Moira Donegan says what needs to be said about the anti-Asian, anti-woman hate crime that took place in Atlanta:
"Why do so many straight men come to resent and hate the women they find attractive? Maybe it’s a question of power. People often experience being sexually attracted to someone as if that person has a kind of power over them, and for a straight, white man like Long, positioned at the top of so many social hierarchies, this is likely one of his most acute experiences of another person’s power that he has ever faced. For men socialized in a sexist culture where rigid strictures of masculinity dictate that another person’s power over a man constitutes a failure of his masculinity, attraction to a woman can be interpreted as a threat posed by that woman – at least, it can for men of especially weak character. It is not hard to deduce how a racist and sexist man, reared in a culture of white supremacy and masculine entitlement, could experience his own powerlessness over his attraction to the women at the spas as a distressing humiliation. To be able to experience sexual attraction to another person without that feeling becoming a source of shame and rage requires a degree of self assurance and respect that Long, and men like him, evidently do not possess."
Easy access to guns, a former president glibly spewing racism, and an American culture awash in misogyny -- this type of violence will happen again.
And sex workers deserve the same rights and protections that anyone else has.
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