Motivated by Hate: Asian Women Face a Rise in Violence, Racism in the Time of COVID
Motivated by Hate: Asian Women Face a Rise in Violence, Racism in the Time of COVID
One year after the Atlanta spa shooting, Diane Yeung investigates the climate of hatred against Asian sex workers in Canada.
Motivated by Hate: Asian Women Face a Rise in Violence, Racism in the Time of COVID
By Diane Yeung
“If someone shot up the massage parlour while you were at work, how would you want me to write about you?”
It was the most violent question I had ever asked a source.
“If I’m dead, I wouldn’t want to only be represented as a sex worker,” Latsami said. “I would want people to talk about the roots of all of this.”
The thought of writing a source’s obituary is incredibly dark, but it’s a privilege to tell people about Latsami. Latsami scrunches her nose when she laughs, writes her own genre of poetry, and lives in the forest when she isn’t working. She likes to draw and dislikes thinking about the dangers of her job.
Latsami started working at a massage parlour in Montreal a month before the Atlanta shooting, where a white 21-year-old gunman targeted three Asian-owned spas a year ago, on March 16. Six of the eight people killed were Asian women, but police said there were no indications that the shooting was racially motivated.
The next day, a spokesperson for the sheriff’s office said the shooter confessed to the attack, citing a “bad day” and a “sex addiction,” claiming he saw the spas as “a temptation for him that he wanted to eliminate.” Americans were incredulous that police simply took the shooter’s word — after all, he overlooked multiple strip clubs in the area on his quest to eliminate sexual temptation.
Before it was confirmed whether there was sex work at the spas, a heated debate was underway. Across the diaspora, many pointed out that Asian massage businesses were often overpoliced and conflated with sex work. Others said that even if the victims weren’t doing sex work, the killer himself admitted to targeting sex workers.
I struggled with how I’d present this story.
On one hand, I hear my community’s pleas for the media to stop peddling stereotypes of Asian women as sex objects. On the other, I recognize that it is sex workers who bear the cost of repression. Particularly trans, racialized, immigrant and migrant sex workers.
But after speaking to nearly a dozen women about the shooting, I heard a consensus — that at the intersection of racial and gendered violence, we find the names of the six Asian women killed in Atlanta: Soon Chung Park, 74; Hyun Jung Grant, 51; Suncha Kim, 69; Yong Ae Yue, 63; Xiaojie Tan, 49; and Daoyou Feng, 44.
The shooting came during a sharp rise in anti-Asian violence that began at the start of the pandemic.
In Montreal, a man of Korean descent was stabbed in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce in May 2020. A few months later, a South Shore man was charged with second degree murder after killing Huiping Ding, 45, and Gérard Chong Soon Yuen, 50, in a double hit-and-run in Brossard. And last March, a Korean man was attacked with pepper spray while walking in the Plateau.
In each case, the victims or those who mourned them feared these weren’t merely random acts of violence.
They believe the perpetrators were motivated by hate. But since hate crimes require an overwhelming amount of evidence to prosecute, none of these attacks are treated as racially motivated. In other words, we can only guess at the scale of anti-Asian violence in Quebec and Canada right now.
However, there is one thing the statistics are consistent on. Women are the most frequent victims of anti-Asian attacks, according to Project 1907, a community-led site that tracks racist incidents in Canada.
Those attacks have yet to stop.
***
Latsami says she’s been fetishized in her past relationships and harassed at every single one of her jobs: at a grocery store, a bong shop, a sound production company.
Long before she engaged in sex work, older men would invite her to hotels or make assumptions about her because she’s an Asian woman.
In Canada and the U.S., Asian women are often limited to some version of two stereotypes: a quiet, submissive China Doll or a menacing, indecent dragon lady. In both cases, Asian women are seen as temptresses.
To properly unpack where these stereotypes are rooted, we’d have to begin with the Chinese Exclusion Act — the most racist immigration law in Canadian history.
It was implemented in 1885 to deter Chinese railroad workers from settling in the country after the project was completed. By 1900, an amended version of the law banned any Chinese who was “a prostitute or living on the prostitution of others.”
Like its southern neighbour, Canada’s presumption that the Chinese migrated for prostitution came from entrenched fears of threats to the white family. In fact, “White Canada Forever” later became a popular phrase that the media and politicians adopted from the 1910 Immigration Act.
What the Atlanta shooter calls a “temptation” reflects these deeply engrained views — that Asian women are exotic sexual objects meant to lure white men.
Today, immigration laws in Canada expressly prohibit anyone with temporary resident status from engaging in sex work. For citizens, it’s widely believed that a person who sells their own sexual services is not considered a criminal under the eyes of the law.
But Canada’s sex work laws are complicated and disjointed, and sex work advocates say its incoherence is costing lives.
“One of the things I organize most are funerals. Every time I see the dead body of a sex worker, I ask why,” said Elene Lam, Executive Director of Butterfly, a support network for Asian and migrant sex workers based in Toronto.
