Challenging “Sex Work” Assumptions: Beyond the Fetishization of Asian Women’s Bodies

A RESPONSE TO THE TRAGEDY ON TUESDAY MARCH 16, 2021, WHERE A SERIES OF MASS SHOOTINGS OCCURRED AT THREE ASIAN-OWNED SPAS IN THE METROPOLITAN AREA OF ATLANTA.

Maybe it’s politically safer to avoid saying “hate crimes” than to acknowledge this country’s long legacy of white supremacy, imperialism, and patriarchy. But for women of color in America, our very own lives are political. Institutions in power either profit from us and/or fail to protect us. To not name the very oppressive structures that cause our deaths is systemic gaslighting.

Racist violence against Asian women harks back to US men occupying and militarizing our mother countries, raping our women as if they were for conquest alongside the land. Jollene Levid, co-founder of AF3IRM, a transnational and anti-imperialist feminist organization, explains, “During the Vietnam War, rape of Vietnamese women by American troops during the US invasion of Vietnam was a widespread, everyday occurrence that was essentially ‘condoned’, even encouraged, by the military…Many veterans considered it standard operating procedure. It was an unofficial military policy.”

These legacies of exploitation and gender-based violence are seen in how American military R&R sites developed into centers of sex tourism throughout Asia. Whole markets were built to cater to the military’s predatory desires—including erotic massage parlors. These historical processes continue to ensnare Asian and Asian American women in exploitative economic conditions. It is no surprise, then, that America refuses to admit the murderer’s racist actions: this country is not ready to reconcile its racist history.

 “A historical lens is essential in the case of the Atlanta shooting. We must recognize that the fetishization of Asian women in the West today has roots in the gendered violence which occurred in our homelands decades ago,” says Rose Schweis, a scholar of Southeast Asian Studies at UC Berkeley. 

Without these historical, systemic lenses, America suffers from a severe case of political amnesia.

Instead of addressing the structural roots which lead to violent incidences such as the Atlanta shooting, Georgia officials labeled the killer a “sex addict” to justify his murderous rampage. Subsequently, the mass media incorrectly made a false connection that the six murdered Asian and Asian American women were in the sex trade, demonstrating the extent to which we are commodified and fetishized. 

It is enraging that the media identified the six Asian and Asian American women as “sex workers” before their names were shared. 

It hurts that the automatic assumption that these women are “sex workers” when for women coerced into the trade, it is rape and imperialism. 

According to Khara Jabola-Carolus, Director of the Hawai’i State Commission on the Status of Women, “I know I’m not the only one who grew up fighting stereotypes that my Asian mom was a prostitute. So we’re not going to put colonial labels like ‘sex worker’ on the slain or use them as mascots to validate imperialist industries that dehumanize us as war booty.”

It crushes my soul that I cannot grieve properly because these six Asian and Asian American women are being commodified even in their deaths: organizations are pushing their neoliberal political agendas, specifically for the full decriminalization of the sex trade (which decriminalizes people in the sex trade and their exploiters). The decriminalization of sex buyers, pimps, and brothel owners increases the demand for commercial sex, sex tourism, and sex trafficking. 

Additionally, full decriminalization does not provide exit strategies or comprehensive trauma-informed services for people in or exiting the sex trade —because once “sex work” is seen as work, it will be treated like any other occupation.

 “The right to exit is the most denied right to women,” says Esperanza Fonseca, a labor organizer, and survivor of the sex trade. “When sex work is like all other work, there’s no reason to provide exit services to women trapped in prostitution, as we saw in New Zealand where after full decriminalization, women were still trapped as they were before.” 

Proponents of full decriminalization believe that taking the underground market into the open will allow the sex trade to be controlled. But a trade rooted in exploitation cannot be regulated. It can only be abolished. 

Learn about the different solutions to full decriminalization by checking out the Equality Model and Bodies Back Model.

Know the victim’s names and how to pronounce them: