Wondering if I was in the grip of death, COVID or some odd new ailment, I tried to distract myself by scrolling through the same old news, when there it was, an American atrocity that utterly dwarfed my personal pain: the mass murder of eight people at three different Georgia massage parlors. Two men were also shot: Paul Andre Michels, 54, died at the scene, and Elcias Hernandez-Ortiz was hospitalized in critical condition.
There are conflicting reports over just what went on at these spas. However, all three spas were listed on several escort sites though these have since been taken down , and their storefronts glowed with bright colored lights and oversized photos of beautiful young women being pampered, beaming that telltale bordello look to passersby.
But mass murder? But then it came out that Long really did have some sex or so he said ; he just hated himself for having it. This is what the killer called himself. I have never seen a single exception to this principle. That said, it did seem that Asian women were targeted by the killer, though not all the victims were Asian, nor were all the victims women.
Racialized feelings are beginning to look like more of a taboo than sexual obsessions. The killing of an Asian American is described as a hate crime, while killing a sex worker is seen as a mental health issue. Racism is stigmatized, while sex is pathologized. Anti-sex worker malice is just as much at the root of the Massage Parlor Massacre as anti-Asian hate, if not more.
Georgia is now an American epicenter of political, cultural, racial and sexual tensions. All organized religions—Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Catholicism, Mormonism, other Protestant denominations and the rest—have strong, sometimes abusive , anti-sex philosophies, rules and rituals, but the erotophobic message of Evangelical Southern Baptist Christianity is particularly dramatic.
