Arnold's Fables: What Koko Wants

My friend Dale Dougherty (editor and publisher of Maker Media) sent this to me for Boing Boing. He writes:

I just completed two plus hours of training in the prevention of sexual harassment. Thanks to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's flirtatious ways in his he-man days, California has a law (AB 1825) that "requires employers with more than 50 people to provide 2 hours of training and education to all supervisory employees." (Learning to spell 'harassment' correctly is a challenge itself - one 'r', not two, and two 's's; pronunciation is another issue.)

So I'm able to meet this requirement by taking an online course that teaches about "protected characteristics" and other terms. "Real-world" legal cases are presented throughout. At times, I thought I was reading Aesop's Fables, but with the "moral" of the story presented as multiple choice. Most of the lessons have the tone of a humorless teacher: "Employees should never use email or any business communication system to send or receive rumors or gossip, or to make disparaging or defamatory remarks about anyone." I felt like a student in the back of class wanting to say: "yeah, that never happens."

So I was surprised to read that the subject of one of these fables was Koko the Gorilla.

Case Study: Gorilla Suit

Kendra was a research associate for The Gorilla Foundation. As part of her duties, Kendra helped care for Koko, the sign-language talking gorilla.

Using sign language, Koko is able to communicate with humans. Over the years, Koko has repeatedly requested that female human visitors display their breasts to her. In fact, certain of Koko's hand movements were interpreted as a "demand" by Koko to see exposed human nipples.

Accordingly, when Koko made the signs about Kendra, Koko's primary caregiver instructed Kendra to expose her breasts to Koko as a way to bond with the great ape.

Although Kendra used to regularly dress in front of the pet parrot that lived in the Foundation's women's locker room, Kendra is uncomfortable with Koko's "demand."

This scenario is based on a 2005 case called Keller v. The Gorilla Foundation. Could Kendra complain that she was sexually harassed?

* No, because Kendra exposed herself to the Foundation's parrot and Koko wanted Kendra do the same thing.

* Probably not, because Koko is not a human.

* Only if she first "signs" to Koko that she will not indulge Koko's request.

* Yes, and the Foundation was required to take effective action to stop the harassment from continuing.

You can't make this stuff up, especially the detail about the pet parrot. David Pescovitz wrote about "Koko's Nipple Fetish" in 2005 on BoingBoing, citing the story in the San Francisco Chronicle. Now it has made itself into state-mandated training materials.

Note: I don't mean to make light of sexual harassment but, honestly, I don't work with gorillas.

• [ankh]

  Thank you Bren for the reality check.

  More stories?

  Too bad the decision didn’t recognize Koko as a responsible party, eh?

• [Connie H.]

  To paraphrase Dennis Moore, “This sexual harassment business is more complicated than at first glance.”

• [Gilbert Wham]

  Q: When can a 300lb gorilla see your tits?

  A: Any time it likes! Badum-tish!

  Thanks folks, I’m here all week…

• [Ryan]

  The commentary so far seems quite lacking of any anthropological insight though. Maybe we should be considering the cultural facets of human-gorilla communication, especially now that such communication is possible if at least with one gorilla in particular. Maybe I hold language to be such an important thing since I am a linguist, but I think it’s interesting that more inter-species communication.

  I’m kind of amused (or maybe this is the wrong word?) to read about discussion of sexual harassment when involving cross-cultural contacts. How would the request be taken from a culture of humans in which women don’t cover their breasts? Would such women asking to see your breasts be the same thing, or is it inherently a request that you become more like them?

  I’m not trying to pull some sort of “lab mice have feelings”-type PETA argument here, but I just feel like more needs to be said on the topic of interspecies interaction. The researchers there really aren’t just observing gorillas to see what they’re capable. Under the surface, they’re all taking part in an experiment of interspecies behavior and communication, so maybe they should get more experimental. Would Koko really kekeke about being shown some boobies, or would something else come of it?

• [lawguy]

  When you plan to have 100,000 supervisors spending two hours away from their main duties to focus on sexual harassment issues, it’s a no-brainer to include gorillas asking to see nipples as one of the real-life example.

