Ape love: Dian Fossey and other real life stories

In real life, sexual intercourse between women and apes is limited to an unconfirmed report of women raped by orangutans (Maugh, 1992), but the sexual attraction and even love that women can feel for apes have recently appeared in the media; see for example the BBC report of women attracted to Buff, the silverback gorilla of Higashiyama Zoo described as fatherly, handsome and with rippling muscles (Anonymous, 2015). If women like J. Goodall, D. Fossey and B. Galdikas openly state that they love apes (Jensen, 2002) −and I assume that this is always meant in a non-sexual way− can women also feel sexually curious or even attracted to apes? Buff ‘s report is not unique, a similar and more sexually clear report was published a few years before about women interested in reproducing with Guy, a London Zoo gorilla (notice that it was written by a woman who says she was initially skeptic about it: Jahme, 2001).

the enduring bond of a young woman with wild gorillas, 23 years after she was pictured playing with a 300lb primate as a baby.  Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2836077/Tansy-apes-astonishing-pictures-enduring-bond-young-woman-wild-gorillas.html#ixzz4aB0ewSZR

Even before these early twentieth-first century examples, Mary Bradley, the first American woman to see gorillas in nature, challenged the official story by suggesting that they were not monogamous and that she was not repulsed by the idea of being taken by one. According to Jones (2006), when she wrote that sexually-charged comment, she undermined the image of white woman’s “purity”, placing herself at the same level of the “lusty black women”. A similar “purity” belief was held by science fiction writer Ray Bradbury when he lamented that in Guillermin’s version “instead of a virgin beauty, they depicted an unclad lady of the night” (Haber, 2005, p. 11). Psychologist Laura Irwin stated that those who see exploitation, abuse or rape in beauty and beast stories miss the point: the beast could harm the damsel in distress but chooses not to, and there is a happy ending (Irwin, 2010).