While officials said the suspect of shooting at a spa in the Atlanta area, Robert Aaron Long, 21, told investigators that he was motivated by “sexual addiction” and claimed he was not racially motivated, health experts say the explanation it is insufficient.
Captain Jay Baker, a spokesman for the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office, said Long – who is accused of killing eight people, six of them Asian women – indicated that the spas were “a temptation he wanted to eliminate”. However, experts say that reasoning has been used before in attempts to exonerate white men. The explanation also disregards racial dynamics and can “cause harm” in the way the public understands these issues.
White men traditionally brush aside when they say that – and have the privilege of ignoring how race is a factor, experts say.
“Historically, the term ‘sex addiction’ has been used by white men to exempt themselves from personal and legal responsibility for their behavior,” Apryl Alexander, associate professor at the Graduate School of Professional Psychology at the University of Denver, told NBC Asian America. “It is often used as an excuse to pathologize misogyny.”
Baker, who was criticized for telling reporters that Long on Tuesday had “a really bad day for him, and that’s what he did” and that he got a reaction for sharing a Facebook post promoting anti-Asian t-shirts last March, he has since been removed as a spokesman for this case.
When examining acts of gender-based violence, Alexander said such attacks often occur at the intersection of misogyny, racism, xenophobia and homophobia. She emphasized that, contrary to what Long told the police, such violence “does not just occur in isolation”.
Richelle Concepcion, president of the Asian American Psychological Association, said that accepting the suspect’s justification in this case erases several conflicting dynamics of class, immigration status and gender that affect communities most at risk of physical and sexual violence.
“Frankly, it is really difficult to attribute the atrocious behaviors to an addiction, especially when you look at the demographics of most of those who were murdered,” she said. “Race and gender play a role in this.”
“It is really unfair to take his word, as there is intersectionality in relation to the lives taken, especially when it is considered that the suspect claims to have sought these deals with the intention of eliminating the threat of temptation,” added Concepcion.
The defense of sex addiction itself, said Alexander, is highly controversial, as the fields of psychology, psychiatry and sexual research continue to debate whether to formally recognize it. Currently, the idea that sex addiction is a disorder is not supported by research, nor is it accepted as a clinical diagnosis, she said.
Although the American Psychiatric Association added the concept of sexual addiction to its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in 1987, it subsequently withdrew the term and has since rejected the addition of the idea in its later editions, including the DSM-5, which it is widely seen as the definitive resource in mental disorders, based on the lack of supporting evidence.
Alexander said that this sexual behavior does not affect the brain in the same way as other addictions, including substance use and gambling behavior, too, calling the characterization of Long’s behavior “worrying”.
Self-identification of sex addiction, she said, is often seen in individuals who were raised in conservative and religious settings, “where there is a high level of moral disapproval of their natural type of sexual urges and desires.” Many of these populations are predominantly white.
“Many individuals who do this type of self-report of sexual dependence have normative sexual behaviors and impulses, but they can be excessive. Or, for many people, it’s rooted in the shame that ‘I’m having these attractions and emotional desires that are normal, but I don’t recognize them as normal,’ ”said Alexander.
Still, sex addiction is a common defense invoked by white men in power. After several allegations made by several women, including several who were minors at the time, accusing comedian Chris D’Elia of soliciting sexual favors, he responded with a video in February saying, “Sex controlled my life.” He added: “I had a problem and I have a problem”.
Harvey Weinstein also stated in a 2017 video that he was “not doing well” and “I need to get help”, after numerous accusations of sexual harassment and rape. In a statement provided to NBC News, his brother Bob Weinstein described him as “obviously a very sick man”.
And former deputy Anthony Weiner, for example, in 2017, broke in front of a judge after being sentenced to 21 months in prison for sexting a minor girl. Weiner, who called himself a “very sick man for a long time,” intended to avoid arrest after the judge acknowledged that he had sought and received treatment for the behavior.
But controversies do not end with the diagnosis itself, and treatments have also been criticized for insufficiently addressing the role of misogyny in sexual behavior. Ideas, including the hypersexualization of Asian women’s society, said Alexander, are often not examined.
“They generally don’t talk about these hypermasculine attitudes or misogynistic messages that individuals are receiving, whether from pornography or from society in general,” said Alexander. “Many of these so-called treatment programs often reinforce gender stereotypes. They talk about things like ‘Women are tempting you’, ‘Women in porn are trying to seduce you, which is why you need to avoid it’, instead of talking about your own type of personal attitudes and behaviors that cause you marginalize women ”.
Such framing of women as “tempting”, particularly in reference to Asian women, in part shifts the burden from the perpetrator to the victim, said Concepcion. It is a stereotype of women as manipulative dragons, fueling dangerous perceptions that make them particularly vulnerable to violence. She explained that there is a tendency to attribute the reasoning behind the violence and murderous acts to the malicious intent of others, creating the perception that these victims who were killed intentionally provoked the aggressor to violence.
“Recently, there were screenings of television shows and even movies from years ago that portrayed Asian women as tempting, which seems to prove these stereotypes of Asian women as a fact,” she said.
Alexander said that larger toxic social issues need to be addressed in this treatment context, in addition to other experiences that may have contributed to such behaviors.
“These are the things that need to be addressed as underlying issues in this constellation of things that may have led to perhaps sexual concerns,” she said. “Compulsions or sexual concerns are often associated with other types of underlying psychological issues, unmet emotional needs, childhood trauma or, again, power and control dynamics that contribute to oppression.”
But experts emphasized that, even when people exhibit attitudes that are indicative of oppression and marginalization of others, this does not always lead to the practice of an act of mass violence. Contrary to prevailing stereotypes, statistics show that about 3% to 5% of violent acts can be attributed to people with severe mental illness. In fact, individuals who face mental health problems are more than 10 times more likely to be victims of violent crime compared to the general population.
For people dealing with the sexual concern that may be causing suffering, experts recommend help and support to approach the issue positively. Shame-based treatments are never effective, said Alexander, and alleviating feelings of shame comes with comprehensive sex education. Sexuality is so often marginalized in culture and it is not uncommon for people to have difficult emotions around the subject, without knowing how to deal with it, she said.
“A lot of our sex education is rooted in shame and stigma, that we don’t talk about normative sexuality and how to work with it – that maybe your impulses are natural,” she said.
With the resources available to help people living with mental illness, Concepcion said it is never acceptable to attribute this violent behavior to a “bad day”.
“Many of us have bad days, but most of us focus on other ways of coping to alleviate the impact of those days,” she said. “There is never any justification for taking lives or engaging in acts of violence when we ourselves live less than ideal days.”