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.”
Not even sorry to say, the INSTANT I feel threatened, my tiny ass foot is going up your dick hole as forcibly as possible. I am fairly small, don’t often feel worried about that… but you get in my space I’m going to bring you down to my height. Or the floor. Preferably the floor.
Disgusting people need to be afraid of reactions again.
This is how perverts and men who try to intimidate women should be treated by everyone. Perverts, and billionaires.
Need to bring back hat pins.
This is a friendly reminder that you can buy hat pins at any well stocked sewing or craft store.
Yo yo imperial bastards… It is your culture vultures. This evil evil MAN probably had a mother like this If your jesus came back you would nail him to a cross and a dog is given more sympathy. This man gives goonin a bad name and this artical only scratches at the skins surface. I have a question Barabbas or the king of the jews? Reactionary dolts.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
These aren’t homeless people committing these crimes.
“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.
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.Fucking gross. What the fuck is wrong with men these days? And I’m saying this as a man. Fucking hell.
They’re really becoming a race of fucking baboons. Between the looksmaxxing incels, the christo-fascists, misogynists, and these sexual predators, there’s just no end to the shit men are doing these days. You can’t rely on them to save our society from the predators that rule it, because they’re on the same fucking team.
I swear, if I have faith in anyone to save our society it’s going to be women and queer folk. Because the men have lost it.
well, the reason for our society being fucked up is men are fucked up, so the last sentence is pretty accurate I guess.
Yeah but not all men turn out the same way though. Why is that? Upbringing? Education? Values? Empathy?
I certainly didn’t turn out like that.
I’d like to blame social media for creating echo chambers and trends. Especially with algorithms that will enable these kinds of people to pool into communities where this kind of behavior is normalized.
But, this probably just created a catalyst for something that was already there.
As bad as it is today, I’m assuming it’s still better than most of history. It’s not a woman’s duty to service her husband anymore, he can still get charged with rape even when married.
What a low fucking bar that is…
“Don’t worry, ladies! Your husband can now maybe get arrested when he rapes you! Equality!”
deleted by creator
Dude, a discussion about this article is neither the time nor the place to vent about how horrible women are. Do this under the next article reporting a trend where women sexual assault men and get cheered on by an online community.
Excluding the half that have both historically excluded everyone else, and got us to exactly this point all on their own having done so… seems like the best course of action, actually.
As a straight white male I feel reasonably qualified to make that observation. (Fully aware of the depths that statement plumbs, I think it makes the point beautifully.)
Fully agree, wish I could have said it so eloquently. Calling them baboons is insulting to baboons.
eloquently
lol!!! Thanks
The future is fuckin weird.
Fuckin’ a dude! I feel like that dude hitting the bong watching some people fight. I’m just here for the entertainment at this point.
I will, for sure, kill a mfer for doing that to me or my wife.
You’d probably go to jail for killing them, but I think they’d let you slide on typical assault or battery charges. That being said, I’d risk doing time again if I saw this happening definitely.
I had something like this happen to me when I was 20. I was helping my disabled aunt by bringing some boxes up to her apartment. I kept seeing this one really old guy as I was going up and down and I got really off vibes from him. As I was leaving the building, I grabbed the same doorhandle I had grabbed many times before, except this time there was semen on the backside of it and it got all over my hand. I’m pretty sure it was the old guy cause I never saw anyone else except my aunt there. I was too naïve to know what to do in that situation so unfortunately he got away with it :(
I’m sorry you experienced that.
This is repulsive. As a (wo?)man, I’d beat the fucking shit out of anyone who does this.
The issues is most women can’t beat the shit out of most men and the men doing this know it and don’t care about anything except physical domination. That said, a good knee or kick to the groin will do the trick, no add beating required.
Not even addressing ridiculous male chauvinism, weapons exist, also element of surprise, guns, etc
Not allowed to carry weapons, mace etc. where I live. What should my 5’4" Wife do in this situation?
Pepper spray. Seriously. It’s not expensive and it should be legal. Way easier to use and no permanent damage either. Just press the button and spray those fuckers.
Yeah, would absolutely ask them to carry it, but again, illegal in my Nanny-Country of Australia. Sucks to be a vulnerable person here, with minimal ways to defend yourself.
How the fuck is pepper spray illegal? What is the fine for carrying it?
