Atlanta spa killings

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otseng
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Atlanta spa killings

Post #1

Post by otseng »

Another incident in Atlanta involving massage parlors, sex addiction, and Christianity:
Police arrested a suspect after eight people were killed in shootings at three separate massage parlors in the Atlanta area Tuesday, March 16. Now the FBI has joined the investigation.

Two spas were in Atlanta and one was in Cherokee County. Police said six of the eight victims were Asian women; Cherokee County officials confirmed to 11Alive there is one suspect for all of the shootings.
https://www.11alive.com/article/news/cr ... 34bcd27633

"He apparently has an issue. What he considers a sex addiction and sees these locations as something that allows him to go to these places and it's a temptation for him that he wanted to eliminate," Baker said.

6 of the 8 killed were Asian women.

"He was pretty much fed up and kind of at the end of his rope. Yesterday was a really bad day for him and this is what he did," Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office Capt. Jay Baker said Wednesday.

For debate:
- Was this rampage racially motivated or a result of sexual addiction?
- Can this incident be considered to be just "having a really bad day"?

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Difflugia
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Re: Atlanta spa killings

Post #11

Post by Difflugia »

otseng wrote: Sun Mar 21, 2021 8:23 amI don't believe Long had a hatred towards Asians. In fact, it could even be the opposite. He might've had an affinity towards Asian women and he targeted them as a source of his temptations.
"Sexual attraction toward" and "hatred for" aren't mutually exclusive. Rape, for example, is about power, dominance, and violence as well as "affinity towards" the victims. I speculate that what he was calling "sexual addiction" was merely his recognition that the gatekeepers to his sexual gratification were people that he thought he deserved to dominate. Whatever the affinity for the victims was, it didn't create enough empathy in him to prevent him from murdering them. I think it's reasonable to suspect that if he did indeed have an affinity for Asian women, it was based at least in part on his racist perceptions of submission and dominance roles. In the end, it's of course possible that he was merely profoundly misogynist and it was an accident of fate that his targets were Asian women (the other two were bystanders), but I find that unlikely. I see no reason to require some other confirmation that he was profoundly racist as well.
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Purple Knight
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Re: Atlanta spa killings

Post #12

Post by Purple Knight »

Miles wrote: Sat Mar 20, 2021 5:42 pm
Purple Knight wrote: Sat Mar 20, 2021 4:44 pmThere is a reason these things are often either illegal or tightly controlled, and it's because it has these effects on people.
So that's why so many people who visit massage parlors end up killing almost everyone in the shop every day. Image
I don't think I said everyone. I said it has these effects on people. I didn't say all people.

https://www.postcrescent.com/story/news ... 723124002/
Miles wrote: Sat Mar 20, 2021 5:42 pmNow that's funny! Nothing like gross exaggeration to tickle my funny bone. Thanks. :approve:
I take it you are a libertarian because, when faced with their own policies (taken from lp.org) all a libertarian can do is call it an exaggeration and make a joke of it. Libertarians have one weapon, and one weapon only: Ridicule.

https://www.lp.org/platform/
1.7 Crime and Justice

Government force must be limited to the protection of the rights of individuals to life, liberty, and property, and governments must never be permitted to violate these rights. Laws should be limited in their application to violations of the rights of others through force or fraud, or to deliberate actions that place others involuntarily at significant risk of harm. Therefore, we favor the repeal of all laws creating “crimes” without victims, such as gambling, the use of drugs for medicinal or recreational purposes, and consensual transactions involving sexual services. We support restitution to the victim to the fullest degree possible at the expense of the criminal or the negligent wrongdoer. The constitutional rights of the criminally accused, including due process, a speedy trial, legal counsel, trial by jury, and the legal presumption of innocence until proven guilty, must be preserved. We assert the common-law right of juries to judge not only the facts but also the justice of the law. We oppose the prosecutorial practice of “over-charging” in criminal prosecutions so as to avoid jury trials by intimidating defendants into accepting plea bargains.
Horse's mouth.

