A Really Bad Day
Or, Grappling with America's Take On Violence Against Asian Women
In case you didn’t know, six East Asian women were murdered yesterday by a 21-year-old white man.
It’s impossible to pull apart the anti-Asian sentiment (Korean papers report that the murderer yelled “Kill all Asians;” American news have not reported on this) from the misogyny (the idea that he had a “sexual addiction” and was eliminating “temptation” somehow more palatable than racism as the intent) from the vulnerability of women in a marginalized economy (massage parlors).
Or perhaps, as the white ex-Black Water ops who once posted a racist Anti-Asian t-shirt on social media said, “He was at the end of his rope” and “It was a really a bad day for him.”
Well, it’s a really bad day for me too.
For my bad day, I popped a can of wine and cried on my Filipino husband’s shoulder as I recounted the times I’d been underestimated, harassed, or worse, while he recounted the times he’d been minimized, profiled by police, or worse. And together we felt the weight of it all, the layers of racism and misogyny, the ways we have been taught to grin and bear it as immigrants, the shit we have not unpacked about being Other in America.
But our bad day is nothing compared to that of the women whose lives were lost, whose stories are yet to be told. There have been some profiles of the massage customers—Delaina Yaun Gonzalez and Paul Andre Michel—but the Asian women? We know little about them. Some of their names have been disclosed, but the names are mostly unfamiliar and unpronounceable to many Americans. There have been no photos, no profiles, no one standing up for who they were or what their days were like, or whether they had families or people who loved them, or whether they were alone in a country that they didn’t know or understand, seeking a better life and instead getting killed because a young white man had a bad day.
They are ciphers, as Asians have always been in American culture. It’s no coincidence that several acclaimed recent novels by Asian Americans have main characters with no names. In Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Sympathizer, the main character is nameless, a Vietnamese functionary during the Vietnam War. In Jenny Zhang’s collection of short stories Sour Heart, there’s a kaleidoscope of girls and women characters, some with names and some without. In Charles Yu’s Interior Chinatown, characters are named after Asian stereotypes in films, amplifying how Asians in America are trapped in paper thin cultural expectations.
Asian women, even more so, are faced with a conundrum of stereotypes.
"Killing Asian American women to eliminate a man's temptation speaks to the history of the objectification of Asian and Asian American women as variations of the Asian temptress, the dragon ladies and the lotus blossoms, whose value is only in relation to men's fantasies and desires," said Catherine Ceniza Choy, an ethnic studies professor at the University of California, Berkeley.
This is not just an American problem, of course. Edward Said’s Orientalism documents the role that Asian and Middle Eastern stereotype has played in European history and the colonial enterprise. His work has always laid the foundations for me about how language shapes perception, and how perception creates the rationale for action.
And so, in a culture where East Asian women are viewed as “exotic, hypersexualized, and submissive,” a white man who is sexually frustrated sees Asian women in marginalized positions as a just fine outlet for his frustrations.
Without humanizing Asian women, this problem will persist.
Standing in for picture of the women are pictures of the massage parlors, in the dark with garish neon signs, as if that is enough to tell the story of who they are—invisible, murky, represented only by their profession. And that profession, in Asian massage parlors, is overshadowed by rumors of illicit sex work. As Shaila Dewan points out in the New York Times, this has a long history stemming from American military in Asia in the 20th century. The massage parlors themselves are not inherently illicit; there are plenty of massage parlors that in fact Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms has stated that the two Atlanta-based massage parlors are not on the radar as spaces for sex work.
Regardless, the role of women in marginalized communities and in marginalized professions puts them even more at risk. And still they remain faceless, represented by a building, not a story or a photo.
Today I have a much deeper appreciation for the Black Lives Matter movement’s insistence on Say Her Name. The chanting of names, the many iterations of Breonna Taylor’s story, and illustrations of her all serve to humanize victims of police violence, that we remember who they were, that their lives and deaths were not for nothing.
Via ZeroHour on Twitter, artist unknown
These women deserve the same fawning biography given to Sarah Everard, a woman in the UK whose recent killing by the police has created a reckoning with misogynist violence there.
This past year was also a banner year for Asian American women in culture.
Minari is full of Oscar nods, including a supporting actress nomination for veteran Korean actress Youn Yuh-jung. Chloe Zhao is up for an Oscar for Nomadland. Ali Wong wrote a book about her life. Mindy Kaling debuted Never Have I Ever, a well-reviewed show about a South Asian teen girl. To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, Grand Army, and Raya also told stories from the point of view of Asian girls. Twitter, podcasts, and the pundit class is full of loud, proud Asian American women. Some faves include Kimmy Yam, Ko Im, Jezz Chung, Jenn Wong, Marian Wang—and yes, I recognize that these women are all East Asian.
Asian American identity is complex and multi-faceted across origin, socio-economic class, and culture. There’s a whole other stable of conversations about being Southeast Asian (holler!) or South Asian in America, but it’s East Asian women that were the targets of violence, East Asian people that are being targeted by the anti-Asian sentiment in the wake of the coronavirus, and it’s my East Asian friends that are feeling unsafe about leaving their houses right now. And there is a huge gap between the women who are getting a seat at the proverbial table and the women who populate the $50-an-hour massage parlors. But if we don’t take this moment as a reckoning with how Asian women are portrayed in America, we’re missing the boat.