r/BlatantMisogyny • u/Forward-Answer-4407 • 4d ago
TRIGGER WARNING As woman burned alive on NYC subway car, bystanders watched — and filmed NSFW
https://www.newsweek.com/nyc-subway-fire-sebastian-zapeta-bystander-effect-nypd-2005812354
u/rosemaryrouge 4d ago edited 3d ago
"Akctually, she wasn't a wealthy CEO, so it was deserved." - ☝️🤓 Bourgeoisie defender
This is actually super sad. This woman was BURNT ALIVE, and nobody helped her? what a truly sick and individualistic world we live in.
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u/SpontaneousNubs 4d ago
They're all saying variations of she was drunk/high/homeless like that means she deserved it
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u/DragonfruitFew5542 4d ago edited 4d ago
I am in recovery and currently work at a rehab as a therapist.
This point they're making makes my blood boil. It has been nearly a decade since the US Surgeon General unequivocally stated addiction is a disease.
Myself, and other people that have suffered from substance use disorder are not moral failures, or villains, or bad people. It is highly correlated with childhood and/or adult trauma, co-occurring mental disorders, and genetic predisposition, alongside social factors.
The human element has been lost on these horrible people, because addiction is so incredibly complex. It is a brain disease that affects the prefrontal cortex, basal ganglia, and amygdala.
No matter this woman's background, first and foremost she was a human being. This is why we are taught person-first care in grad school; a person is more than their mental disorders. They are a human being, first.
And who the hell cares if she was unhoused? Once again, how does that make her any less human?!?
I cannot fathom the lack of humanity displayed by these callous individuals.
Sorry if rambling, this is one of my major soapbox issues that just makes me so incredibly angry. And exhausted.
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u/SpontaneousNubs 4d ago
These are the same guys that go on indigenous people Facebook accounts and post racist shit about being the master race/Victor. I doubt they give a flying frick about humanity if it doesn't fit their narrow little niche of people
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u/DragonfruitFew5542 3d ago
Oh I'm aware, I just can't help myself with a soapbox moment lol.
The one consolation is that they're also typically as dumb as a hamster, so there's that.
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u/volostrom 3d ago
Last time I heard they still couldn't ID the poor woman because of how unrecognizable her remains were. That’s the saddest fucking part for me. I don't want to hear about the cunt who did it, I want to know about her, I want her to be something more than a thing people can gawk at. I want her to get her personhood back, maybe then people will treat her with a bit respect. Big maybe though.
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u/Nws4c 4d ago
Like genuinely what the fuck were the people in that Subway doing just sitting on their asses! Fuck the dude recording especially the cop that didn’t even attempt to help. It’s disappointing that she could have been alive today
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u/cjmmoseley ORGANISED FEMALES 4d ago
i keep on pointing this out in EVERY thread i find on this, and there’s ALWAYS someone (and almost always a man) saying “well, what was he supposed to do?!”
NOT FILMING A WOMAN DYING is the BARE MINIMUM. this isn’t cool content to go viral on TWITTER. this is a woman DYING. where is your EMPATHY?! where is your HUMANITY?! i am sick and tired of these zombies who think everything revolves around their social media and fake internet points.
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u/Ok_Stress_2920 4d ago
In case anyone else is wondering why she was just standing and not screaming for help well apparently when people burn their tendons lock in place. her tendons stopped working, locking her in place. The rocking motion in the video is probably her nerve damage or rigor mortis. And her throat and eyes would have been burnt beyond use. The perpetrator poured something on her before lighting her on fire while she was sleeping. The people around her failed her because nobody helped. It’s horrible.
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u/nofrickz 4d ago
Yeah, nah. I live here. I take that train all the time. I'm not playing with my city anymore. But lately, the subway has been a very weird ass place. I don't take the F that deep into BK, but my mom does and she doesn't feel comfortable riding anymore because she's extremely disappointed in the riders for not doing anything.
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u/Azulrio 4d ago edited 4d ago
That video was so haunting. Her just standing there burning alive and nobody helped her. The guy who did it is there fanning a shirt on her and the cops just waves him away.
It reminds me of a time when a friend of mine and I were in NYC. We were bar hopping and while we were walking she passed out. There was a couple of people around us but when I looked up for help they disappeared. I prayed that I never have an emergency in NYC because I know people are either going to gawk or disappear. Luckily, my friend was okay and we didn’t need to call 911.
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u/Ok_Natural 2d ago
the guy getting up and fanning the flames is actually sickening. i think that has to be the most evil thing i’ve ever seen
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u/goddamitletmesleep 2d ago
The bystander apathy is disgusting. People recording instead of acting is a symptom of the disease of social media and desensitisation to violence against women. Everyone is so caught up in documenting the world around them or protecting themselves from liability that the instinct to help has seemingly evaporated. We have normalised treating women’s suffering as entertainment, as if it’s something to capture and post instead of intervene in. This woman died in agony while people stood by, some likely thinking more about their phones than her life. What a collective moral tragedy.
The systemic dismissal of violence against women is glaring here. Let’s call this what it is: an act of misogyny. Not the actions of a “madman” but a deliberate, hateful act targeting a woman. The perpetrator wasn’t out of control… he was fanning the flames! The fact that this isn’t automatically being treated as a hate crime demonstrates the extent to which violence against women is normalised and downplayed. If a woman can be killed in such a grotesque and public way without it sparking immediate outrage, what does that say about how much - or how little - society values women’s safety?
