{"id":90842,"date":"2021-03-24T08:59:25","date_gmt":"2021-03-24T08:59:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/?p=134250"},"modified":"2021-03-24T08:59:25","modified_gmt":"2021-03-24T08:59:25","slug":"atlanta-shootings-sex-race-the-politics-of-repression","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/03\/24\/atlanta-shootings-sex-race-the-politics-of-repression\/","title":{"rendered":"Atlanta Shootings: Sex, Race & the Politics of Repression"},"content":{"rendered":"\"\"<\/a>\n
\"\"

Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair<\/p><\/div>\n


\n\u2026 in nothing doth the raging power of original sin more discover itself<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u2026 than in the ungoverned exorbitancy of fleshly lust.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2013 Samuel Willard, Puritan minister, 1640-1707<\/p>\n

Robert Aaron Long\u2019s killing of eight people, six of whom were Asian women, in three Atlanta-area \u201cspas\u201d on March 18th<\/sup> makes one wonder how far the country has come from the early Puritan settlers who first colonized the New World.<\/p>\n

As has been extensively reported<\/a>, Long, a 21-year-old man\u00a0from Woodstock, GA, \u201cdid take responsibility for the shootings.\u201d \u00a0He first attacked the Youngs Asian Massage Parlor, in Acworth, GA, killing\u00a0four people; he then drove to Atlanta where he attached the Gold Spa killing three people and then, crossing the street, he killed one person at the Aroma Therapy Spa. Long was captured fleeing the shooting sites apparently heading for a \u201cporn industry\u201d location in Florida.<\/p>\n

Capt. Jay Baker, a spokesperson for the Cherokee County Sheriff\u2019s Office, declared<\/a>, \u201cHe apparently has issues, what he considers a sex addiction,\u201d he said. \u201c(He) sees these locations as … a temptation for him that he wanted to eliminate.\u201d\u00a0 Cherokee County Sheriff Frank Reynolds said<\/a> Long \u201cfrequented these places in the past and may have been lashing out,\u201d though he also said the attacks might have been \u201ctargets of opportunity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Much attention has been rightly focused on the six Asian-American women killed in the horrendous episode.\u00a0 Many have linked the Atlanta-area spa shootings to the enormous increase in physical attacks against Asian people taking place across the country. This upsurge has been attributed to former Pres. Donald Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric around the coronavirus.\u00a0 He repeated referred to the Covid as the “China Virus,” \u201cWuhan Virus\u201d and \u201ckung flu,\u201d sparking anti-Asian racist attitudes that culminated in physical attacks and, now, mass killings.<\/p>\n

Not unlike the ripple effect of #MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements that preceded it, the current rage against Asian-Americans that has resulted in nearly 4,000 reported<\/a> physical attacks (especially of the elderly) has fostering a strong grassroots movement challenging yet another deeply held all-American prejudice.<\/p>\n

A closer look at Robert Aaron Long sexual repression can provided additional insight into yet another aspect of American cultural prejudice. An unasked \u2013 and unanswered \u2013 question is whether Long would have killed these people<\/a> had they been Black or white and not Asian?<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

One of the earliest media reports about the Atlanta-area shootings quoted the Cherokee County spokesperson Baker who said that Long “apparently has an issue, what he considers a sex addiction, and sees these locations … [as] a temptation for him that he wanted to eliminate.”\u00a0 He noted<\/a> that Long was “pretty much fed up and kind of at the end of his rope.\u201d\u00a0 And added, \u201cYesterday was a really bad day for him and this is what he did.”<\/p>\n

Baker\u2019s comment about it being a \u201cbad day\u201d for Long was repeatedly assailed<\/a> by the media, implying that it somehow denied the reality of the killings or that the killings involved six Asia women.\u00a0 He also claimed that Long\u2019s actions were not racially motivated.\u00a0 This assertion was challenged by reports<\/a> that Baker promoted a T-shirt with the racist logo, \u201cCOVID-19 imported virus from CHY-NA.\u201d<\/p>\n

