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The disturbing rise of ‘gooner’ assaults at Dollar Tree stores: ‘They find it funny to degrade women’
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2026
432 points (97.2% liked)
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Let this shit happen in front of me. There is no way I'm not interfering. I don't mind going to jail for beating the brakes off of a bully.
Our society has broken down to the point that we legitimately have to bring back mob justice. I'm so ashamed to be a human right now.
Has it broken down, or is the basic level of degeneracy just amplified?
I think a lot of people lose sight of the fact that society is still at the most advanced level it has ever been, violent crimes have dropped steadily across most of the world. 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.
It's a pretty big fucking deal for men to be encouraged and celebrated for publicly ejaculating on women.
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.
What were the other 47? Do I even want to know?
Various sexual assaults that were encouraged in these online gooning communities.
You're really going hard defending these gooners in here.
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.
They’re downplaying the crimes that are happening here and in turn defending these guys.
They're doing neither.
They are directly downplaying the crimes.
Comments like this:
They are absolutely downplaying the seriousness of these 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.
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.
Found the gooner
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.
It's not isolated when it has a whole online culture devoted to it.
It happened to me and it's happened to people I know.
time to break out the hats.
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/hatpins-mashers-self-defense-history-women-hats-fashion
The problem becomes that for all the benefits that instant communications enabled by the internet brings, it also enables people that once would have been the isolated weirdos previously keeping their nonsense in check through public pressure to find each other as well.
The net effect is that they then feel validated in their actions, same way people in your everyday social platforms get a little bump by doing some recent 'challenge' that would otherwise go unnoticed.
The only mob "justice" I remember in recent memory is what happened in Maryville Missouri, and it was against the victim. They burned her house down (allegedly) after she reported sexual assault. So... Just a mob. No justice.
Both of the women featured in the Netflix documentary also committed suicide. The mother of one of the victims also committed suicide. One of the men accused of the assault was connected to a politician. I can't think of a real life scenario in the last decade where mob justice was actually just.
Assholes realized they can either profit from being an asshole for social media links or in life because if they get assaulted they can sue.
Really need to make new laws and assaulting people who are doing shit like that ok
Nah, the entire reason mob justice doesn't work is because it doesn't actually target the people who deserve it most of the time. It tends to catch innocent people far too often, which just makes people even more antisocial.
Watch out, we've got a badass over here
But really, I hope you would fuck them up
Guy fell down some flights of stairs before we gently restrained him. Don't know where he found them in this one-story building but that's what happened.
'Murica. Help someone and you will be sued in civil court.
There were 16 reported cases over a year and a half nationwide.
This article is complete rage bait.
Only 16, hm?
Lol, and we're getting a preview of the "plethora of stupid arguments" in the comments.
But seriously, they explicitly mention that they "take physical security seruously" and they absolutely do not. Like there's a really clear reason this place is being targeted for this shit. Because they have narrow aisles that you can't see around and views are blocked from cameras and cashiers at the front.
Also, THESE POOR CASHIERS! I know they're not getting paid enough to 1v1 a serial masturbator. There's often just one person.
Exactly! They also staff really low so there’s not enough employees to properly see what’s happening through the store.
You refuted their statememt with data that encompasses sex crimes other than the one in this article.
You then went on to quote the source they likely used for 16 incidents like this one:
Congratulations on being rage baited into attacking people that oppose this disgusting behavior, I guess.
No shit, they’re looking at a pattern. Of course journalists are going to dig for similar cases and not just report on this single incident.
Read the full article before coming at me.
Yes, there is a pattern of 16 incidents like the one in the article. 63 total, it says. There are 9,064 Dollar Tree stores. That's a 0.7% occurrence rate.
Please, stop attacking people for being rational about the rate of occurence.
I'm not attacking someone by presenting facts from the article.
You're asserting that they were incorrect when they were using numbers straight from the article.
Does no one here read an entire article before commenting?
Sometimes articles include more facts and figures, but you have to read them to find out what they are.
Like how this is an emerging trend. The investigation has only scratched the surface of reported incidents.
0.7% is not an emerging trend. That is reported incidents across all 9,000+ stores, which I believe it also said was the total for 5 years.
Quick napkin math using last years' total sales and using $50 as the average transaction gets 340,000,000 for a very rough estimate of total transactions. That amounts to 0.000018% of shoppers reporting sexual assault.
You really should read the whole article.
Where do you see any opposition to the sexual assaults from the person saying that 16 cases isn't enough to be so upset about and everyone who feels strongly about this happening has fallen for rage bait?
Have you noticed how you're more upset with people taking issue with 16 sexual assault cases in a year and a half than you are that there's a demonstrated trend of sexually assaulting specific people?
And because you think that's too few sexual assaults to care about too, which is a whole other can of worms of an implication.