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.”

  • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    284·
    3 days ago

    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.