Furthermore, if sex workers have very high murder rates, what would those rates look like for Massage Therapists? Through that research, I found that for women, the two most dangerous jobs with the highest risks of violence and death are sex work and massage therapy. Both professions involve being alone with clients who may or may not have been screened in any meaningful way. We are often in a room with someone where, if something goes wrong, all you have is your word against theirs.

My profession, for many years, has existed between two spectrums. On one hand, we are part of the medical world. In states like Virginia, Massage Therapists are required to obtain a license through the umbrella of the Virginia Nursing Board. Many Massage Therapists work in hospital cancer wards comforting those in extreme pain or near death, at rehabilitation centers helping people recover from addiction, or at chiropractic and wellness clinics under professionally certified doctors.

On the other hand, Massage Therapists also work in small strip malls in tiny towns, behind blacked-out windows, where you cannot be sure if the person inside is truly a Massage Therapist or a kidnapped woman being trafficked.

At the beginning of my career, there was a perspective that was gaslit to me and that I bought into for a large part of my career. I remember thinking, I guess I kind of get the misunderstanding. If a guy asks for a “happy ending,” he could just be mistaken and mean no real harm. This is a very forgiving viewpoint toward men asking a professional for sex work. I was nineteen when I got my first massage job, and whenever it came up that clients might ask us for sexual favors, even managers framed it as something understandable. If it happened or we felt uncomfortable, we were told to ask them to get dressed, go up front, and the massage was over. We would go to the back break room and move on with our day. There was a suggestion to minimize the situation for the benefit of the other clients. Most of the time, they were simply not asked to return or were put on a possible ban list until they did something again. Both male and female owners and managers acted this way, so I cannot even say it was a sexist thing that upper management did not take it seriously.

I will never forget one time when I was working at a high-end franchise in Hollywood. A client released himself on the sheets, got dressed, and left the room, leaving it for the Massage Therapist in the room next to me to discover. When she reported it, the manager said he probably was not going to do anything, like call the police, because it would look bad for their image, could result in an article being written, and create bad PR. He also mentioned that the man’s wife was a regular client and that he did not want to embarrass her.

There was also a strange part of the patriarchy I did not realize I had been conditioned into until later in life, the be an accommodating woman conditioning. Even when being harassed or assaulted, we are expected to remain polite, calm, and understanding. I cannot think of anything more infuriating than being assaulted and then asked to remain calm about it. It is accommodating to abusers.

One of the biggest abusers of this misconception is the men who traffic women for sex and use massage as a code word, mostly online but sometimes at small locations. It drives me crazy that you can type massage into Facebook and immediately get ads for women in your area who give sexual massages. It makes me sad that someone might genuinely be curious about massage, maybe they are in pain, maybe they have cancer, and instead they come upon porn.

Like I said at the beginning, this is what I used to think or was conditioned to think. More recently, I have come to the conclusion that men are fully aware that Massage Therapy is a legitimate profession and have collectively agreed on their own definition for their own benefit. This confusion between massage therapy and sex work is also a lie that policemen, politicians, and cheating husbands have all silently agreed to participate in. It is a universal excuse. If the assumptions and misconceptions already exist, why not take advantage of them? That way, if they are ever confronted by management or police, they can claim it was an understandable misunderstanding. If they go to court for assault, rape, or murder, a lawyer will no doubt take advantage of that misunderstanding in his client’s favor.

To me, this logic is similar to a cop pulling over a man with a sex worker and asking how they know each other. They are not going to say, I pulled over and offered money for sexual favors. Of course they will lie. They will say she is a cousin or a friend and that he is just giving her a ride. So why is this obvious logic not applied to Massage Therapists?

Mr. Officer, if your grandmother is getting massages after chemotherapy in the hospital, and your mother and sister go to a spa weekend, do you really believe that the same Massage Therapists treating your loved ones are also offering sexual favors on the side? Do you see how ridiculous that sounds?

And yet, time after time, the word massage appears in police reports, lawsuits, and news articles connected to abuse, trafficking, and murder.

Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell used the word massage like a key to unlock doors they had no right to enter. Court files and records now show that he used this ruse on hundreds of women.

The two most common traps they used were simple. Do you want to be a model? I know a man who can help your career. Or, do you need to make some money? I know a man who pays very well for massages. When offered, this appears to be a stroke of luck because it is. As soon as these young women entered their home, the illusion disappeared and the threats, coercion, and manipulation began.

Although I believe Massage Therapists should have the freedom to work wherever they feel safest, perhaps for the protection of everyone, private home appointments should be illegal for a period of time. Even if only for one year or five years. What is more radical is allowing thousands of women to be harassed and killed for the convenience of home service.

To be clear, I am not talking about long-term clients or elderly people who rely on in-home care. I am talking about a system that allows strangers to lure women into private residences with promises of money and safety.

Right now, I struggle to see the benefit to Massage Therapists or to young girls interested in the field in allowing them to place themselves in situations where they could be mentally, physically, and financially destroyed.

There will always be people who argue against this idea. But if we are talking about saving lives, then the discomfort of changing how and where massage is practiced is worth it. If every massage appointment took place inside a licensed business and crimes against Massage Therapists were taken seriously, I believe the statistics would drop dramatically. That is not proven fact. It is my personal theory grounded in pattern recognition and lived experience.

In the entertainment and sports worlds, the story repeats on a larger scale. There have been cases where Massage Therapists were assaulted during private sessions, and in some instances the victims died before justice could be served. Articles appear that read, Massage Therapist commits suicide before trial against so-and-so. Silencing accusers has long been a tactic of powerful men.

Rich men and celebrities have been caught soliciting sex acts under the guise of legitimate appointments, with charges dismissed on technicalities. Money, power, and intimidation are used to exploit vulnerable women who work healing people in pain.

The Atlanta spa shootings in 2021 showed how deeply massage is entangled with racial and sexualized violence. Asian Massage Therapists take the brunt of the stereotype. Violent men wrongly assume Asian women are submissive, and when rejected, they become enraged by both the refusal and the loss of power they expected.

On March 16, 2021, a man entered three spas and murdered eight people, six of them Asian women. He claimed a sex addiction and said he was eliminating temptation. The Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus called this what it was. Though he was not charged with a hate crime, the pattern was obvious and helped spark the Stop Asian Hate movement.

There is no doubt that sexual acts sometimes occur in massage rooms, but this is rare. Women are not eager to give hand jobs and blow jobs at work. No one seems to consider that an immigrant woman working on a visa might comply out of fear or confusion.

The list of Massage Therapists murdered by private clients or in their workplaces is long. Kristi O’Connell was killed by a client during an in-home session. Julissa Brisman was murdered by the Craigslist Killer who booked her for a massage. In Chicago, Xinran Ji was beaten to death. In Washington State, Shuyin Jin was murdered during what was supposed to be a normal appointment.

There is also the overlap with serial killers. Gary Ridgway admitted to targeting women who advertised massages. Robert Hansen picked up women under the guise of paying for massage services. The word massage becomes bait. It is the disguise that gets women alone behind closed doors.

One possible way to change this narrative is legalizing sex work and creating nationwide unions for both sex workers and Massage Therapists. Massage Therapy already has state licensing systems. Why should sex work not be treated the same way? If it were legal and sexual crimes were prosecuted fully, everyone could operate transparently. But that is a big ask in this country.

The misunderstanding was never a misunderstanding. It was a convenient lie. A word that lets men ask for sex and lawyers argue for innocence. Massage Therapy is not a euphemism. It is not bait. It is not a joke. It is women at work. And women deserve to come home alive.