Controversy Erupts Over Nina Hartley Talk At UW-La Crosse

LA CROSSE, Wis.—It seemed a simple enough event: Veteran porn star Nina Hartley was invited to address the University of Wisconsin - La Crosse during its Free Speech Week, which took place the last week in October, but due to prior engagements, Hartley couldn't make it that week, so university Chancellor Joe Gow rescheduled her for November 1, paying her speaking fee out of his office's discretionary fund, which is the repository for "interest earned on funds raised by self-sustaining campus operations such as dining services, parking fees and residence halls," according to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. But this is, after all, Wisconsin, which just got rid of its ultra-conservative Gov. Scott Walker by a mere two percent of the vote, and which has been involved since 2015 in a lawsuit accusing the state's Republicans of gerrymandering voting districts to ensure that their party would maintain majorities in the state legislature. Hence, it's not overly surprising that when news of Hartley's appearance became better known, the shit hit the fan in various ways, forcing Gow to reimburse the discretionary fund with his own money and write a letter of explanation as to why he brought Hartley to the campus in the first place. AVN spoke with Nina Hartley to get her take on the whole situation—one that she'd been largely unaware of thanks to her extensive traveling, but which was reported by Newsweek and a variety of Wisconsin media. "He's the nicest guy!" Hartley exclaimed when informed of Gow's bad press. "I hate that he's getting grief for it. He could not have been more polite, more honest—he's just a kind decent person." Hartley's lecture, which was titled "Fantasy vs. Reality: A critical view of adult media," took place in the evening, with about 70 people attending, due to the fact that the talk hadn't been announced in the media, but on digital signage all over the campus—another choice Gow got shit for. But according to Hartley, in his introduction before her talk, "he mentioned that he thinks the university should be a place for free speech all year around, and he also went back to the founding statement of the university, which was to 'promote intellectual curiosity and exploration.'" "I did expect more people to attend, but they didn't advertise it a lot, so I don't know how many students actually knew about it," Hartley said. "And of course, it was a weekday and it was optional—and I think he might have been trying to head off any protesters that might have taken offense to it." Hartley was also the honoree at a luncheon that took place earlier that day, whose attendees were largely from the Women's Studies and Psychology departments, as well as a number of the campus's LGBTQ activists. So... what was Hartley's talk all about? "I talked about the importance of realizing that all media is designed to get your attention and to create a response and to get you to do something like purchase or masturbate; that's one of the things," she explained. "I talked a lot about how important it is to lengthen as much as possible the moment between impulse and action, because the longer time you have between impulse and action, the fewer negative side effects are likely to occur when you can decrease impulsivity and increase planning. I put up a list of all the things that might happen from being sexually active, the bad and the good; you know, humiliation, STIs, love, intimacy, scabies, death. I urged caution. I wasn't there to kill anybody's idea of sex being fun, but just did urge caution when undertaking an adult activity. Adults seek to minimize their risks and maximize their success, and one does that by taking a moment. "There really weren't any negative questions from the group, but a couple of women at the very end did ask about porn being used to get women to understand what's expected of them; could that be something bad? In response, here's the statement that I made: 'It is imprudent for an adult to render themselves helpless in public,' and I said, 'Of course, it doesn't give anyone the right to hurt or harm you or to assault you; of course it doesn't. But that being said, prudent adults do not render themselves helpless in public by whatever means, without a sober partner or friends,' and the young woman did not like hearing that, because she wants to go out and have drinks with her friends and not have to worry, and I didn't push back on her too much, but yes, of course one wants to go out with friends and drink and have fun, but prudent adults—and these students were all adult, over 18—don't render themselves helpless in public because things might happen. You might break an ankle falling off a curb, you can get hit by a car, get robbed, you could be assaulted in any number of ways, and I don't know—I don't think she liked hearing that message. I don't think she was convinced. But that was the biggest pushback from the students present in the room at the time." No, that pushback showed up in the local press over the next few days. "Although I wasn't opposed to Nina Hartley coming to our campus, I thought spending $5,000 out of student fees was a little excessive," La Crosse senior and