Why Asian women are uniquely vulnerable to violence in Canada and the U.S.

Emma Sandri

POSTMEDIA

3/20/2021

The intersection between race and gender has made Asian women uniquely vulnerable to violence, experts and advocates say in the wake of the killings of six Asian women in Atlanta, Georgia.

© Provided by National Post People hold a banner during a candlelight vigil in Garden Grove, California, on March 17, 2021 to unite against the recent spate of violence targeting Asians and to express grief and outrage after a shooting that left eight people dead in Atlanta, Georgia, including at least six Asian women.

The 21-year-old accused gunman, who is white, carried out his violent rampage at three spas on Tuesday, killing eight people.

A spokesperson for the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Department said the gunman confessed to the shootings and indicated that he had a sex addiction and “wanted to eliminate” the temptation the establishments represented to him.

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While investigators have said it’s too early to say whether the gunman’s crimes were racially motivated, anti-Asian hate crimes have been on the rise, in both the U.S. and Canada, over the past year.


“Whether or not they were actually sex workers or self-identified under that label, we know that as massage workers, they were subjected to sexualized violence stemming from the hatred of sex workers, Asian women, working class people and immigrants,” wrote Red Canary Song , a grassroots collective of Asian and migrant sex workers, in response to the killings.

Sexism and racism not mutually exclusive

As Sunny Woan wrote in the Washington and Lee Journal for Civil Rights and Social Justice, Asian women are often fantasized as “small, weak, submissive and erotically alluring … existing solely to serve men and be sexually consumed by them.”

Over the last century, the media and the arts have continued to over-sexualize Asian women, while portraying them as meek and inferior — such as in the hit Broadway play, Miss Saigon, in which an underage sex worker in Vietnam falls in love with an American Marine — wrote Woan.

WHICH IS BASED ON THE OPERA MADAME BUTTERFLY ITSELF A WORK ABOUT AN AMERICAN IMPERIALIST AND AND ASIA WOMAN HIS LOVER WHOM HE ABANDONS AND SO SHE COMMITS SUICIDE

Russell Jeung, a professor of Asian American studies at San Francisco State University, told NBC that the intersection of racism and sexism — including the stereotype that Asian women are subservient — has factored into the disproportionate impact of anti-Asian violence on women. In particular, Asian women have often been perceived as “easier targets.”

“ More than 68 per cent of reported incidents of anti-Asian harassment and violence (in America) have been from women,” said Sung Yeon Choimorrow , executive director of National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum, in a statement on the Atlanta shootings. “Even before the pandemic and the racist scapegoating that came in its wake, AAPI ( Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders) women routinely experienced racialized misogyny.”

The ‘Shecession’

Asian-owned businesses have been particularly hard hit by the pandemic, as lockdown restrictions have been compounded by racism.

In particular, politicians’ rhetoric has been blamed for fueling anti-Asian racism and business boycotts, such as president Donald Trump’s labelling of COVID-19 as the “Kung-flu” or “Wuhan virus.” Amy Go, president of the Chinese Canadian National Council for Social Justice, said that language has done “tremendous” harm to the Chinese-Canadian community.

“There’s so much pain and grief,” she told the Canadian Press about her initial reaction to the attack. “At the same time, as Asian Canadian women, none of us were surprised. There was no sense of shock. It was as if we knew this was coming … it just happened to be in Atlanta.”

Many Chinese businesses and restaurants experienced a drop in sales before the start of the pandemic, as customers opted to stay home — or buy from somewhere else — after hearing about the virus.

The pandemic has also been especially hard on Canadian women — with the economic recession being dubbed a “shecession.” When the pandemic first hit, women lost 62 per cent of the jobs shutdown in February and March 2020 — almost all in the service sector. Compared to white women, women of colour — including Asian women — have faced higher rates of unemployment during the pandemic.

According to Reuters , these women tend to work in some of the hardest-hit job sectors, such as retail and hospitality, and care for children or relatives. In particular, South Asian women have experienced the highest unemployment rates in the country over the summer, with 20 per cent of South Asian women aged 15 to 69 reporting they were without a job in July.

“The Asian women murdered yesterday were working highly vulnerable and low-wage jobs during an ongoing pandemic speaks directly to the compounding impacts of misogyny, structural violence and white supremacy,” said Phi Nguyen, a litigation director at Asian American Advancing Justice – Atlanta, in a statement .
Violence and harassment stoked by COVID-19

According to Statistics Canada , media outlets and police services have reported an increase in anti-Asian discrimination since the start of the pandemic — reminiscent of reactions to the 2009 SARS outbreak.

In May 2020, more than 43,000 Canadians submitted responses on how COVID-19 has impacted their perceptions of safety. Data from Statistics Canada shows that Canadians with Asian backgrounds were more likely to report noticing increased racial or ethnic harassment during the pandemic. In particular, Korean, Chinese and Filipino participants perceived that discriminatory incidents — such as harassment or attacks — were happening often or sometimes in their communities.

Among the women surveyed who were identified as visible minorities, 26 per cent reported feeling unsafe while walking alone after dark. The highest proportion of those who felt unsafe were Korean, Filipino and Chinese participants — the same groups who perceived an increase in harassment and attacks since the onset of COVID-19.

British Columbia has also surpassed any sub-national region in North America for having the most reported anti-Asian hate crime incidents “per Asian capita,” according to community-based reporting tool Project 1907 . Women have been disproportionately impacted in particular, and make up nearly 70 per cent of all reported incidents in the province.

“Just because we look Chinese or look Asian, we’re suddenly not Canadian,” Go told the Canadian Press .

 ABC News

Duration 2:05

Neighbors across the US are standing strong against anti-Asian American bias