The First Victims

Certain men were treated very poorly throughout society—by women, by employers—and became known to other men who may not have been aware of the problem yet. Those voices of men who were the first victims spread to other men who may or may not have already become victims themselves, or who may not have noticed that they, too, were being victimized until the first male victims made them aware. And this spread throughout society.

As men who were victims removed themselves from being victimized—either by no longer looking for employment or no longer looking for girlfriends—you would assume that would solve the problem. But the victimizers only moved on to the remaining men to victimize them instead. Those remaining men did not see themselves as connected to the first victims. They did not care about the first victims. Now, they propose solutions that would only help themselves, not the men who were victimized first. They will not sacrifice themselves for the first victims. They will blame anything and everything—except the victimizers, who are women. They will blame the economy. But because they aren't geniuses, they will only propose systems that first benefit themselves, not the first victims.

Let me break down what this actually means—because if you read between the lines, there's a real argument here about how men have failed each other.

First, understand how this started.
There were men—real men, out in the world—who got treated badly. By women. By employers. They were the first ones to take the hits, and they took them alone. Nobody was talking about it. Nobody had words for it yet. They just suffered in isolation.

Then something shifted. They started speaking. And other men—men who hadn't yet been hurt, or hadn't yet realized they were being hurt—began to listen. The warning went out. "This could happen to you too."

And here's where it gets complicated.
The first victims tried to solve the problem the only way they knew how: they quit. They stopped looking for jobs. They stopped chasing relationships. They thought, If I remove myself from the game, I can't lose.

But that's not how victimizers work. The ones doing the hurting—whether you want to call them women, or employers, or just the system—didn't stop just because some men walked away. They just found new men. Fresh targets. Men who were still in the game, still trying, still vulnerable.

Now here's the part that stings.
Those new men? The ones who got warned? They didn't care about the first victims. They saw what happened and thought, That's them, not me. They didn't feel connected. They didn't feel grateful. They didn't feel responsible.

And now those same men—the ones who came later, who saw the warning signs and kept walking—are the ones proposing solutions. But watch what they're actually doing. They're not fixing the problem for everyone. They're not lifting up the men who came before them. They're building lifeboats for themselves and themselves only.

They'll blame the economy. They'll blame society. They'll blame anything and everything except the actual source. Why? Because blaming the real victimizers—and let's be direct here, the text points at women—would require something they're not willing to give: sacrifice. It would require standing with the first victims instead of stepping over them.

So here we are.
Men who were hurt first, abandoned. Men who came later, building walls instead of bridges. And the cycle? It keeps turning. Because until someone is willing to name the real problem—and until someone is willing to help the ones who sounded the alarm—nothing actually changes. The first victims remain casualties. And the rest of you keep pretending their suffering had nothing to do with you.