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Re: Atlanta spa killings

Post #13

Post by Dimmesdale »

[Replying to otseng in post #1]

I think it really depends on how an individual thinks. He may have been racist; that's definitely a likely possibility given the circumstances. Or perhaps Asian women embodied some type of symbolism in his mind. And that made him angry. In other words, he may not have actually hated the Asian race, but Asians occupied his mind in such a way that he had to "get rid" of them, or "off-load" in some fashion. Maybe this was due to some sort of psychological association that didn't involve any explicit racism or hatred.

For example, it used to be in my life I had an intense fear of millipedes. Now, I never hated millipedes. I was just grossed out by them and fearful of their many legs. They conjured in my mind some type of psychological association, and I had no choice but to avoid them (not sit on the ground for fear one might start crawling on me, etc). If they happened to have been Asians, I very well could have felt "boxed in" in a similar way.

Human psychology is very complex.

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Purple Knight
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Re: Atlanta spa killings

Post #14

Post by Purple Knight »

otseng wrote: Sat Mar 20, 2021 8:30 pmBut, can we fault young men to be addicted to porn when it's so easily accessible?
No, you can't fault them. You can fault them about as much as you can fault a crack baby for being born addicted to crack - they were bathed in it... marinated in it.

That doesn't mean you can't punish them, however, and I argue you still should. He murdered. He should get the punishment for murder. The fact that such a punishment is, at maximum, his life, which the massage parlour had already ruined, is a natural consequence of the situation, and a warning to all that you should perhaps not ruin peoples' lives even if it is legal. Bartenders must cut people off who've gone over the edge, why not them? Oh, right... they were breaking the law by even selling sex in the first place.

I think you'll find I'm the oddball here being on this side. Usually, an issue like this splits the religious and the areligious down the middle like a vorpal blade. I'm just on the wrong side.

I'm not even usually fully on a side but this legitimately upsets me.
Dimmesdale wrote: Sun Mar 21, 2021 7:58 pmFor example, it used to be in my life I had an intense fear of millipedes.
Some are poisonous but I don't think there are any that can kill you, or even do anything truly horrid to you.

Cockroaches, however, can crawl in your nose or ear and then either get stuck, or lay an egg.

https://www.theverge.com/2018/6/6/17429 ... infections

https://www.rentokil.com.my/blog/newsbr ... uman-body/

Each cockroach egg contains up to 50 baby cockroaches.

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otseng
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Re: Atlanta spa killings

Post #15

Post by otseng »

Difflugia wrote: Sun Mar 21, 2021 5:53 pmI see no reason to require some other confirmation that he was profoundly racist as well.
Dimmesdale wrote: Sun Mar 21, 2021 7:58 pm He may have been racist; that's definitely a likely possibility given the circumstances.
I personally believe the race factor comes in because Long had a fetish towards Asian women.

"Multiple experts have stated that race cannot be ruled out as a motive because Asian women are fetishized in American society."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Atla ... ngs#Motive
“I think that the fact that Asian women are stereotyped as sexually alluring or competent, which seems to be a positive trait in general, makes it seem like it’s a positive thing to be stereotyped that way,” Zheng told me. “It’s not necessarily positive, and it can also have the effect of reducing someone, especially someone of a racial minority who is already going to be flattened… to those qualities, and nobody wants to merely be an object of sexual interest.”
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/ro ... 18701.html

I do not believe his motivation was based on domination or anger against Asian women. As far as I can tell, Long has not exhibited any violence of any sort towards anybody prior to this. But one thing we know for sure is he had an addiction to porn and to massage parlors.

"Investigators believe Long had previously visited two of the Atlanta massage businesses where four of the women were killed, police said."
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireSto ... a-76560038

If he did have a fetish towards Asian women, can the murders be considered a hate crime?

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Re: Atlanta spa killings

Post #16

Post by nobspeople »

[Replying to otseng in post #11]
For debate:
- Was this rampage racially motivated or a result of sexual addiction?
- Can this incident be considered to be just "having a really bad day"?
Race is, for some, a sexual thing - fetish even. Knowing that, the question should be 'does a racial fetish allow this type of rampage'? I'd say no sexual fetish based on race, gender, weight, body part, eye color, clothing, whatever, should allow for such an action.

There's not much more that would equate to 'having a really bad day' than killing people. That, itself, shouldn't negate the seriousness of the issue IMO.
Have a great, potentially godless, day!

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