A first‑time offence carries a maximum fine of $33,300 or up to 2 years imprisonment. Repeat offences attract higher fines and mandatory custodial sentences. Courts consider the intent, quantity, and whether the spray was used in a public place. Even possession of an empty canister can be prosecuted as “possession of a prohibited weapon.”
Yeah…
Sharp object under jaw pointing upwards. Use both hands and full force.
Alternatively, bite down as hard as you can on the throat.
Stores sell knives and other sharp or pointy objects. Or blunt objects.
I dunno man, be creative. Maybe panic and shit your pants because woman helpless and weak and inferior to man uwu 🎻
You legitimately can’t carry anything resembling a weapon in Australia, sharp or blunt. In my state, brandishing a blunt object like a cricket bat can get you jail time.
So I’m not asking to stir the pot, I seriously fear for my Wife and Daughter’s safety, and I can’t do anything about it. I guess societal pressure on these predators is the only tool we can use here.
There’s too many sick fucks like this all over the world. If we lived in a country with more relaxed laws, they would both be packing at least mace, preferably a pistol.
this may sound silly, but the best you can do forvyour daughter is make sure she has proper self esteem.
Cant carry a weapon, a woman who values herself to not be dragged is a solid weapon in itself.
That’s why, as one who totally can, I’d step in if I saw this happening, stick up for all the ladies that can’t.
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
Let this shit happen in front of me. There is no way I’m not interfering. I don’t mind going to jail for beating the breaks off of a bully.
Watch out, we’ve got a badass over here
But really, I hope you would fuck them up
There were 16 reported cases over a year and a half nationwide.
This article is complete rage bait.
A year later, with the lawsuit still mired in preliminary motions and no trial date in sight, Greenberg’s research team has dug up 63 officially documented sex crimes in all – fewer than five a year before 2020 and as many as 18 a year since the December 2023 attack on MR. Sixteen involved masturbation or ejaculation. The company’s attempts to disavow this, Greenberg said in an interview, amounted to “a plethora of stupid arguments” and only underlined what she saw as a pattern of poor corporate governance.
Only 16, hm?
Lol, and we’re getting a preview of the “plethora of stupid arguments” in the comments.
But seriously, they explicitly mention that they “take physical security seruously” and they absolutely do not. Like there’s a really clear reason this place is being targeted for this shit. Because they have narrow aisles that you can’t see around and views are blocked from cameras and cashiers at the front.
Also, THESE POOR CASHIERS! I know they’re not getting paid enough to 1v1 a serial masturbator. There’s often just one person.
Exactly! They also staff really low so there’s not enough employees to properly see what’s happening through the store.
16 reported cases over a year and a half nationwide
You refuted their statememt with data that encompasses sex crimes other than the one in this article.
You then went on to quote the source they likely used for 16 incidents like this one:
Sixteen involved masturbation or ejaculation.
Congratulations on being rage baited into attacking people that oppose this disgusting behavior, I guess.
No shit, they’re looking at a pattern. Of course journalists are going to dig for similar cases and not just report on this single incident.
Read the full article before coming at me.
Yes, there is a pattern of 16 incidents like the one in the article. 63 total, it says. There are 9,064 Dollar Tree stores. That’s a 0.7% occurrence rate.
Please, stop attacking people for being rational about the rate of occurence.
I’m not attacking someone by presenting facts from the article.
You’re asserting that they were incorrect when they were using numbers straight from the article.
Where do you see any opposition to the sexual assaults from the person saying that 16 cases isn’t enough to be so upset about and everyone who feels strongly about this happening has fallen for rage bait?
Have you noticed how you’re more upset with people taking issue with 16 sexual assault cases in a year and a half than you are that there’s a demonstrated trend of sexually assaulting specific people?
And because you think that’s too few sexual assaults to care about too, which is a whole other can of worms of an implication.
'Murica. Help someone and you will be sued in civil court.
Our society has broken down to the point that we legitimately have to bring back mob justice. I’m so ashamed to be a human right now.
Has it broken down, or is the basic level of degeneracy just amplified?
I think a lot of people lose sight of the fact that society is still at the most advanced level it has ever been, violent crimes have dropped steadily across most of the world. But now when isolated incidents like the above happen, the internet amplifies them into being a bigger deal than it really is on a population scale.
But now when isolated incidents like the above happen, the internet amplifies them into being a bigger deal than it really is on a population scale.