Since February, Lam and other sex work advocates across the country have testified virtually in a series of parliamentary hearings to review the Protection for Communities and Exploited Persons Act (PCEPA), a law tabled by the Harper government in 2014.
The conservative government claimed that the act was passed to protect women, but also stated in its preamble that “it is important to denounce and prohibit the purchase of sexual services because it creates a demand for prostitution.” Advocates say PCEPA is an anti-sex work law that only drives the industry further underground, and disproportionately affects migrant sex workers.
“Due to the conflation of sex work and trafficking, law enforcement keeps targeting sex workers,” Lam said.
She said Asian migrant workers have been arrested and deported for translating, advertising or screening clients on behalf of those who don’t speak English. In other stories, police conducted raids in parlours that were closed, when workers were sleeping, under the guise of human trafficking.
“The stereotype about Asian and migrant sex workers is that they are passive, ignorant, trafficked victims. Yet, migrant sex workers have been vocal about the need to decriminalize sex work,” Lam said.
In contrast, anti-sex work advocates praised PCEPA for its criminalization of clients. Suzanne Jay, a member of Asian Women for Equality, said that “racist stereotypes about Asian women [are] packaged, branded, sold,” and are then used to entrench the demands of sex in Canadian culture.
She said the sex industry only contains “exploiters and the exploited,” and finds it difficult to imagine that anyone would willingly engage in sex work. To Jay, exploiters are “parasitically invested in the growth and entrenchment of prostitution as an industry.”
Workers and advocates say that Jay and other prohibitionists have turned the hearings into a judgement on the morality of sex work rather than an examination of Canada’s human and labour rights.
The last hearing will be held virtually today and broadcast live to the public. A report with the committee’s findings is expected to follow.
But the fight for sex workers’ rights continues even after the PCEPA hearings end.
Last year, the Canadian Alliance for Sex Work Law Reform filed a constitutional challenge of PCEPA, and hearings are set to begin this summer. Advocates say they’re tired of the government’s inaction and wished they didn’t have to force the hand of parliamentarians.
“It’s so expensive in terms of lives and time,” said Jen Clamen, national coordinator of the alliance. “It is a drain on our community resources that we could be using to sustain each other, build capacity, and live.”
Until then, tragedies like the shooting in Atlanta continue to haunt some of the most vulnerable in Canada.
***
When I asked Latsami and one of her colleagues whether they thought the Atlanta spa shooting could happen in Canada, they said they didn’t think sex work in Quebec was any less dangerous than the U.S.
In January 2020, Marylène Levesque, a 22-year-old massage parlour worker, was stabbed more than 57 times by her ex at a hotel in Quebec City.
Levesque met her killer through the parlour. He was out on parole after a 15-year sentence for the murder of his ex-spouse. In his parole board documents, the killer was permitted to meet women “only for the purpose of responding to [his] sexual needs.”
Last November, sex work advocates said that a victim in a murder-suicide in the Mile End was an escort. Sandra Wesley, General Director of Stella, a sex work advocacy group based in Montreal, said that the killer had been known in the community as “aggressive, denigrating and violent.”
Latsami says violence against sex workers is fueled by its criminalization and repression, and that the same sentiments can be found when prohibitionists called Latsami and her peers a privileged minority who were “choosing to be raped.”
“It was really the same argument made by people who kill us,” Latsami said. “The same argument as the shooter in Atlanta. They’re just as dangerous.”
Stereotypes of Asian women are paradoxical. They are seen as both victims (trafficked humans) and perpetrators of their own oppression (promiscuous threats), according to scholar and anti-racism advocate Julie Tran.
“All of these stereotypes work to dehumanize Asian women,” Tran said. “And we need to ask why this image is given to us.”
I’ve spoken to Tran and Latsami repeatedly about those who see sex work as one that fuels gendered racism. It was particularly difficult for me to press on the argument with Latsami but she said she understood, and wished she could have more productive conversations with those who lobbied against her right to safe working conditions.
“In the beginning, I wondered if I was participating in my own objectification too,” Latsami said. “But is it me? Or is it society and the history of colonialism and racism?”
***
Few people are able to talk about racism and fetishization the way Asian women adopted into white families can.
Marilie Ross was adopted from southern China when she was nine months old, and raised in a loving home by white Quebecer parents in the South Shore.
But Ross says she was only ten years old when she began feeling nervous around her uncles and grandpas. She said she vaguely remembers reading a letter addressed to her mother, advising her not to leave Ross alone with some of the men in her boyfriend’s family. She doesn’t remember either of her two white siblings having the same anxieties.
Did she feel that she was overtly sexualized when she was ten years old? She can’t say because of the details she’s suppressed over the years.
Today Ross is completing a masters thesis on transracial adoption at the Université de Montréal. As part of her research, Ross read transcripts of interviews with prospective parents.
“I was flabbergasted reading these interviews,” she said. “[People said] that adopting a Black child would be too much, but an Asian child would be perfect because they conform to white people.”
Ross said that there was a particular way prospective white parents talked about wanting to adopt Asian children. “Their idea of little Chinese girls as calm, smiling, not speaking — was a factor in their decision to adopt,” she said.