  I suspect the company I work for (I’m the senior editor) created the online harassment program mentioned. Besides the Koko case from the news, we took the parrot part from another case where the Court actually explained that the “employer” (a hospital) was responsible for stopping the sexual harassment of its employees, whether the harasser is a co-worker, non-employee (an independent contractor doctor in that case), or even a parrot.

  The law requiring training AB 1825 (btw: for awhile I was keeping a blog going at http://ab1825.blogspot.com but there hasn’t been any news worth reporting about the law for months) created a demand for about 1.7 million California supervisors to be trained — to spend two hours training. (The company I work has been hired by the employers of over 100,000 of these potential students.)

  To keep adult minds engaged and to be respectful of their cooperation is a challenge that we tried to meet by using colorful, contemporary, and legally-significant real-life cases to educate and entertain the supervisors who take our course.

  The same training also includes examples about an unfortunately-obvious penile prothesis implant and avoiding disability discrimination, and the California Supreme Court case involving the writers of the Friends TV show who talked about masturbation and having sex with the stars, but weren’t responsible for sexually harassing an assistant who had to take notes about their offensive jokes, since the writers weren’t directing their sexual conduct to her.

  More recently, we reported on a case in which a San Diego crime lab wasn’t liable even though a female worker discovered her ex-boss’ stash of corpse porn, since, as the Court explained, “pornography depicting necrophilia might not have the same shocking overtones there” (you can see our story at http://www.lawroom.com/story.asp?STID=1730 online).

  Unfortunately for everyone’s productive time, the 10-second anti-harassment course (i.e., “treat everybody with respect”) is one hour and 59 minutes and 50 second short of the requirement set by the law signed by the people’s governor. Since it was our hope that people taking our course would not feel like it was a total fraking waste of time, our intent was to make it entertaining, informative, engaging, and memorable.

• [Bren]

  Yeah, ANKH. I can share more.
  IMO, I would have liked to see them put Koko on the stand. She was a direct witness and can testify. Of course, there is always the risk of perjury. She did lie before and claim Michael broke the sink, when she obviously had done the deed.

  You just can’t punish a gorilla with jail time when they already live in a cage though. Punishments they abhor are 1) being squirted with water. 2) having a snake or iguana in their cage. (That is how we got them from one place to another when they were being too stubborn to move.)

  Michael would lie too, but you could tell he was joking. One time, when Barbara commented that the place was stinky, he said “Brenda did it” (my name sign, followed by the ‘do’ sign) and laughed first. I was around the corner in the kitchen and only heard him, the Barb laughing. Barb told me what he said. We all were cracking up at that point.

  To clarify my post above, now that I have read the links, “Penny” is the supervisor referenced in the story. Francine Grace Penelope Patterson. She goes by Penny.

  The Gorilla Foundation is her baby. She started with the Gorillas while at Stanford, and then moved them out- leaving in a protest over the university’s refusal to stop their experiments on monkeys.

• [madhaus]

  You know, it’s humorless corporations — way back in the ’80s — that made me write this.

• [mellowknees]

  wow – who knew that Koko was such a perv?

• [anthonys82]

  so which answer was right? i’m confused

• [Anaxaforminges]

  It seems to me that Koko can demand whatever the hell he wants. If the Foundation says to take off your top to satisfy Koko, then the Foundation is guilty of sexual harassment.

  So, “None of the above” was the correct answer.

• [Chickie Pants]

  @anaxaforminges

  I don’t think they properly clarified this in the article, but Koko is a female. So she’s not just a perv, she’s a lesbian perv. That’s hot and wrong all at the same time.

• [satman]

  quote…
  Learning to spell ‘harassment’ correctly is a challenge itself – one ‘r’, not two, and two ‘s’s; pronunciation is another issue.

  Especially if you live in the south and hear it as “Her Ass Meant”

  I am so going to hell for that.

• [Mithras]

  I would guess that the answer is yes, it is harassment. In the facts as presented, Kendra was not made aware that disrobing for Koko was a condition of employment, and doing so is not the usual responsibility of someone caring for a gorilla.