Long was a member of the Crabapple First Baptist Church in Milton, GA, baptized there as an adult in 2018. According to the New York Times<\/em><\/a>, the Crabapple is affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention and its bylaws include a lengthy passage on marriage and sexuality that condemns \u201cadultery, fornication, homosexuality, bisexual conduct, bestiality, incest, polygamy, pedophilia, pornography, or any attempt to change one\u2019s sex.\u201d\u00a0 It is on a list of Baptist churches that are \u201cfriendly\u201d to the mission of Founders Ministries, \u201ca group within the denomination that has criticized what it characterizes as a leftward drift within evangelicalism.\u201d<\/p>\n

The church adheres to a belief that sexual activity is only permissible within the bounds of marriage.\u00a0 It strongly opposes masturbation, pornography and sex with a sex worker. It\u2019s lead pastor, Jerry Dockery, preached a sermon about gender roles in September, drawing on a passage in 1 Timothy that instructs women to dress modestly and to \u201clearn in quietness and full submission.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the wake of the shootings, the church elders released a statement saying that\u00a0\u201c<\/em>we grieve for the victims and their families, and we continue to pray for them. Moreover, we are distraught for the Long family and continue to pray for them as well.\u201d The Times<\/em><\/a> notes, the church was in the process of expelling Long, calling the shootings \u201cthe result of a sinful heart and depraved mind.\u201d<\/p>\n

A series of recent media reports have begun to reveal Long\u2019s deep sexual repression that fueled his \u201cbad day.\u201d\u00a0 One of his former roommates, Tyler Bayless, who lived with Long for six months in 2019 and 2020 at Maverick Recovery Center in Roswell, GA, reported that Long had sought treatment for sex addiction. \u201cIn the halfway house, he would describe several of his sexual addiction \u2018relapses,\u2019 as he called them,\u201d Bayless, who was receiving treatment for drug addiction at the time,\u00a0told Reuters<\/a>. \u201cHe would have a deep feeling of remorse and shame and say he needed to return to prayer and to return to God.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bayless reported that Long would say, \u201c\u2019I’ve done it again’ and it just ate away at him.” “He felt\u00a0absolutely merciless remorse.”\u00a0 In weekly therapy sessions he would confess his indiscretions and say how guilty he felt about what he had done.\u00a0After his relapses, Long would spend hours in prayer, Bayless added.<\/p>\n

Bayless’\u00a0account\u00a0was echoed by another former housemate, Bronson Lillemon, who said<\/a> he lived with Long for three months in 2020.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe felt a lot of guilt, and a lot of shame,\u201d Lillemon said. \u201cI don\u2019t know the specific massage parlors that he went to, but I would assume that the ones he shot up were the ones he went to.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Daily Beast <\/a><\/em>reported that a student who graduated from Sequoyah High with Long in 2017 claimed the tagline for an Instagram account belonging to Long read, \u201cPizza, guns, drums, music, family, and God. This pretty much sums up my life. It\u2019s a pretty good life.\u201d \u00a0Going further, the student claimed, \u201cHe was very innocent seeming and wouldn\u2019t even cuss. He was sorta nerdy and didn\u2019t seem violent from what I remember. He was a hunter and his father was a youth minister or pastor. He was big into religion.\u201d<\/p>\n

Long also sought treatment for his sex addiction at HopeQuest, a facility operated by an evangelical group.\u00a0 Its website announces, \u201cOur mission is to help individuals and families impact by addition to experience freedom, hope and life.\u201d\u00a0 It claims that \u201cthrough a clinically-effective and Christian-centered approach, many people like you are finding the hope and help they need \u2026.\u00a0 \u201d Among the conditions it treats are sex addiction\u201d and \u201cpornography addiction.\u201d\u00a0 Indication of sexual addiction includes \u201ccrossing lines\u2019 of personal beliefs or values in his\/her behaviors, which result in extreme emotional distress and feelings of guilt and shame.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cSexual addiction\u201d is not an established psychiatric diagnosis.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