Sigma Tau Gamma chapter president Kyle Beckwith told the far-rightwing website Campus Reform. "Paying an adult entertainment star several thousands of dollars for a 90-minute lecture to 70 students appeared wasteful... Regardless of how you feel about the content of the event, using a large sum of money from our student fees wasn’t fiscally responsible. Additionally, it was clear that the university was apprehensive about advertising the event because of its controversy, which could be interpreted as a misalignment of the university’s values." As noted earlier, Hartley's payment did not come from student fees, although several "news" stories claimed it did; most notably the one by TheRacquet.org's "Diversity, Social Justice, and Inclusion Reporter" Marissa Widdifield. "The pornography industry profits off images depicting sexual violence, non-consensual sex, or abuse during sexual acts and normalizes and desensitizes the behavior through increased consumption," Widdifield claimed. "Not only does it relate to sexual violence and rape, but pornography is directly linked to sex-trafficking," she added, quoting anti-porn activist Dr. Gain [sic] Dines. "I would like to believe that men are not innately rapists but that there’s something in the social environment that’s fueling these behaviors. This is the consumption of pornography." "Sex trafficking didn't come up in the talk, it came up in the luncheon," Hartley noted, "and they thought that I was flippant about that, and I informed them that the statistics on trafficking are highly politicized: who gets funding, what gets funded, who gets to do the questioning, what are the questions asked; who is behind all the media accounts of trafficking, and so I reminded them, if you live within 100 miles of the border, you are supposedly at risk; that's where we get some of those inflated numbers about tens of thousands of people 'at risk' for trafficking... I pulled out my little story that the LAPD would so love to hear from a young woman locking herself in a bathroom at a porn set, saying, 'Please come and get me!' Boy, they would live for that—but it's never happened. So yeah, there was that, at the lunch; someone asked me about trafficking in porn, and I reminded them that we're legal and have no need to coerce or lure or lie our way into people who want to work in our business. "I spoke a lot about the difference between watching something and taking action. I said watching porn's not bad; I said you could be uncomfortable about porn, you could hate it, you don't have to like it, you don't have to watch it. It's okay that you don't like it and don't watch it, that's fine, but one of my biggest things I always say to young people is, 'Eventually, you and another person will be alone in a room together. No amount of media removes personal responsibility for your actions in that moment.'" Another anti-Hartley/Gow commentator was La Crosse Tribune columnist Bob Atwell, who (perhaps inadvertently) made it quite clear on which side of the free speech divide he stood. "Pornography is a horrible hill on which to plant the flag of free expression," Atwell wrote earlier today. "In a recent op-ed, Chancellor Gow expressed admiration for Ms. Hartley’s strange comment that 'fantasy is what we want; reality is what we negotiate.' I hope Dr. Gow comes to understand that there is much to pity and nothing to admire in this phrase. I suspect she is fantasizing about negotiating with the reality of life as porn star too old to be much in demand. Rebranding herself as a paid advocate for sexual health isn’t going to restore her surrendered dignity. No amount of talking about condoms and consent will undo the damage she has done to herself and others. "I wonder if she or Dr. Gow have ever talked with a woman whose husband is trapped in the addictive fantasies he longs to escape? Has she ever thought about their children?" Atwell continued. "Do we really think that pervasive adult pornography plays no role in the proliferation of child pornography? How is a porn user supposed to know how old the person behind the image is?" All this horseshit did have its intended effect. Chancellor Gow wrote a statement of apology which was published by local NBC affiliate WEAU-TV, which read in part: "I'm writing to let you know how sorry I am for the sensationalistic media attention UWL has received as a result of a speaker I brought to campus to help us celebrate Free Speech Week. Regrettably, in many media headlines and accounts the speaker's profession completely overwhelmed her message. I admit that in inviting her to present at our university I was naive about this possibility and I have learned much from it... Also, in response to several requests from students, parents, and community members I am arranging for a speaker from the non-profit group 'Fight the New Drug' to make a presentation on our campus later this month... This will be another way to promote free expression on our campus, and I look forward to attending." Hopefully, Gow will be inspired to write another letter of apology after Haley Halverson, or whoever Fight the New Drug sends, gets done spreading her group's lies about sexual content. Pictured: Nina Hartley, with Chancellor Joe Gow (inset)