Was it sexism? Racism? Or just a really bad day?
“He was pretty much fed up and at the end of his rope. And yesterday was a really bad day for him and this is what he did.”
This is what Capt. Jay Baker with the Cherokee Sheriff’s Office had to say about 21-year-old Robert Aaron Long - the man who killed 8 women in 3 massage parlors in the Atlanta area, 6 of whom were Asian.
I have watched the clip of Baker saying this at least 25 times. The inflection in his voice makes it all the more disturbing. His dismissive tone. The emphasis on Long and the apparent empathy for his bad day. A man can commit mass murder and law enforcement blames it on a bad day… this is a snapshot of what white privilege looks like.
You know who had a bad day? His victims. As I write this, the press has only released the names of 4 of his victims: Delania Ashley Yaun, Paul Andre Michels, Xiaojie Tan and Daoyou Feng. People with families and stories; with children to raise and partners to love.
According to someone he spent time in rehab with, Long was a “deeply religious” man who frequented massage parlors and was “tortured” by sexual addiction. Capt. Baker further noted that massage parlors were a “temptation [Long] wanted to eliminate.”
To describe the murder of 8 women as an attempt to “eliminate temptation” is a painful example of the extreme dehumanization of women in the sex industry.
On one hand, women are viewed as sexual objects who exist for the sexual gratification of men, on the other, they are temptations in need of elimination.
It is also a reflection of our continued tendency to victim-blame.
We still live in a society where a woman is raped and gets asked what she was wearing. There is an underlying belief operating in our culture that women are responsible for men’s sexual responses to them. In many contexts, women are still blamed for their own abuse, exploitation, and in this case, murder.
As a woman who has experienced sexual abuse and exploitation, as someone who has worked in the commercial sex industry and walked along side others on their journey out, I recognize that this is the first lens through which I viewed this tragedy. Still, there are so many more layers here. His attacks were specific. They targeted massage parlors, and specifically Asian women in massage parlors. To say that these attacks were not racially motivated is to try to erase the identity of 6 of his victims. He didn’t target white women in street prostitution. He targeted Asian women in massage parlors, an industry that is known to capitalize off of the fetishization of Asian women. The fetishization of Black, Indigenous and Women of Color has been a long-standing issue, with roots in colonization. European colonizers eroticized black women’s bodies, going so far as to turn them into tourist attractions, as was the case with Sara “Saartijie” Baartman. Sara was an African woman who was sold into slavery and turned into living, breathing exhibit. She was placed in a cage, half-naked, for the amusement of tourists who marveled at her body.
Indigenous women and girls have been sold for sex (aka trafficked) since the Colonial Era. They continue to experience sexual violence and trafficking at grossly disproportionate rates. Exploitation and trafficking cannot be disentangled from systemic sexism and racism.
The fact that Long hasn’t admitted to (or perhaps isn’t conscious of) a racially driven motive does not mean that it doesn’t exist. It is also important to understand that all of this is happening against the backdrop of growing anti-Asian violence. Since the pandemic began, hate crimes targeting Asian Americans have grown by 150% (According to California State University’s Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism).
Ultimately, some of the most atrocious acts in human history have been committed as a result of otherization, objectification, and dehumanization.
Where do we go from here?
I don’t have all the answers. Or many at all. Mostly grief and anger right now. But maybe we can start with taking an honest look at the social constructs that allowed this tragedy to occur. We can acknowledge and examine our own biases and cultural lenses. We can learn to recognize our own privilege, whether it be related to race and gender or citizenship, language, ability status, and socio-economic status. We can speak out against comments, practices and environments that perpetuate sexism, racism, descrimination, exploitation and xenophobia. Maybe, if enough people did this, things would change.
- Harmony