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More details are emerging about Robert Aaron Long, the white man accused of killing eight people, including six women of Asian descent, in three Atlanta-area shootings. Various news outlets report that Long’s parents kicked him out their house on Monday night because of his obsession with pornography and his regular visits to the spas he would later target. Long underwent treatment for sex addiction for a period of six months in late 2019/early 2020. Captain Jay Baker of the Cherokee County Sheriff’s office stated that Long told the police he wanted to control his sex addiction. The spas were a temptation he wanted to eliminate. His method to eliminate temptation was to kill the women who tempted him.
Did Long commit these heinous actions because he is a sex addict? Or are his actions a product of a complex interplay of sexism, racism, and evangelicalism? This is a trick question The criteria typically used to define sex addiction — a condition that is not recognized by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders — and the behaviors taken as emblematic are, to a large degree, products of sexism, racism, and, for men such as Robert Long, evangelicalism. Does any of this mitigate Long’s responsibility? Absolutely not.
Invoking sex addiction as part of an explanation for committing heinous sexual acts is not new. Serial killer Ted Bundy, who confessed to killing at least 30 women, offered a similar explanation, as did Ariel Castro, who kidnapped and held three teenage girls hostage for a decade. The assumption seems to be that addicts completely lack control over their cravings and the actions spurred by those cravings. On this account, Ariel Castro was lacking control for 10 years. But was he? He was able to exert enormous if not total control over his three victims. What of Robert Long’s control? He was able to purchase a gun, drive for miles, sit in his car for an hour, enter a spa and kill, drive some more, enter another spa, and kill again. Rather than a lack of control, Long seemed to demonstrate enormous control as he tried to eliminate the objects — the women — who tempted him.
Those mental health professionals who work with people identifying as sex addicts or struggling with hypersexuality or compulsive sexual behavior point to the criteria of SUDs as an argument for the legitimacy of the diagnosis. These criteria primarily involve behaviors associated with impaired control, social impairment, risky use, and pharmacological indicators. One study of 72 people in treatment for sex addiction (94% of whom were men) found the following:
[T]he most ubiquitous sexual behaviors identified were masturbation (100% of the sample was concerned, among whom 31% considered this behavior as problematic), followed by watching pornography (90.1% of the sample was concerned, among whom 29.7% considered this behavior as problematic), then using cybersex (77.5% of the sample was concerned, among whom 43.6% considered this behavior as problematic), and being involved in sexual intercourse with multiple partners (70.4% of the sample was concerned, among whom 56% considered this behavior as problematic). An important proportion of patients (53.5%) indicated that the Internet is their favorite medium for sexual behaviors…. The most frequent sexual dysfunctions identified were erectile disorder (16.7%) and premature ejaculation (12.5%). Results also showed that 31.9% of the participants displayed risky sexual behaviors.
Additionally, 60% engaged in paraphilia, defined as abnormal or obsessive sexual behaviors and impulses. The two most frequent activities in this category were voyeurism and exhibitionism. Individually or taken together, these behaviors infringe or intrude on many aspects of daily life, disrupting relationships and leaving people with enormous regret and recrimination.
How are these behaviors products of sexism and racism? There’s an assumption that women’s bodies are on display for men, whether the women know and consent to it. Feminist analyses of the pornography industries argue that women’s bodies are objectified for male pleasure. Women are dehumanized; our bodies are devalued, denigrated, and abused. Pornography is normative; it tells stories about how sex should be. Consent isn’t seen as sexy but coercion is. Pornography tells stories for both men and women about sex: What is hot sex, good sex, dirty sex. For men, it is being dominant and in control. Real men have sex in certain ways; it is being aggressive or rough and not soft, cuddly, and caring. Pornography says that only men’s pleasure matters. There’s a spectrum of pornography, from the misleadingly labeled soft core to hard core. The most extreme version is snuff films, in which a woman is killed. Pornography eroticizes violence against women as it depicts violence through sex.
The racist elements are equally clear. White men have sexualized and fetishized Asian women in multiple ways in pornography, and in popular culture as well. Asian women are exotic beauties, whether the submissive woman or the dragon lady. Asian women are also thought to be especially mysterious and in possession of great sexual secrets and prowess. “Yellow fever” is one way to describe how white men fetishize Asian women. As Jessie Tu writes:
“Yellow Fever" is not a preference. It’s a racial prejudice. I have a small body. I have an Asian face. Women like me are handcuffed to a double bind. We have to fight off men who infantilise us because of our small bodies, and who also believe the Asian face carries some special gene that makes us soft-spoken, gentle, and non-confrontational. This is both oppressive and racist. I continue to be astounded by the number of white men who still see me and immediately assume I am "submissive, docile, compliant, accommodating, sweet in the kitchen, tiger in the bedroom.” My body is viewed as a literal and symbolic site upon which to construct their fantasies of the perfect Asian lover.
The fantasy of a perfect Asian lover is one who will never challenge a man’s authority. That fantasy meets the reality because many of the Asian women who work in these spas are especially vulnerable to exploitation and fearful of their well-being. Their immigration status, lack of other options, lack of housing, and inability to speak English trap them. They cannot challenge a man’s authority. All of this contributes to men visiting these massage parlors far more frequently and demanding more and treating the women even more callously and viciously than they might otherwise. Racism and sexism are fused in the exploitation of Asian women.
Evangelicalism is the final consideration in how the behaviors associated with self-identified sex addiction are described. If raised in a purity culture in which people ought to remain virgins until marriage, since the only permissible sex is in the context of marriage, anything else will be considered abnormal and wrong. With fears of lustful thoughts and in response to the sexualized images found so readily in popular culture, it isn’t surprising that those raised in such a tradition would tend to pathologize most sexual behavior and thoughts. According to Joshua Grubb, Ph.D., who works on matters of religious beliefs and attitudes toward sex, “There’s a large and growing body of research that shows that conservative religious values are strongly linked to feelings of sex addiction. We find that men in particular are likely to interpret normal sexual urges as pathological and then act on them in ways that they find to be problematic.” Moreover, many of these same men report feeling out of control even with “minimal use” of pornography. This sense of lacking control may prompt some of them to feel that they are the victims. These men may see themselves as the victims of clever, duplicitous, sinful women. This is one of the oldest stereotypes in the book.
Who does have control? Not women who are victimized in the pornography and sex industries. Not the women whom Long killed. All men—including Long—can make choices and exercise control about how to act on impulses, entertain fantasies, look at other people, and how, when, where, and what type of sex to have.
Postscript: I am genuinely agnostic on the question whether sex addiction is similar to a behavioral or process addiction such as gambling. I am compelled by people whom I have known as well as those whose accounts I have read. My concern is that the characteristic behaviors are themselves products of systems of racism, sexism, and, I would add, ableism and heterosexism. This affects how women may identify as sex addicts. The issue of control is central. Control operates on multiple levels, from the institutional/structural to the interpersonal to the personal level. We’re in need of more nuanced accounts of control. All of this indicates that far more study is necessary on the matter.
