To print this page, select "Print" from the File menu of your browser salon.com > People May 18, 2000 URL: http://www.salon.com/people/feature/2000/05/18/drblock The Erin Brockovich of the bonobo Sex sells, says Dr. Susan Block, so why not use it to save an endangered species? - - - - - - - - - - - - By Deirdre Guthrie Dr. Susan Block calls herself the "Erin Brockovich of the bonobo." Yet she's not crusading against a power company poisoning ground water, she's fighting for a sexual revolution, and she's drafted one of Homo sapiens' closest relatives to help her in battle. Like the cleavage-baring Brockovich, Block, star of two HBO specials and "The Dr. Susan Block Show," which runs Saturdays on cable TV in San Francisco and Los Angeles, tends to get flak for her combat fatigues. Propped amid ostrich feathers and dildos, she plies her trade in lacy lingerie, teaching her eager audience how to have "bigger orgasms and better relationships" from in between the satin sheets of her "broadcast bed." Block's TV constituency has been described by Detour magazine critic Dale Brasel as an "ever-growing cult following ... Unlike Dr. Ruth," writes Brasel, "you can actually believe she's had and is still having sex. Good sex." Block says this is largely because she's a passionate subscriber to what she terms the "bonobo way." Like the chimpanzee, the bonobo, which look a lot like the chimp, share 98.5 percent of their DNA with humans, making them roughly as close to us as a fox is to a dog. These apes, also known as pygmy chimpanzees, appear to function under an egalitarian matriarchy in which the highest-ranking males tend to be the sons of respected females. In fact, it's been observed that when female bonobo share a meal, lovingly feeding each other bits of sugar cane or banana, they calmly ignore the charging displays of males anxious for a bite. Instead, when the ladies have had their fill, they generously leave a portion for the hungry, humbled male who waits until they leave to claim his share. The female bonobo's self-possession is believed to come from a strong sense of sisterhood, reinforced daily through sexual petting and grooming rituals. Still, should food sharing or virtually any conflict arise, the bonobo know how to avoid violence and apply a little sexual healing to alleviate a tense situation. Indeed, some observers have witnessed the apes alleviating their libidos in some form of hetero, homo or self-sexual activity as frequently as every 90 minutes. (Granted, their average copulation lasts 13 seconds.) As Block says, "They know how to give a blow job for a banana or communicate 'Don't be nervous, honey; come sit on my face.'" Frans De Waal, a primatologist at the Yerkes Primate Research Center in Atlanta, has noted the profound implications of the bonobo upon evolutionary theory. "The art of sexual reconciliation may have reached its evolutionary peak in the bonobo," he writes. He has predicted "after 20 more years of research the bonobo is going to change the whole picture of human evolution." As early as 1954 primatologists at European zoos observed that the bonobo mated like people, that is, face to face. Yet, since the late 1970s, the patriarchal chimpanzee with its penchant for warfare and power politics, has served as the chosen evolutionary model for human behavior. It took until the 1970s, for the first researchers, a team from Japan, to venture into the bonobo's sole habitat: the Salonga National Park in the dense equatorial Congo River basin of Africa, a region ranked fourth in the world for plant and animal diversity. Today, some researchers claim that had primatologists studied bonobos earlier, models of human development may have challenged assumptions about the supremacy of violence-prone males. Block says she was elated to discover her "French-kissing cousins" because they authenticated the paradigm of her life's work: a concept she calls "ethical hedonism." "Ethical hedonism supports the egalitarian pursuit of pleasure and the repression of violence," she explains. Block says she and her "bonobo gang," a mix of co-workers and friends, practice the bonobo way every day, inspired by the apes' bisexual appetites. Her Web site features photos of the pygmy chimps "goin' downtown," "bun grabbing" and masturbating with a big, red ball. Elsewhere, a click of the mouse reveals humans body-licking and massaging one another with equal enthusiasm. Block sees other parallels between Homo sapiens and our hairier counterparts. She assures me that "penis-fencing," a phenomenon De Waal observed among captive males he found hanging face to face from a branch twiddling their diddlies together, is "the macho man's best kept secret fantasy." She also observes the female bonobos' tight-knit cohesion among her own human girlfriends who host swinger parties. "Women dominate these settings," she explains. "And why do the men submit to that kind of power? Because they're getting laid. And like the male bonobos, who reap the benefits of being around confident, horny females, these sexually satisfied human males don't feel as driven to assert their dominance. Then women can enjoy the freedom to explore their sexuality with each other, unencumbered by fears of being judged, raped, impregnated or catching disease." Block isn't blind to her shameless anthropomorphism. But, she argues, "a little anthropomorphism never hurt Flipper." She says sex will offend as much as it will titillate and no matter how unscientific her perspective is on the bonobo, it's impossible to overlook their overt sex appeal. "And guess what," she quips. "Sex sells. Why not tap into my shows' audience to help save the bonobo?" In response to her critics from academia, Block admits she's an inspired businesswoman who is looking to them for leadership. She claims her Dr. Block Bonobo Foundation serves to help protect the bonobo through educating her audience and encouraging donations to the Bushmeat Project, the Bonobo Conservation Initiative and the Bonobo Protection Fund. Block says her first fundraising event, an erotic art show entitled "Sexual Evolution," is scheduled for fall, and a percentage of its proceeds will be donated to the initiative. Sally Coxe, who researched the bonobo for seven years after leaving National Geographic, created the nonprofit initiative to help promote information sharing and collaboration among international