The U.S. has come a long way since the Puritan settlers first colonized the New World.\u00a0 In New England four centuries ago, two sexual offenses were most upsetting: bestiality involving young men and sexual witchcraft among older women.\u00a0 And for women identified as witches, sex with the devil was the gravest of all sins!\u00a0 Puritan sexual scandals were a terrain of struggle that illuminates, if only in its exaggeration, America\u2019s most formative era of sexual identity.\u00a0 It is an identity that, like a threatening shadow, continues to hover over America today<\/p>\n

Today, sex has been commodified, fully integrated into the market economy.<\/p>\n

A host of traditional sexual prohibitions — including masturbation, premarital sex, adultery, homosexuality and interracial sex — are no longer considered sins by civil authorities, most moralists and a significant proportion of the public. Prostitution \u2013 rebranded \u201csex work\u201d — has become a discreet business activity, regulated in an increasing number of states and \u201caccepted\u201d with a wink-and-a-nod and relatively free from moralistic and police harassment. The limits to acceptable sex are based on consent among adults or among similarly aged adolescents over 16-years. Strong prohibitions, both legal and ethical, attempted to halt nonconsensual sexual acts like rape, pedophilia, incest and bestiality.<\/p>\n

Little has been reported as to the nature of the \u201ctherapy\u201d Long received for his alleged \u201csexual addiction.\u201d\u00a0 One can well imagine that it only intensified the puritanical edicts of Baptists and the Crabapple Church.\u00a0 Had he received more humane (and, likely, non-moralistic) psychotherapy he may have come to terms with his sexual demons and not acting out by killing eight people.<\/p>\n

And the six Asian women \u2013 \u201csex workers\u201d \u2013 that he killed?\u00a0 Esther K, a co-director of Red Canary Song, a grassroots Chinese massage parlor worker coalition, said, \u201c\u201cEven if they were providing non-sexual massages, this ends up being a sex work issue.\u201d \u00a0She added, \u201cthe women are de facto being seen as sex workers and being scapegoated as such.\u201d<\/p>\n

As she explained to The Guardian<\/em><\/a>, \u201cRemoving the anti-sex-work component really removes the crux of what this specific kind of racism is about: the fetishization of Asian women\u2019s bodies, the objectification of their bodies and the assumption that Asian women are obviously going to be providing sexual services at massage parlors.\u201d<\/p>\n

Elene Lam, the executive director of Butterfly, a Toronto-based group for Asian and migrant sex workers, furthered this analysis.\u00a0 She argued, \u201cthe whorephobia created the hate and discrimination that makes them subject to violence.\u201d \u00a0A\u00a02020 report<\/a>\u00a0published by Butterfly found that over half of workers at these businesses have experienced some kind of threat to their safety at work.<\/p>\n

Robert Aaron Long\u2019s \u201cbad day\u201d bespeaks a deeper crisis that the commodification of sexuality only makes more egregious, exploding as yet another aspect of American cultural prejudice.<\/p>\n

The post Atlanta Shootings: Sex, Race & the Politics of Repression<\/a> appeared first on CounterPunch.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the earliest media reports about the Atlanta-area shootings quoted the Cherokee County spokesperson Baker who said that Long “apparently has an issue, what he considers a sex addiction, and sees these locations … [as] a temptation for him that he wanted to eliminate.”\u00a0 He noted that Long was “pretty much fed up and kind of at the end of his rope.\u201d\u00a0 And added, \u201cYesterday was a really bad day for him and this is what he did.” More<\/a><\/p>\n

The post Atlanta Shootings: Sex, Race & the Politics of Repression<\/a> appeared first on CounterPunch.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":670,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,266],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90842"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/670"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=90842"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90842\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":90843,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90842\/revisions\/90843"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}