As she walked the aisles, MR said in an interview, she sensed a man standing close behind her. She turned to confront him and noticed that he was a good six inches taller than her. He was talking in graphic detail about sexual things he wanted to do to her. “You’re so disgusting, get away from me,” she told him, and hurried off to find her friend.
Still, he stayed close, and for a few tense minutes the two of them locked eyes while she waited in line to pay. When at last he left, she thought that was the end of it – until, back outside in the chill of the winter morning, she felt something cold against the back of her leggings.
The man had ejaculated on her.
“I didn’t know how to react. I wanted to kill this man,” said MR, who was 47 at the time, recalling the horror and helplessness she felt as her friend wiped her off with towels. (The Guardian has verified MR’s identity but is not publishing her full name to protect her privacy.)
Hours later, on the advice of a sister who worked in law enforcement, she fished her soiled leggings out of the garbage and took them back to the store to report what had happened. A clerk listened to her account and, not seeming to realize that MR understood Spanish, shouted to a colleague in a backroom: “Tenemos otra.”
“We’ve got another one.”
What in the hell goes through the head of a dude like that?
Why? How? I don’t get it. What the fuck did we do as a society to create such people???
My objection to capital punishment leaving my body
Carry mace
Holy shit! I hope they start getting shot when they do this.
My wife is a victim of sexual assault and while I’m generally anti carceral I do think that these sexual assaults need to be treated as misogynistic hate crimes, and that crimes done for clout need to receive extra penalties.
Sometimes I feel like we’d have a better world if we gave women free guns.
Not a kinder world, probably, but a better one.
I don’t want to live on this planet anymore.
Very lame of The Guardian to use the word gooner instead of sharking. Either the author is uninformed and couldn’t bother look it up or they purposefully used it for SEO strength. Neither scenario is good. I will praise them for covering the issue, though.
It even came with its own specialized vocabulary. Masturbating in public and surreptitiously ejaculating on random women was known as “tagging” or “sharking” – or even “cum-sharking”. Online forums praised perpetrators for being “low inhibition” or “low inhib”, and users contributing to the discussion said they wished they could summon the same fearlessness in themselves.
From the article
The act seems like a gateway to worse forms of sexual assault/rape. Yikes.
Not the word I was complaining about, but good on you for reading the article instead of my comment.
They used the word you were complaining about them not using to describe the act. I’m not sure what I missed here. The gooner (name of the community they were part of) was the subject of the article who was doing the act (sharking). The headline is accurate.
The gooning communities that the journalists looked into were using the terms “sharking” and “tagging” to describe these attacks.
Giving gooners everywhere a bad name
People really seem to be taking offense to the reputation of gooners taking a hit with this piece.
If you’re a gooner and NOT assaulting women in public, you’re probably fine and this article isn’t talking about you.
Someone that goons is engaging a form of extended masturbation without climax. That is not sexual assault. What people are worried about is that gooning will be equated with sexual assault, because they are not the same thing. Not all gooners are rapists, and not all rapists are gooners. Furthermore, if a person wants to goon, they shouldn’t have to worry about their reputation over it.
Someone that goons is engaging a form of extended masturbation without climax.
I mean that’s just edging. Gooning is generally more disfunctional than that, typically involving excessive amounts of pornography for an extended period of time combined with an excessively self-deprecating mindset. Gooning should honestly be seen as a form of sexual dysfunction in a similar vein to porn addiction
I completely agree. That doesn’t mean that these men committing these particular sexual assaults are NOT gooners though.
Gooning on it’s own is totally fine. Using gooning to justify attacking people and performing sexual acts without consent is not.
The authors still should have used the the correct term “sharking” in the headline instead of randomly throwing gooners under the bus, apparently just because it’s a term people would actually recognize.
Did you read the article?
There are groups of gooners that come together to encourage these acts and share videos of them. These particular gooner groups are using the terms “sharking” and “tagging” to describe these sexual assaults.
That doesn’t mean that all gooners are doing this.
Why tf are y’all acting like being a gooner means one is immune from being a perpetrator?
Thank goodness I stick to men and boys.
Some people have no sense of humor. You are some people.
This is a news community and this post is about sexual assault victims.
This is not a shitposting community.