teams of scientists and conservationists. Coxe could care less about Block's occupation and plans to involve her in an upcoming Peace Concert Benefit. Tony Rose, director of the Biosynergy Institute and its Bushmeat Project, which aims to stop the increased trade of ape meat; Richard Wrangham, author of "Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence;" and Hope Walker, director of the Primate Conservation and Welfare Society, have also shown enthusiastic support for Block's efforts. But her self-promotion of the "bonobo way" has not always been well received. Georgia State University's Bonobo Protection Fund has published a magnum opus online that dismantles the premise of comparing human and animal sexual behavior as depicted in the "popular movement called 'the bonobo way,'" and accuses Block of exploiting bonobo by associating them with her porn. And de Waals, who concedes his book has appeal to special populations, largely gay and feminist, who could be targeted for fundraising, still says he fails to see why someone who has never been "in the field" would be interested in saving the bonobo. Rose does. He's written extensively on how conservation can become a "global social movement based on a deepening discovery of primate kinship." He writes that scientific epiphanies rarely move laypeople, but "biophilia," the belief that humans, urbanites in particular, are endowed with an innate fascination and need to relate to other living things, can. He cites the case of an Internet chat with Koko the gorilla that ranked the fifth largest in online history. Claire Richardson, president of the Diane Fossey Foundation, seconds Rose's contention that anthropomorphism goes along with the human condition. "You have to bridge the relevance gap. When you talk about biodiversity the eyes of the general public tend to glaze over. So what we have to do with a charismatic species like the great apes is use them as a flagship species. What we know is that it's about habitat, not individual species. So if you educate the public about our close kinship to the bonobos and get the message out that if these protected places disappear, so do the species, maybe people will be more motivated to act." However Gaye Reinartz, coordinator of the Bonobo Species Survival Plan for the Zoological Society of Milwaukee, who has just returned from the Congo where she met with government officials about reaffirming their conservation commitments, gets a little fed up with talk about "biophilia" and habitat. "I don't sit around pondering my interconnectedness," she says, "Let's not put this in the abstract. Hell, the Grand Canyon isn't habitat, it's the grand old USA!" She recognizes, however, that public pressure is needed to induce U.S. foreign policy leaders to take a more active role in bringing peace and preservation to the Congo. "Our government has certainly proved it can hold a carrot and a stick," Reinartz insists. "And believe me, the Congo makes Kosovo look like Disneyland. At some point it will become a security risk." The Milwaukee Zoological Society has implemented a survival plan that focuses on the training of native Congolese to carry through their own conservation efforts. "This isn't about white guys counting monkeys," Reinartz says, arguing against Western imposed solutions, like telling hungry, war-torn Congolese not to eat bushmeat without offering up an alternative source of protein. Reinartz is also quick to note that in a region where vibrators have less appeal than a bowl of rice, the selling point among Congolese will not be the bonobo's sex appeal. Yet she feels Block's efforts are fairly benign and could even be helpful. "But if she's serious about saving the bonobo, she can get me a plane ticket back to Africa, which runs around $4,000. I don't care if the money is dripping in blood. At this point I'm close to selling my soul." The cranky desperation shared by Reinartz and others in her field is understandable. While Block and the bonobos' sex life continue to provide saucy headlines, the apes' survival is extremely tenuous. As Block points out, swingers are primarily a middle-class phenomenon, thriving in times of plenty. And some researchers attribute the bonobo's peaceful matriarchy to the Congo's ample food supply. How will a species' behavior change in a climate of war, hunger and desperation? Reinartz is clear that we have much more to learn about the bonobo than their sexual habits. More pressing at the moment is finding out whether sustainable populations even exist in the Salonga. Fieldwork has been stalled since war broke out on the eastern side of the park in August 1998. Deforestation, the natural barriers of the Congo, poaching and over 30 years of dictatorship, unrest and colonial exploitation have deprived the bonobo of their habitat. As few as 5,000 may exist in the wild and only 125 exist in captivity. It's estimated that 300 to 400 are needed in order to sustain genetic diversity. And Reinartz brought back more bad news from her recent trip to Kinshasa: evidence of thousands of baby orphans taken on as "pets" by rebel soldiers. "That means the parents were killed and most likely the babies will be sold for meat," she says. She tries to focus on the positives: There's a great ape bill pending in Congress that would make funds available, the United Nations recently declared the Salonga a World Heritage Preservation Site and African policymakers are recognizing the benefits of ecotourism. "We're just trying to stay alive and wait out the war," she sighs. "We're still committed to working with whatever government exists and just hope we're not too late." Meanwhile Block continues to aspire toward the bonobo model. "I'm an imperfectionist, not a utopian. But I do think violence spawns from frustration, loneliness, bigotry and ignorance and if we can mobilize an effort to save the bonobo it will go a long way towards saving ourselves." Like an erotic Mary Poppins, Block believes a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down in a world seemingly besieged by harbingers of environmental Armageddon. Let's hope so. Extinction is definitely not sexy, and losing the bonobo would be a bitter pill indeed. salon.com | May 18, 2000   - - - - - - - - - - - - About the writer Deirdre Guthrie has written for Paper, Mirabella, the Village Voice, New Woman, Mother Jones and Z Magazine.