Asian Massage Festival: Celebrating Asian Massage Workers’ Pride and Resilience

We warmly invite you to join us for the Asian Massage Festival: Celebrating Asian Massage Workers’ Pride and Resilience as part of Asian Heritage Month 2026.

​​This festival honours the rich cultural heritage of Asian massage practices and recognizes the healing knowledge, labour, resilience, and contributions of Asian massage workers—who have sustained these heritage and tradition across generations.

Event Details

Tuesday, 12 May 2026 | 7:00–9:00 p.m.

Online: Resistance and organizing of Asian massage workers over the past decade

• Speakers: Butterfly and Asian Massage Workers

Registration: Registration form for the May 12 Event

​​​​This festival is a space to celebrate, learn and stand in solidarity. While Asian massage is rooted in holistic wellness and community care, it continues to face stigma, racism, xenophobia, classism and whoreaphobia. Many Asian massage workers are impacted by restrictive policies, overregulation, racial profiling, discrimination and criminalization. ​​Despite various forms of oppression, Asian massage workers have built strong resistance and organized to fight for their rights over the past decade—for example, more than 300 workers went to Toronto City Hall to fight against the shutdown of massage parlours.

A​​sian massage workers are not criminals or victims—they are workers.

Massage is not a crime—it is healing, cultural knowledge, and community care.

How You Can Support

• Listen to the voices of Asian massage workers
• Join the movement to support Asian massage workers (Speak out against stigma, racism, whorephobia and criminalization)
• Support local massage workers (book a massage)
• Join collective efforts calling for dignity, rights, and safety

Let us come together to honour heritage, celebrate healing, and stand in solidarity.

Co-sponsors 

Butterfly (Asian and Migrant Sex Workers Support Network), ACAS, Asian Canadian Labour Alliance, Asian Canadian Women’s Alliance, Chinatown Lion Dance Group, ​​​​​​Chinese Canadian National Council (Toronto), Chinese Canadian National Council (SJ), HIV Legal Network, Korean Legal Clinic,  Women’s Legal Education & Action Fund, Mayworks Festival of Working People & the Arts, Migrant Workers Alliance For Change, No More Silence, Toronto Chinatown Land Trust, Raw Taiko, SURJ (Toronto), Whippersnapper, Gallery, Workers Action Centre, very láo.d 

York University : Mad Studies Hub, School of Social Work, Critical Disability Studies, Critical Trafficking and Sex Work Studies Research Cluster, ​​​​Centre For Feminist Research, York Centre For Asian Research , 

Toronto Art Therapy Institute
OCAD in the Art & Social Change area of study
University of Windsor, Transnational Law and Racial Justice Network

Learn more about the event and our speakers: ​​ Information about Asian Massage Festival 

Contact: cswbutterfly[at]gmail.com