• [lamarlowe]

  In general, BS “training” classes like this are designed to protect the companies, not the employees. Now that you have signed off on the course, if anyone complains of inappropriate behavior on your part then they can’t be held liable since they did their best to enlighten you.

  Mmmmm, lesbian gorilla perverts! That sounds……well, quite frankly, hairy.

• [stend]

  @Mithras: harassment by The Gorilla Foundation, not by Koko, as Koko is legally property, not an employee

  … but did koko demand soft p0rn music as well? bow chicka wow

• [abb3w]

  “What a man dislikes in his superiors, let him not display in the treatment of his inferiors; what he dislikes in inferiors, let him not display in the service of his superiors.”

• [noen]

  I loath bananas.

• [Mithras]

  @Stend: You’re absolutely right. I meant to say, it’s the primary caregiver’s instructions to Kendra that constitute the harassment.

• [mikelist]

  first off koko is a she. she has some degree of confusion regarding her peopleness, and has asked other seemingly inappropriate favors. there was a male caretaker who she wanted to “ride on her back”, which was apparently her way of describing gorilla love. there’s something sad about having crushes cross species lines.

  i believe that innocent curiousity is the cause of the tittie inspection, although i don’t think that mandatory breast exposure should be a condition of the job.

• [grey]

  “I don’t mean to make light of sexual harassment but, honestly, I don’t work with gorillas.”

  Oh, trust me. You do, you do. You just don’t know it yet.

• [stend]

  this whole girl-on-girl, cross species thing sounds like a bad animal planet remake of those lesbian prison films of the 50′s and 60′s, etc., I’m just wondering who they’re going to get to play the abusive butch guard… I hear Alice from The Brady Bunch could use the work

• [Bren]

  I worked with both Koko and Michael (mainly Michael, who passed away some years back) at the Gorilla Foundation back in the early 80′s. Penny Patterson was my boss.

  Here is what I can share with you: Back then, Koko liked boys (the mailman, but not Michael) candy, and flowers. She’s super smart and very curious and funny. If she developed a fascination with human women’s breasts it is surely because she was just that- curious and fascinated by them. I would not be at all surprised if she wanted to feel everyone’s and see what they’re like. No doubt, she would share a preference as to what she would deem ideal or “pretty.”

  Back then, if something like this was going on and Penny said “show ‘em to her.” to me, I would have taken it as her usual understated humor.

  Gorillas aren’t descended from the puritans, and I am not uptight about something like that. BUT I wouldn’t have done it for this reason: It would become an everyday game of “show me your tits!” over and over. Followed by raucous laughter. Kinda like Michel and me playing “chase!” everyday … during that more innocent time. (On the other hand, laughing and playing a game of “show me your tits!” might not be a terrible way to spend a few years.)

  There was that one time Michael climbed on Penny’s back and started humping. Animals are like that.

  On th other hand, if Penny’s boyfriend Ron had suggested I play this game with Michael …. I might’ve sued. I certainly would have found it creepy.

• [Cowicide]

  Please pardon my English, I was violently slapped by a gorilla some time ago and sustained a head injury with affected my speech.

  For many years, I work with the parrot. I had constant issues with the bird; some of which caused considerable strain to our professional relationship. For instance, as I walked by the “chicken” (as I would call him), he would often get stone-cold serious look on his face, then slowly get all bug-eyed and squawk, “You gonna get raped.”

  On other occasion he would just slowly turn his head towards me and say with a low growl, “Rape.”… then chicken cock his head back like nothing happen.

  He do this when no one else looking.

  Eventually, I learn to loathe bird and choke that chicken as he stab me with pecker. I sue chicken in court and win considerable money.

• [eih10dv65g]

  I can only say: I still have my Koko’s Kitten book from twenty years ago.

• [eih10dv65g]

  Of course, it’s more interesting after this article.

• [Daemon]

  Well, Koko certainly can’t be doing any harassment – that would require her to be recognized as a person in the law. Inspite of being able to speak via sign language, I doubt that’s going to happen any time soon.

  The keeper suggesting Kendra do it could possibly be hit for it though. Strange that this isn’t on the option list.

  Sure is a bloody wierd example to use though. I mean, what percentage of the workforce is going to be in a remotely similar situation?