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
    404·
    4 days ago

    It’s a pretty big fucking deal for men to be encouraged and celebrated for publicly ejaculating on women.

    • Ann Archy@lemmy.world
      1020·
      4 days ago

      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.

      • velma@sh.itjust.worksOP
        272·
        4 days ago

        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.

        • stringere@sh.itjust.works
          98·
          4 days ago

          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.

          • velma@sh.itjust.worksOP
            124·
            4 days ago

            They’re downplaying the crimes that are happening here and in turn defending these guys.

                • blazeknave@lemmy.world
                  56·
                  4 days ago

                  I think they’re saying that there were always at least 47 rapey creeps doing this horrific dehumanizing and agency stealing SA act, but now we hear about it strung together.

                  • velma@sh.itjust.worksOP
                    72·
                    4 days ago

                    There’s way more than 47 cases of sexual assault. They pulled cases that are similar to show a pattern, not all sexual assault cases total.

      • phutatorius@lemmy.zip
        5·
        3 days ago

        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.