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.”
They are directly downplaying the crimes.
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.
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.
It’s a valid critique that the larger social pattern of ironic dehumanizing misogyny that this represents is the real story, and the article does not make that clear.
I think someone who separates concerns about how disgusting and high-priority an assault like this is, from how frequently it occurs based on how the article describes it, is rightly confused if they aren’t reading much about similar aspects of patriarchy.
That commenter should know now, I expect. Often propaganda or just ideology uses isolation of events or uncovered problems to obscure larger patterns of oppression.
These commenters have a pattern of misogynistic comments. Lemmy is not very big and I’ve had multiple run ins with them. They actively choose to remain ignorant about the sexism issues that women still face to this day.
Trying to downplay these crimes and waiving away these victim’s testimonies and calls for justice is just another way they use to discredit women.
Is sexual assault a national problem and deserving of being addressed? As a survivor and advocate, absolutely.
Is there a national epidemic of sexual assault in Dollar Tree stores? Not statistically, no.
Is every sexual assault a horrible crime against someone? Absolutely.
Maybe don’t be so quick to attribute misogyny where none is intended.
Thanks for immediately proving my previous comment true.