And yet tearful shit keeps pouring out of you.
Don’t you have something better to do than antagonize people who post news articles about sexual assault by pretending to be a child molester?
Why the fuck do you care what I post? If you don’t like it, ignore it.
I’m a Batman goon and I’m ashamed
BOOM!
Those responsible for the act here are horrible, broken people, but don’t forget the company that created the conditions for this to happen and an environment where their employees can be so casual about sexual assault - most likely being perpetrated predominately on low/no income individuals and people of color per Dollar Tree’s typical customer base.
We need mace and attack dogs.
You know what else would be funny? Convictions. Fuck these losers
Shame on The Guardian for using a term for a kink when the article itself even mentions a term for the specific form of sexual assault. Why call this anything ralted to gooning when it’s tagging/sharking/cum-sharking?
This may seem minor to folks, but it’s actually extremely concerning. I’ll be very clear though, this behavior was disgusting. I’m not saying people engaging in sexual assault aren’t pieces of shit or that they’re just engaging in a harmless kink. The problem is that the article also uses a term for a kink/people engaging in a kink and labels it onto people engaging in sexual assault.
It even came with its own specialized vocabulary. Masturbating in public and surreptitiously ejaculating on random women was known as “tagging” or “sharking” – or even “cum-sharking”. Online forums praised perpetrators for being “low inhibition” or “low inhib”, and users contributing to the discussion said they wished they could summon the same fearlessness in themselves.
[…]
Almost immediately, the lawyers stumbled on another weird dimension to the cases they were developing: an online subculture of lonely, disaffected men, known as “gooners”, who bond with one other over their shared fascination with obsessive masturbation and compete with each other to see who can keep going for hours or even days at a time.
While most appear to pursue their self-pleasure in private “goon caves” and are not criminals, some gooners, the lawyers found, took pride in public acts of masturbation. In fact, some were committing sharking assaults at Dollar Tree stores and posting the footage online.
[…]
Another gooner, who was caught filming himself while masturbating at a Dollar Tree in Fern Park, Florida, told police that he did this regularly “in different locations” and uploaded the videos to an OnlyFans page, according to his arrest report.
[…]
Long before it developed an association with criminal acts, “gooning” was understood as a pornography-fueled compulsion, sometimes involving multiple screens at once, that can become a substitute for intimate relationships with others. It also tends to come with a heavy dose of self-loathing. Experts say that online forums and video content aimed at gooners often send the message that obsessive masturbation – whether alone or in public – is as much as men like them can aspire to in life. Webster described it as a “disavowed manic state of triumph over something hideous”.
One common trope of the pornography that these gooners consume has men ejaculating over women’s bodies, faces and hair – acts that, Lankford said, have no basis in evolutionary biology and are difficult to interpret as anything other than demeaning to the women.
As a small aside, I think the last paragraph really shows out weirdly out of touch some of this article is. Does something sexual have to be based on “evolutionary psychology” for it to be considered acceptable? As long as consensual for all parties involved, why does it matter? Just because something makes you personally uncomfortable doesn’t mean it’s something that’s inherently wrong. Kinks can be explored in a consensusal, safe, and healthy way. Conversely, would that suddenly mean other niche kinks that are based in more biological topics are considered acceptable? Does knotting get a pass but facials don’t?? Like, this paragraph is just so weird. Anyways, back to the main point.
This is really concerning to me. It’s the Overton window shifting to demonize porn instead of the actual issue at hand: sexual assault.
For folks who might not understand why I think this is concerning, consider this hypothetical alternative scenario.
Alcoholic sexually assaults woman
A local woman was attacked in public. During the assault, the assailant’s words were slurred and his breath smelled of hard liquor. He was detained and found to be a part of a community that attacks women and posts videos of it online. They call themselves rapists.
Almost immediately, the lawyers stumbled on another weird dimension to the cases they were developing: a disturbing trend amongst people to engage in drinking alcohol. These alcoholics bond with others over their shared interest in alcohol.
While most alcoholics are content to self indulge at home or in bars, many also drink at parties, or large get togethers of many people. At these parties many people drink alcohol. A concerning trend amongst party goers is to have sex. Many of these alcoholics rape women at these parties.