The tendency to excuse or minimise male violence by labeling perpetrators as “madmen” is insulting. It deflects attention away from the larger, uncomfortable truth that misogyny is deeply embedded in our society. Violence against women is not rare or random; it’s systemic, and this kind of act exists on a spectrum of entitlement, dehumanization, and unchecked hatred toward women.
The inaction of the police is unacceptable. We’re told that police are there to “protect and serve,” but time and again we see them standing by, doing nothing, or enforcing minor laws while ignoring serious violence. If this is the level of protection the public can expect, why should anyone feel safe?
Women are taught to depend on men and systems for protection, but both failed here. The bystanders failed. The police failed. The system failed. Women are repeatedly told not to overreact, not to arm themselves, not to demand change, but then they’re abandoned when it matters most. Women are expected to endure violence as an inevitable part of life, and that expectation is baked into how society operates.
This incident is a wake-up call, or at least it should be. But the sad reality is that unless there’s a seismic cultural shift, it will likely be forgotten, just another statistic in the ongoing epidemic of violence against women.
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u/if_a_flutterby 4d ago
I've still not seen the video. But to be macabre, but people keep referencing the video and I can't find it, only stills.
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u/NickArchery 4d ago
I mean if she is already on fire what are you supposed to do, don't think there are fire extinguishers everywhere nearby and getting help is probably already too late. The filming part is still horrible don't get me wrong but how can you help someone at that point.
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u/fatfatcats 4d ago
You throw a fucking jacket on her and try to muffle the flames ffs, you call 911, you take your goddamn water bottle and splash it on her. Basically anything but film it for fucks sake.
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u/cyyster 4d ago
A whole grown human is ENGULFED in flames, what the actual fuck is a jacket gonna do but catch into flames itself. What is a hoard of people swarming around this giant ball of fire and squirting singular bottles of water (if they even had one) and ripping off their jackets (if they had one) to throw it into the fire going to do at this point but create an even more dangerous situation by exposing more people to the angry flames and then we have more casualties as the woman burns harder as you just tossed a sized small jacket into a burning pit. You might as well have asked every person near by to start spitting on the fire because you would have gotten the same outcome.
I understand it’s devastating to see stuff like this and see people standing around but these people do not know the details of the case like we do reading it in the comfort and safety of our own home after the fact. This is traumatic even watching the blurred video online… I can’t imagine witnessing this shit in person. A human burning alive, there’s smoke, fire, gas, everyone’s panicking and you expect bystanders who did not go through emergency military training to just hop into action? Let’s be realistic.
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u/aquacrimefighter 4d ago
So if you were engulfed in flames, you’d rather everyone just walk by shrugging because “well, trying to smother the flames probably wouldn’t help anyways - bummer!”? Because I highly doubt that. Try to have some humanity.
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u/Staraa 4d ago
I might not be able to extinguish it but I’m gonna do something and try ffs. Even if someone could smother the flames on her head and chest that improves chances of survival a lot. I’ve never done any kind of training for something like that but I know enough to not just toss something at her, fire needs oxygen so it can be smothered and yeah a splash of water on her eyes from a small water bottle could save eyesight etc. I wouldn’t be able to sleep if I didn’t at least run for a fire extinguisher like my own life depended on it.
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u/fatfatcats 4d ago
Listen, I know there's no way you could know this without looking into it, but what I've described in my previous comment is the actual first aid protocol when someone is on fire. You take a rug, a jacket, anything, and you smother the flames. If everyone standing around with their fucking phone in their hands filming were to have used their jackets, this woman, this actual human being, could have lived.
I have been in situations where I needed to react, and it hasn't always been perfect. When someone is brutally injured in front of you, sometimes a frantic 911 call is all you can manage. I can't and won't shame people for panicking or not knowing what to do, but I can and will be disgusted and horrified at what actually happened here. They filmed while a human being burned to death in front of them. Multiple people. Don't act like my reaction is the problem here.
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u/Comfortable-Class479 4d ago
Imagine you're burning to death while people just film you and do nothing. Nothing at all. It's about humanity.
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u/sassquatchewan 3d ago
That’s a human being. That person burning is an entire human being who has lived their life up until that point. Even if they were already dead, that’s a human being that deserves respect and care.
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u/Llamp_shade 4d ago
Ever hear of "stop, drop, and roll?" Fire extinguishers and blankets are nice if you have them, but there are always ways to help.
I saw a utility worker jump out of a manhole after hitting a natural gas line. The flames shooting out of the ground caught my attention, which is why I was watching when he came up from the manhole a few seconds later. One of his coworkers immediately jumped on him, took him to the ground and started rolling to extinguish the flames--getting burnt himself. Meanwhile, dozens of people, including me were dialing 911 (the emergency operator confirmed that others had already called and an ambulance was already on its way with fire crews). I saw that guy alive and on a stretcher afterwards. He was as on fire as anyone has ever been, and he lived because people took action and saved him. Thank god the people there that day didn't have your attitude.
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u/misslili265 4d ago
The fact that someone can ignore the suffering of a horrific scene as someone burning alive can tell something about them, no? It's a psychopath that filmed this.
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u/pandaSmore 4d ago
There are absolutely fire extinguishers nearby in a subway station. It's a legal requirement that's taken seriously.
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u/TessaBrooding 2d ago
Awful but I don’t see how this was related to misogyny. Men are at least just as likely to be victims of random violent crimes perpetrated by people who are not right in the head.
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u/Forward-Answer-4407 4d ago
A photo caption from the article: "A still image from a video that captured a woman ablaze in a stopped New York City subway train on Sunday. An unidentified police officer appears to walk by without rendering aid."
Will someone please explain this to me?