Seven of the eight people killed were women; six were of Asian descent. The suspect, according to the police, appeared to blame his actions on a “sex addiction”.
While the United States has witnessed mass killings in recent years when police said gunmen were racially or misogynously motivated, advocates and academics say the shootings this week at three massage companies in the Atlanta area targeted a group of people marginalized in more in a way, in a crime that sews stigmas about race, gender, migrant work and sex work.
“In a way, this is another manifestation of targeting marginalized people in the United States,” said Angela Jones, associate professor of sociology at Farmingdale State College, New York State University, whose research focused on race, gender, sexuality and sex work.
The Atlanta deaths follow a wave of recent attacks against Americans of Asian origin since the coronavirus first entered the United States, with most reports coming from women. The 21-year-old suspect denied that his attack was racially motivated and claimed to have a “sex addiction”, with officials saying he apparently saw business as sources of temptation.
Police said at a news conference on Thursday that investigators believe the sniper has already visited two of the spas, but it is still unclear whether any of the companies offered sexual services. The mayor of Atlanta said the police had not been there before, apart from a small potential theft. Still, the suspect equated business with sex, and that led to his death, police said.
“There is an assumption that all these massage parlor workers are sex workers. That may or may not be the case, ”said Esther Kao, organizer of New York’s Red Canary Song, a group of Asian and Asian American sex workers and allies serving these companies. “Most massage parlors are licensed companies that also provide professional, non-sexual massages.”
“There is this assumption of sexuality and fetishization of Asian women’s bodies that is unique to this type of crime,” she said.
At least one of the victims was a patron, not an employee. Delaina Ashley Yaun, 33, and her husband went to the spa for a date, her mother, Margaret Rushing, told WAGA-TV. Yaun leaves behind a 13-year-old son and an 8-month-old daughter.
The shootings follow examples of race and gender killings by white men in recent years. In 2014, a 22-year-old man who protested women online killed six people and injured 14 near the University of California, Santa Barbara. The following year, eight black church members and their pastor were shot dead in a racist attack in South Carolina. In 2018, a Florida sniper with what the police called “hatred of women” killed two and wounded five in a yoga studio. The following year, a sniper targeting Latinos opened fire at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, killing 22 people.
“This is a thread that runs through the stories of these gunmen. Toxic masculinity is really a problem in this country, ”said Shannon Watts, founder of the gun control group Moms Demand Action.
The fact that the Georgia sniper targets companies because they have linked them to commercial sex is a nightmare scenario for those working in the erotic industries and are increasingly subject to online harassment and attempts to report massage businesses to the IRS, he said. Kate D’Adamo, an organizer and advocate for the rights of sex workers. “Basically, it’s about going out and pointing out sex workers as fallen women, blaming them for social ills,” she said.
Prostitution laws mean that women are also afraid to report harassment or violence to the police, for fear of being arrested or of their appeals being ignored, she said. These fears are even more pronounced for women of color, those who are immigrants or those with little language skills.
They don’t think they can report crimes to the police, said Barbara Brents, a professor of sociology at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, who studies the sex industry. “When they do, sex workers are not taken seriously and can also be arrested.”
Researchers who spoke to more than 100 Chinese and Korean workers at illicit massage companies for a 2019 study found that while some women said they felt cheated or coerced into jobs involving sex work, many others chose the profession after they had bad experiences with some other types of generally poorly paid jobs available to them, such as restaurants and nail salons.
While there have been some reports of exploitation or abuse by managers, “alarming” 40% of women told researchers that a client forced them to have sex last year, the study said.
In the Atlanta shooting, the suspect’s allegations about sex addiction, meanwhile, sound hollow to some. It is not a condition recognized by the American Psychiatric Association, said David Ley, a clinical psychologist and author of “The Myth of Sex Addiction.” And although it was cited by celebrities for a while, the Harvey Weinstein affair has become a symbol of how it can be used as an attempt to avoid taking responsibility for abuse and aggression, he said.
There is also a disturbing line of racism in some online discussions about sex addiction, he said.
“They hold others accountable – the porn industry, sex workers and even women in general – for triggering those sexual desires that they are afraid of,” he said.
Moral opinions can shape beliefs about sexuality, and friends described the Atlanta shooting suspect as deeply Christian. He also told police that he planned to go to Florida to attack the porn industry.
The allegation of sex addiction is a way of redirecting guilt, Kao said. “He is not taking any responsibility at all and putting all this on the workers themselves, which also distracts from the racial issue,” she said.
Meanwhile, the suspect, Robert Aaron Long, was arrested on charges of murder and assault. It was not yet clear whether he had a lawyer who would represent him.
Police said Long confessed to the crime and told authorities about a “temptation he wanted to eliminate”.
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Whitehurst reported from Salt Lake City and Price from Las Vegas.
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