We consulted a biologist and they informed us that alcohol is actually poisonous to the body and there is no reason one should ever consume it.
In case it’s not clear, instead of calling the person a rapist they’re called an alcoholic, ignores that the person is in a group called “rapists”, and then tries to make a connection between alcohol and rape.
What if the article was about finding a kidnapping victim who was tied up and the article attributed it to shibari? It’s just so weird to me. I find it disgusting. I hope that others here aren’t so puritanical that they can see the problem I’m illustrating.
I’ll do plenty of things that have no basis in evolutionary biology. I just get consent first.
Yeah that entire comment is defending gooners performing consensual sex acts. The article is NOT talking about consensual sex acts.
Well they managed to turn feminists into a dirty word, now are working on gooner.
Maybe if we meme “journalist” into a filthy word these hacks will get that truth actually matters.
Please don’t compare a sexual activity with feminism.
Kinks can be explored in a consensusal, safe, and healthy way.
These men who are self-proclaimed “gooners” and assaulting women in public are not exploring their gooning kink in a consensual, safe, or healthy way.
If you’re a gooner that isn’t assaulting women, then you’re probably fine and this article isn’t targeting you.
My point is that the article mentions this is called sharking and then instead of saying they’re a “sharker” it says they’re a “gooner.”
Over the next several weeks and months, MR would learn not only that there had been reports of similar incidents at the same store in the same timeframe – one that had been shared on social media and at least one other she heard about anecdotally from shopping center employees – but that masturbating in front of female customers at branches of Dollar Tree was fast becoming a national phenomenon, a disturbing new form of sexual assault that men were documenting and bragging about in dark corners of the internet.
It even came with its own specialized vocabulary. Masturbating in public and surreptitiously ejaculating on random women was known as “tagging” or “sharking” – or even “cum-sharking”. Online forums praised perpetrators for being “low inhibition” or “low inhib”, and users contributing to the discussion said they wished they could summon the same fearlessness in themselves.
The online forums they’re talking about here are the gooning forums and the social media posts from these gooners. The people in these communities call these actions “sharking” or “tagging”.
I’m aware that you’re offended by the framing of the article about gooners. They’re specifically talking about the men who cross boundaries and assault women in the pursuit of gooning, not all people who indulge in gooning.
The problem is that later they associate sharking with gooning as if the two are extremely closely related and then go so far as to label the sexual assaulter in the headline a “gooner” instead of a sharker. As if trying to edge for a long time is somehow a slippery slope that leads to people ejaculating on women in public. It’s disgusting.
Almost immediately, the lawyers stumbled on another weird dimension to the cases they were developing: an online subculture of lonely, disaffected men, known as “gooners”, who bond with one other over their shared fascination with obsessive masturbation and compete with each other to see who can keep going for hours or even days at a time.
While most appear to pursue their self-pleasure in private “goon caves” and are not criminals, some gooners, the lawyers found, took pride in public acts of masturbation. In fact, some were committing sharking assaults at Dollar Tree stores and posting the footage online.
Sharking and gooning are two totally unrelated things. One is sexual assault. One is glorified edging.
They found these public assaults posted in gooning communities by the perpetrators.
These men are self-labeled gooners who are assaulting women.
If you’re a gooner and are only edging and NOT assaulting women, this article isn’t talking about you.
The article never mentions any of this being posted to “gooning communities” (unless I missed something). It mentions “an amateur porn site”, “OnlyFans”, and “an incel forum.”
Greenberg and Blizzard could not establish how public MR’s assailant had been with his exploits, since he has never been identified. But they did find an individual going by the name “Goon-God”, who had a page on an amateur porn site offering more than 200 sharking videos for $25 – along with a promotional clip that appeared to show an attack on an oblivious Dollar Tree shopper as she pushed a cart along a crowded soap aisle. Another gooner, who was caught filming himself while masturbating at a Dollar Tree in Fern Park, Florida, told police that he did this regularly “in different locations” and uploaded the videos to an OnlyFans page, according to his arrest report.
[…]
The Dollar Tree assaults essentially bring these elements together, turning a criminal act into some combination of a dare and a misogynistic joke. “Damn that’s pretty cool,” reads one comment on an incel forum in response to a 2018 sharking video. (The video has since been taken down.) “How did he not get caught there lol,” reads another.
