hot for Chancellor - Part 2
in places, that would be our purpose. And I think that's really invigorating.
Campus Files
Hot for Chancellor - Part 2
My doctorate is in counseling psychology, and I had intended to be a therapist. And as it turned out, my husband at the time got a job at University of Wisconsin-La Crosse.
Campus Files
Hot for Chancellor - Part 2
Then I moved up here and there were not therapy jobs, but there were teaching jobs at UWL. So I started teaching in the psychology department and really loved it. And as I got into a faculty role, a tenured and full professor, I became involved in lots of service activities, chaired the search for the chancellor.
Campus Files
Hot for Chancellor - Part 2
This is neither of our first marriages. We've both been married before. And, you know, we knew what we wanted sexually. Our partners were not always on the same page. So that when we got together as we were older, it's sort of like, what do you want sexually? Let's not play any games here. Let's make sure we're on the same page.
Campus Files
Hot for Chancellor - Part 2
I said, stuff. And she said, like sports? I said, yeah, like that. You're going to need a tripod. Sure enough, we did need a tripod.
Campus Files
Hot for Chancellor - Part 2
We were interested in involving other people in our sex life and experimented with things. And we tried polyamory for about 10 seconds. And that works for many people, did not work for us. We went to a swingers club. That was just a comedy of errors, not for us. And so it's like, well, how can we get other people involved in a way that there's no weirdness, no emotional struggles?
Campus Files
Hot for Chancellor - Part 2
And we are the Sexy Happy Couple. And this is Sexy Healthy Cooking.
Campus Files
Hot for Chancellor - Part 2
Well, hire a professional. And so we did hire some professional sex workers out where it's legal. In Nevada. In Nevada. Moonlight Bunny Ranch.
Campus Files
Hot for Chancellor - Part 2
And then he hired a male stripper for me. We were in Chicago. And that was fun. And this guy worked in the industry. And he said, well, you know, there's this Exotica, which is a sex convention. There's talent there. And you could call an agent and say, we want to shoot some video with some of your talent.
Campus Files
Hot for Chancellor - Part 2
To some degree, it's just to humanize the talent in the industry because, you know, we have a talent person, we interview them. and to realize that these are highly educated people, often married, in relationships. They go to the grocery store just like you and I do. So it's fun to get to know them.
Campus Files
Hot for Chancellor - Part 2
Shake, shake, shake. Shake, shake, shake. Shake your booty. And then I'm just going to mash this up.
Campus Files
Hot for Chancellor - Part 2
I think we were a very unusual couple for them. And the cooking piece, I think they enjoyed that because it was something different than what they typically do.
Campus Files
Hot for Chancellor - Part 2
When I started in academia and when Joe got to be chancellor, campuses were really given the autonomy to decide what was best for them and to work towards those things. And then it shifted the people in charge, the boards, the president of the system, whomever would say, no, we're going to do it, you're going to do it this way. And in part, that was influenced by legislators.
Campus Files
Hot for Chancellor - Part 2
This is what you educators are going to do. And that's just not tenable.
Campus Files
Hot for Chancellor - Part 2
Literally like two sentences. I mean, he didn't even have the courtesy to call me on the phone. But it was just, it was so disheartening and disrespectful. And that was really the straw that did it for me.