February 21, 2005
Sexual harassment by a female gorilla
It seems that Koko, a female Gorilla in San Mateo, California, has been accused of sexual harassment by two female workers, who have filed a lawsuit against the Gorilla Foundation after being fired for failure to expose their breasts to her.
The suit, in any case, says that Patterson would interpret hand movements by Koko as a demand to see exposed human nipples. She warned Alperin and Keller that their employment with the foundation would suffer, the suit says, if they "did not indulge Koko's nipple fetish."Koko, on the other hand, also claims discrimination because of her preference for females.
During at least three visits, the suit says, "Patterson communicated to Alperin that exposing one's breasts to Koko is a normal component to developing a personal bond with the gorilla." - Source.
Koko -- older sister of Kubi, who presided over the zoo's Gorilla World exhibit until he died last year -- now has a vocabulary of more than 1,000 words in American Sign Language, according to foundation claims that are much debated among scientists.The subject of books, videos and documentary films, the hairy linguist participated in what was called the first interspecies chat on the Internet in 1998, attracting more than 8,000 AOL users.
San Francisco attorney Stephen Sommers, who is representing Alperin and Keller, has a transcript of that chat.
"There's a history with this nipple thing," he said, leafing through the transcript and pointing out the word "nipple" -- which he'd highlighted in pink -- each time it appeared.
Posted by Susan R at February 21, 2005 07:47 PM