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.”

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

      You’re vehemently defending gooner communities and complained that the journalists for the Guardian didn’t specifically point you to the gooning communities where they found these assault videos.

      Why do you want to know where exactly these gooning communities with the assault videos are?

          • JackbyDev@programming.devEnglish
            0·
            2 days ago

            Go find where I said I wanted to know exactly where they were, because that’s not something I did. I disagreed with you, you didn’t like it, and your reaction to that was to say I must be looking for videos of sexual assault. You’re only trying to paint me as a monster and hurt me, all because I disagreed with something you said. I’m done with this conversation unless you’re willing to apologize. Life is too short to accept this behavior.

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

              I don’t like how you’re trying to defend gooners when the article is clearly laying out that some men in these gooning communities are assaulting women. It’s not that you disagreed with me. It’s that you’re looking for plausible deniability in order to protect gooning.

              Gooning by itself is fine as long as it’s consensual and no one is being hurt. That’s not what is happening in these cases laid out by the article.