Killings leave many Asian women feeling unsafe
Editor’s note: Violence against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders came into the national spotlight with the killing of eight people – six of them women of Asian descent – at three Atlanta area massage parlors on March 16. Such violence has been on rise since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, but it has a long history in America.
Opinion and Community Engagement Editor Amelia Robinson asked today’s guest columnists their thoughts on this subject. Two columns were featured Sunday. Find them and related opinion pieces at Dispatch.com/opinion/.
Less than two days after news of the Atlanta shooting broke, close to 60 of us, all Asian Pacific Islander Desi American (APIDA) at Ohio State University, gathered on Zoom.
I was not prepared for the weight of the emotion at the event. Many words were shared – tired, exhausted, angry, fear – but it was the pauses and silent moments that told the most difficult parts of what the people in this community were experiencing. Six of the victims of the shooting were women of Asian descent.
“It’s just … gross … like we are objects,” a female student attending the online event said quietly.
This “gross” feeling was triggered not only by the shooter’s inhumane killing, but also by his self-narrative, which was callously amplified by both the police spokesperson and the media. But the triggers are everywhere: the popular constructions of Asian women as willing and submissive sex objects and real-life encounters with unwanted sexual advances.
For those of us who are immigrants, they also come from systems of patriarchy back in our countries of origin. Having experienced a host of misogyny across continents, I was heartbroken to see the hurt in our young women of Asian descent here at OSU.
Among those from East Asia with whom I have close contact, the most common mode of response is silence. But in a survey that I have conducted with them, one voice rings loudly: “I don’t feel safe.”
How we experience safety and security is compounded by complex factors that include more than race and gender.
Our international students from East Asia, those from China in particular, have been enduring misinformation and xenophobia targeting their home country. As politicians exchanged tough words, on the ground, our students from China dealt with ever more unfriendly student-visa processes; forced to stay in
China or choosing to return there out of concern for their own safety, they have been taking classes online on a U.S. Eastern time zone schedule, which means staying up at 12:30 a.m. or 2:20 a.m. to log in to classes, day after day.
Those who have stayed here since the pandemic began have not seen their parents for at least a year. Their silence, as one courageous student from China told me, was partly due to fearing risks of deportation, should any of their more public statements or activities somehow have legal ramifications.
My experiences, as well as my students’ experiences as Asian immigrant women, are very different from those of service industry working women. But the killing of these six Asian women, all of whom worked at massage spas, touched our nerves: They were brutally murdered, even though they simply had been diligently living their lives.
Even the silent were silenced. After our Zoom gathering, more organizing has sprung up. As the Asian/ APIDA communities across and beyond OSU strengthen our voices, we, Asians and non-asians, must also practice hard listening, attuning ourselves to the urgent need for support in pauses and silences.
Meow Hui Goh is an associate professor of Chinese literature and chair of Ohio State University’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee at the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures.