In dark corners of the internet, men are goading each other to masturbate in public – and on female shoppers – and post the footage

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.”

  • JackbyDev@programming.devEnglish
    0·
    2 days ago

    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.

      • velma@sh.itjust.worksOP
        0·
        2 days ago

        Yeah that entire comment is defending gooners performing consensual sex acts. The article is NOT talking about consensual sex acts.

        • AlteredEgo@lemmy.ml
          0·
          2 days ago

          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.

    • velma@sh.itjust.worksOP
      0·
      2 days ago

      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.

      • JackbyDev@programming.devEnglish
        0·
        2 days ago

        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.”

        • velma@sh.itjust.worksOP
          0·
          2 days ago

          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.

          • JackbyDev@programming.devEnglish
            0·
            2 days ago

            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.

            • velma@sh.itjust.worksOP
              0·
              2 days ago

              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.

              • JackbyDev@programming.devEnglish
                0·
                2 days ago

                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.