The closest thing I can find to mentioning these being uploaded to gooning communities specifically is this from when it talked about gooners.
While most appear to pursue their self-pleasure in private “goon caves” and are not criminals, some gooners, the lawyers found, took pride in public acts of masturbation. In fact, some were committing sharking assaults at Dollar Tree stores and posting the footage online.
But all it says is “online”, it doesn’t say where it’s been posted online. Notably, this paragraph is also before the others, so it could easily be referring to the other places mentioned later and not a fourth location.
Why would they post a direct link to these online gooning communities?
Need some pointers on how to find them?
How… How do you even do that??? Dumbfounded.
do you live in a city?
lots of homeless mentally ill folks bust nuts in public, and assault strangers. pretty common sight.
lots of homeless mentally ill folks bust nuts in public, and assault strangers. pretty common sight.
Which city are you in where this is common?
Boston, NYC, SF, Seattle, seen it all of them and if you follow the news blots it’s frequently reported.
It’s just that homeless folks are doing it and it’s passe. It’s not shocking, except maybe to people new to the city or suburbanites.
Folks masturbating and sexually assaulting others in public is not something mentally healthy people do. It’s a co-morbid with other problems.
But hey, why try to understand human behavior when we can just get outraged about it?
“Which city are you from” “Oh, i don’t live in the city, I just see it sensationalized in the news”
those are cities i’ve lived in that i’ve seen it and had friends be assaulted in.
but keep making shit up if it suits your narrative, i guess? there are stats on it.
These aren’t homeless people committing these crimes.
This story is quite literally about men online that are part of the “gooning” community that encourage each other to sexually assault women in public.
This seems like something separate to gooning.
Why do you say that? The reporters found posts sharing these public assaults in gooning communities, which are not hard to find tbh.
Over the next several weeks and months, MR would learn not only that there had been reports of similar incidents at the same store in the same timeframe – one that had been shared on social media and at least one other she heard about anecdotally from shopping center employees – but that masturbating in front of female customers at branches of Dollar Tree was fast becoming a national phenomenon, a disturbing new form of sexual assault that men were documenting and bragging about in dark corners of the internet.
It even came with its own specialized vocabulary. Masturbating in public and surreptitiously ejaculating on random women was known as “tagging” or “sharking” – or even “cum-sharking”. Online forums praised perpetrators for being “low inhibition” or “low inhib”, and users contributing to the discussion said they wished they could summon the same fearlessness in themselves.
Almost immediately, the lawyers stumbled on another weird dimension to the cases they were developing: an online subculture of lonely, disaffected men, known as “gooners”, who bond with one other over their shared fascination with obsessive masturbation and compete with each other to see who can keep going for hours or even days at a time.
While most appear to pursue their self-pleasure in private “goon caves” and are not criminals, some gooners, the lawyers found, took pride in public acts of masturbation. In fact, some were committing sharking assaults at Dollar Tree stores and posting the footage online.
yeah, who are mentally ill, and many only mentally ill communities become hotbeds of egging each other on.
You framed this as homeless mentally ill people doing it which is inaccurate.
No, I didn’t. But please continue to misinterpret me to push your agenda.
I’m glad this story in shocking and horrible, but in my experience it’s just par for the course. Guardian just loves to frame stuff like this as shocking and new, when online spaces full of nutcases are have been around for 20 years. Including spaces for celebrating sexual assault.
Your comment again, since you forgot:
lots of homeless mentally ill folks bust nuts in public, and assault strangers. pretty common sight.
Yeah, that was my comment. As in, this isn’t some random or novel thing.
But hey, don’t let me ruin your narrative that all men are evil and these folks are totally normal well-adjusted folks, or something.
It’s not an agenda when we’re talking about a specific article here.
These men aren’t homeless and mentally ill folks just busting a nut in public, this is coordinated and shared and encouraged in these “gooning” communities of men.
i remember seeing that video of a gross pervert that jerked off on woman shoppers, never knew it was a DT store on r/publicfreakout a while back. the dude was chicken just ran off after coming on them.
What the actual fuck?
And to the wastes of space downplaying this or making fun of it, good work of proving everybody right that says men simply suck.
