{"id":90662,"date":"2021-03-23T17:16:36","date_gmt":"2021-03-23T17:16:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/radiofree.asia\/?guid=70f22dea80d5581175aa78ed4fcc14f8"},"modified":"2021-03-23T17:16:36","modified_gmt":"2021-03-23T17:16:36","slug":"attacks-on-asian-women-are-fueled-by-criminalization-war-and-economic-injustice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/03\/23\/attacks-on-asian-women-are-fueled-by-criminalization-war-and-economic-injustice\/","title":{"rendered":"Attacks on Asian Women Are Fueled by Criminalization, War and Economic Injustice"},"content":{"rendered":"\"An<\/a>

When eight people, six of them <\/a><\/span>Asian and Asian American women, were killed in a mass shooting at three massage parlors in the Atlanta, Georgia, area last week, we learned that a white man targeted these parlors to get rid of a \u201ctemptation<\/a><\/span>.\u201d His reasoning made transparent the disregard for the lives he took.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe made human beings \u2014 mothers, sisters, daughters \u2014 into something less than human,\u201d said Kai Zhang of the Asian Pacific American Taskforce in New York and co-founder of Red Canary Song during a vigil to mourn<\/a><\/span> lives lost.<\/p>\n

We know so little about these women. Information is passed in trickles and spurts, heavy with silences, unknowns. In the days following the attack, we slowly learned some of their names. However, we don\u2019t know many of the stories that their lives hold. There are things we\u2019ll likely never know, nor should we have access.<\/p>\n

An act of spectacular violence brought these six women into our collective awareness and exposed many other everyday forms of violence that often go unnoticed: the moments of rupture, war and geopolitical upheaval that prompted their migration; the harassment and vitriol that service workers face daily; the compounded indignities brought about by housing insecurity and precarious immigration status.<\/p>\n

Exceptional Forms of Violence Rely Upon and Coexist With Non-Exceptional Forms.<\/h2>\n

The targeted killing of Asian American women in a claimed attempt to eliminate sexual temptation is bound up in politics of race, gender and sexuality. Asian American women and femmes being killed and attacked because of toxic masculinity, which is a form of racist, classist and heterosexist entitlement that brings together white supremacy and rape culture, is not new<\/a><\/span>.<\/p>\n

The long history of U.S. racism<\/a><\/span> and imperialism creates forms of violence that draw people in and out in different ways.<\/p>\n

The U.S. permanent war and military occupation in Asia at different points in history — including the Philippine-American War, World War II, Korean War and Vietnam War, to ongoing geopolitical tensions with China<\/a><\/span> in the present — is connected to long-standing violence against Asian women. The targeting of Asia as a foreign threat and an enemy to be eliminated alongside U.S. desires for dominance over<\/em> Asia work in tandem with the imagination of Asian women as submissive fantasies to be conquered<\/a><\/span>.<\/p>\n