It’s Not Always About Race: Sex Addict’s Massacre of Women in Atlanta Massage Parlors

by Phyllis Chesler

The subject du jour—in fact, the only subject allowed—is that of racism, usually anti-black racism, except for today, when the massacre of women working in two Atlanta massage parlors is All About Race.

Every single mainstream/leftstream newspaper and site are spinning this story as a case of anti-Asian racism. Their articles are without their much favored “nuance.”

The murderer, 21-year-old Robert Aaron Lang, is a man who claims that he was wrestling with his “sex addiction” and who decided to “eliminate” the “temptation.”

The New York Times has a front page, four column lead article titled: Rampage In Georgia Deepens Fears of Rising Anti-Asian Hatred in U.S.  But that’s not enough. In addition, there are three more stories in their pages about this atrocity, which “spin” it as All About Racism.

Interestingly, enough, on the two inside pages entirely devoted to this case, there is another article titled: U.S. Needs More Resources to Fight Threat of Domestic Terror, Report Warns  According to this article, the danger is coming from “militias and white supremacists”—the likes of which we saw on January 6th. They feel the need to connect these dots.

I am somewhat outraged. These spas are open 24-hours a day. What do these reporters believe was going on there? Mani-pedis for women?

As the author of Requiem for a Female Serial Killer, and on the Editorial Board of Dignity, an academic journal which documents and analyzes violence against women brilliantly, I have researched and written about murderous male violence against prostituted women. Most of the corpses that litter our American landscape belong to women who’ve been preyed upon by male serial killers—women presumed to be prostitutes; women who were seen as unobtainable and yet so very tempting by incels and others.

Extreme violence towards prostituted women is totally normalized: Verbal contempt, gang-rape, sadistic sex, serious beatings, savage mutilations, hostage-taking, and murder. Prostituted women have been battered by thousands of men. Legalizing or de-criminalizing prostitution does not lessen these crimes nor does having a pimp who, most likely, is the one who trafficked the woman into a life of prostitution; he has probably also addicted her to drugs, without which she cannot endure the constant abuse.

What do people think these mainly Korean women were doing in a massage parlor or a Spa? Perhaps some were massaging women; yes. But mainly, these poor souls in Atlanta had probably been trafficked and trapped into working as prostitutes by economic necessity or by force. Even if some of these “Asian” women were not working as prostitutes, the important point is that the man who murdered them saw them as such. 

Unsurprisingly, Long was also addicted to pornography. Connect these dots, please. Unfortunately, radical feminists lost the war against pornography, whose influence is now greater than it ever was. Did you watch the Grammy’s the other night? Bare-bottomed women twerking and jerking on the floor, climbing poles? Surrounded by fully-dressed male counterparts? Enough said.

According to Cherokee County Sheriff Frank Reynolds: “We believe he (Long) frequented these places in the past and may have been lashing out” and that racism “did not appear to be the motive.” Cherokee County Captain Jay Baker said: “These locations, he sees them as an outlet for him—something that he shouldn’t be doing, an issue with porn—and he was attempting to take out that temptation.”

Bess Levin at Vanity Fair does not think we should listen to anything Long himself says. As to his sex addiction, Levin chides the police for being “seemingly happy to take Long’s word for it re: race supposedly playing no part in the killing.” According to our wokestors, “race and racism can play a role in an incident even if the people involved say they do not—or genuinely believe they did not” commit a racial crime.

Yes, woman-hatred can also be racialized; women of color are overrepresented as “sex workers.” Extreme poverty, extreme child abuse, violent male intimates may, in part, account for this. Johns, those who pay to rape women, are probably also racists as well as sexists.

Now hear this: The alleged “women’s march” has already jumped on the fundraising bandwagon and is calling these murders a “racist misogynist act.” But they write that they are “in solidarity with the Asian-American community”, not with women in general who are similarly under siege. If you click on their link it leads you to a Donate page. 

The more conservative the media outlet, the more nuanced and accurate the coverage. The New York Post understands that “sex addiction” and “pornography” is involved and that the killer saw these women—or knew that these women were working as prostitutes.

Who are you going to believe?  What the police say, the words of a confessed murderer—or your handy-dandy “woke”paradigm which reduces all reality to a matter of racial hatred?