You sound like this guy:
There’s always room for improvement. Like I thought that was the entire basis of Critical Theory is that there is no end to history, there is no perfect society, we can always improve, and improvement must come through rational and thoughtful critique of the status quo, whatever the status quo may be, forever and ever. Marx’s society in perpetual revolution within itself.
Sure crime may never be zero, but acting like the solution is to just throw up your hands and say “what’s the big deal if some women are mentally scarred, it’s only a few of them! The world is doing better than it ever has, the arc of history bends towards justice! (editors note: barf) Why would we make the world better just for them?”
The answer to that question is because they are a part of that world too. Also, these are not the only crimes enabled by how the Dollar empire operates.
It’s a pretty big fucking deal for men to be encouraged and celebrated for publicly ejaculating on women.
16 cases nationwide. This is not an epidemic. It’s a handful of people on one of the chans egging eachother on. And yes, they are degenerate creeps and should be punished but this is not “A THING”. It’s just more polarizing man vs woman bs.
Found the gooner
A year later, with the lawsuit still mired in preliminary motions and no trial date in sight, Greenberg’s research team has dug up 63 officially documented sex crimes in all – fewer than five a year before 2020 and as many as 18 a year since the December 2023 attack on MR. Sixteen involved masturbation or ejaculation. The company’s attempts to disavow this, Greenberg said in an interview, amounted to “a plethora of stupid arguments” and only underlined what she saw as a pattern of poor corporate governance.
What were the other 47? Do I even want to know?
Various sexual assaults that were encouraged in these online gooning communities.
You’re really going hard defending these gooners in here.
But they’re not defending the gooners. They’re pointimg out that, while this is absolutely disgusting behavior, the frequency, or lack thereof, is not indicative of a social pandemic.
They’re downplaying the crimes that are happening here and in turn defending these guys.
16 documented cases at that retailer alone. The article said nothing about the actual prevalence of the crime, nor did you. So you’re drawing conclusions based on no data.
The problem becomes that for all the benefits that instant communications enabled by the internet brings, it also enables people that once would have been the isolated weirdos previously keeping their nonsense in check through public pressure to find each other as well.
The net effect is that they then feel validated in their actions, same way people in your everyday social platforms get a little bump by doing some recent ‘challenge’ that would otherwise go unnoticed.
It’s not isolated when it has a whole online culture devoted to it.
It happened to me and it’s happened to people I know.
time to break out the hats.
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/hatpins-mashers-self-defense-history-women-hats-fashion
Assholes realized they can either profit from being an asshole for social media links or in life because if they get assaulted they can sue.
Really need to make new laws and assaulting people who are doing shit like that ok
The only mob “justice” I remember in recent memory is what happened in Maryville Missouri, and it was against the victim. They burned her house down (allegedly) after she reported sexual assault. So… Just a mob. No justice.
Both of the women featured in the Netflix documentary also committed suicide. The mother of one of the victims also committed suicide. One of the men accused of the assault was connected to a politician. I can’t think of a real life scenario in the last decade where mob justice was actually just.
Guy fell down some flights of stairs before we gently restrained him. Don’t know where he found them in this one-story building but that’s what happened.
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.
How come this never happens to me?
I’d lunge at a guy that had his fly open and was jerking off in my direction.
If I managed to get my hands on his knob, and you’d bet I’d try… he’d not be getting his dick back in one piece…
(homegirl works in the Trades… 40+ years… and has a strong grip…)
I’m the girl my friends get to open their tough jars. I can use any tool put in my hands, I can skin a squirrel, and I’ve built a forty foot canoe.
Didn’t stop a dude from smearing jizz on my backpack on the bus. He was gone before I realized what happened.
Your comment reeks of victim blaming, insinuating “toughness” has anything to do with this.
Agreed. But getting to take the violent option is cathartic. Punched a guy in the face at school following a sexual assault. The trouble I got into was worth it.
I’m no stranger to sexual assault myself, but if that’s the way you want to take it, be my guest.
Yeah, that’s how I took it. If you’ve experienced it then you should know that all the violent thoughts and threats in the world can’t stop someone from experiencing sexual assault.
Not only that, but it can make victims feel like they’ve done something wrong, or not enough, by making claims that you could do better in their situation.
We all want to feel like we could stop this kind of creep or get revenge but it rarely works out that way.
Knees go for the knees. Less likely to get your leg trapped. And you have the benefit of possibly crippling them.
It’s not the victim’s fault for allowing this. It’s the perpetrator’s fault.
It’s fight, flight, freeze, or fawn for a reason.