These descriptions of Asian baby girls were alarmingly similar to what Tran said Asian women have told her about online dating. They say men would frequently send messages that objectified them based on racist tropes; that they were expected to be calm, submissive and docile.
“Asian women are objectified everywhere in our lives. The problem is society and the media, but when we talk about these issues, we blame Asian women,” Tran said. “And it’s not [our] responsibility, it should be society’s responsibility to stop.”
***
Last May, I moderated a panel on anti-Asian racism during Asian Heritage Month.
That’s where I met Fo Niemi. He’s the executive director of the Center for Research-Action on Race Relations (CRARR). I asked Niemi about what progress has been made since the panel.
“What have we heard about in terms of concrete change to the way the city tackles hate crimes?” Niemi asked. “Nothing. We don’t see anything. We don’t hear anything.”
Niemi said that for Asian women, gendered racism isn’t just violent attacks, but also manifests as a systemic and socio-economic challenge. He said some examples can be found in Filipino women who are most affected by the pandemic as healthcare workers, and East Asian women who work in kitchens, among others.
At the start of the pandemic in 2020, Asian Canadians were among those with the highest unemployment rates. The rates among Southeast Asians, 16.6, and South Asians, 14.9, were nearly twice the national average. And as of February, Chinese Canadians continue to be among visible minorities with the lowest employment rates. That number is even lower among Chinese women.
“The question we’ll have to ask is what happens to [Asian women] in terms of their ability to survive economically in a post-pandemic era?” Niemi asked. “And what area of the economy will they be able to work in?”
During parliamentary hearings, sex work advocates said that the discussion around ending demand through criminalizing the purchasers of sex is a waste of money and resources. Alison Clancey, Executive Director of SWAN Vancouver, said that ending demand will not be the path to ending sex work — a task that no other country in the world has accomplished.
“If the government is interested in ending demand, [it should] look at poverty, the gender wage gap, the housing crisis, systemic racism and all of the push factors into the sex industry for some folks whom it is a last resort,” Clancey said.
***
For weeks after the shooting, Latsami was afraid to return to work.
Her boss wanted her back because she was one of only two Asian women on staff. So she told herself that it would probably be okay since the parlour she worked at wasn’t owned by Asians.
“I could be afraid because of the sex work,” Latsami said, “but I’m also afraid because I’m a woman.”
It’s been incredibly hard to think about why Asian women and sex workers aren’t seen as human beings by those in the halls of power. Hearing women argue against affording them human rights is even harder.
Over the last year, Asians have been kicked, punched, and beaten in public.
In New York, Michelle Alyssa Go, 40, was pushed in front of an oncoming train in January. Less than a month later, Christina Yuna Lee, 35, was followed into her New York City apartment and stabbed more than 40 times.
Earlier this month, a man attacked 7 Asian women in two hours in New York. And two days before the anniversary of the Atlanta shooting, Asians were subjected to footage of a 67-year-old Asian woman being punched 125 times in the head.
In Canada, reports of anti-Asian hate crimes saw an increase of 301% between 2019 and 2020, according to a Statistics Canada report released earlier this month. And of the total hate crimes reported between 2011and 2020, more than half reported by East and Southeast Asians were violent.
Over 1,150 incidents of anti-Asian racism were reported between March 2020 and February 2021, according to a study published by The Chinese Canadian National Council’s Toronto chapter (CCNCTO) and Fight COVID Racism.
The roots of all this? Hate.
“Everyone is ashamed of being hated. So I tell them my truth,” said American author and journalist Min Jin Lee, at the Justice for Asian Women event in New York City on Wednesday. “I will never be ashamed of being hated for my race. This shame belongs to the racists. It is not my shame,” Lee said. “So I ask you, please: tell us who you are. Tell us your name. Tell us your story.”
***
Latsami grew up with a classically French name (something like Marianne or Caroline).
If you met her, you’d agree that Latsami was the perfect name for her. When she started working at the massage parlour, she reverted to “Latsami” because it’s distinctly Asian.
“I like that people have to say it. They have to hear it,” Latsami said. “Even if nobody remembers the name and they all have trouble pronouncing it, I still think it’s precious to me.”
A few weeks before we met, Latsami told her parents about her job. She wrote them a letter that carefully laid out all of the precautions she’s taking to keep herself safe. She told them that she liked her work and the freedom it afforded her, and that she was in a community with other workers who took care of each other.
The next day, Latsami’s father wrote her a Facebook message, thanking her for telling them, and said that they would always love and support her. She said that this was the real privilege — to be able to tell her story because her family and friends support her.
Even after weeks of conversation, Latsami would tell me that she appreciated being able to tell her story. After our first interview, she said, “It was really nice talking to you, and I felt really safe and listened to.”
A year from now, I’ll ask Latsami the same questions. Until then, I’ll pray that the world is listening and becomes a safer place for us.
About the author…
Diane Yeung is a freelance journalist and journalism student at Concordia University. She's covered a wide range of topics, but is most passionate about community reporting.
Her work can be found at The Link and Global News.
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