Hey, here's a brief analogy for you: If someone in medieval Europe decides that moneylending is an immoral profession, and they kill a bunch of Jewish people who "happen" to be moneylenders (because it's one of the professions society allows them to do), that's antisemitism
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In medieval times there was no such thing as "hating moneylenders as a profession" without hating Jews Any more than in the old South it made sense to say "He oppresses people who are *enslaved* but not because they're Black, just because of their legal status"
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In modern times we have softened the rules, we have tried to increase social mobility so it's easier to escape the social role your family was born into
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But it's still complete and total bullshit to pretend that someone "doesn't mean anything racial" when he says he "hates cab drivers" or "looks down on maids" or, in this case, "is disgusted by the temptations of sex workers"
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This isn't even fucking that stretched an analogy I deliberately picked the less direct analogy -- it's also true that in medieval times Christian moralists *directly used the word "Jewess" as a synonym for "prostitute"* (which is why it's now considered a slur)
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Sex work has always been a diverse profession that exists in some form wherever sex exists But the stigmatized population of sex workers that the brunt of oppression and violence falls against is always one defined by markers of race, ethnicity and social class
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I don't know what was going through this specific shooter's head and I don't actually much care (nor do I think he's a reliable witness about his own motivations -- as though any of us is, but especially someone about to go on trial for murder)
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But I do know that it's absolutely true that while all sex workers are seen as disposable once they fully get hit with the stigma of "sex worker", there's obviously a huge range of how EASILY someone slides in the general public's mind from "human being" to "sex object"
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And that that dehumanization has to go pretty far for someone to think that ending a human being's life is justifiable as "removing temptation" from his own life -- that shooting a woman dead is the equivalent of putting a porn blocker on his laptop
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And the process of dehumanization is always -- ALWAYS -- easier if someone is defined as a different race from you That's what race is FOR That's what race IS
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That's why these fucking "Asian massage parlors" doing sex work under the table EXIST -- that's EXACTLY WHY white men like this feel comfortable patronizing them but would be skeeved out by buying sex from someone "who could be a girl you went to school with"
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The idea that "Oh, he's a fucked up sex addict, and Asian massage parlors are what was available to him, so it had nothing to do with race" is SO STUPID INCREDIBLY STUPID It's like you all said the words "structural racism" as this magic phrase you never tried to understand
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If racism only described to your personal disparate interactions between two people with the exact same socioeconomic status and profession then like 90% of racism wouldn't be racism That's the motive behind people who push the line of "I don't see race"
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"If a PoC came into my office as a fellow lawyer in my field I would treat them the same as all my white colleagues The way I treat people in professions I don't respect who only HAPPEN to be disproportionately PoC has NOTHING TO DO with race"
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Well, shit, anyone from any time period could fucking say that "It's not my fault all my fellow European aristocrats are also white Christians, I didn't set up that system In some hypothetical situation like Shakespeare's Othello I'd be totally not racist"
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End of conversation
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