There is something called the 4B movement, and there are people considering it
in the United States.
The short version is that this is a movement, which originated in the Republic
of Korea,
where women are swearing off men.
This is not an attempt to create a change in policy, as the sex strike for
peace in Aristophanes comedy Lysistrata was in 411 B.C.E., rather it is
an attempt by women to assert personal autonomy in a patriarchal society.
The 4 "B"s are no marriage to men, no child bearing, no dating men, and
no sex with men. (The "B"s are in the Korean terms for this.
I don't see it going anywhere in the United States, but it's interesting:
In the week since Trump’s election victory, between the numbness and
overall dread, maybe you’ve heard or read the phrase “4B movement” and
thought, Movement of any kind feels difficult at the moment. Hey, no judgment, that was many of us last week. But now that some of
the immediate panic has settled into a more concrete and permanent
apprehension, you hopefully have the capacity to learn more about the phrase
and why it’s being thrown around so much.
First of all, you wouldn’t be alone in your curiosity. Searches for the “4b
movement,” which originated in South Korea in 2016, spiked
nearly 100% in the last seven days. Social media is ablaze with users
explaining it, decrying it, or suggesting the U.S. get on board with
it. “Women are refusing to have kids until they’re treated equally,”
Drew Afualo
explained
on Rainn Wilson’s podcast. That is certainly part of the movement.
In general, the nature of online discourse and the reactionary buzz
following Trump’s re-election has simplified the 4B movement into merely being a sex
strike—which in turn has allowed it to become more of a punchline. But I think
the question to grapple with isn’t how effective a U.S. 4B movement
would or wouldn’t be, but why some women feel it’s a worthwhile
endeavor at all.
But let me back up…The 4B movement is a South Korean feminist movement that centers around
four main tenets: “Bihon” (no heterosexual marriage), “Bichulsan” (no
childbirth), “Biyeonae” (no dating), and “Bisekseu” (no heterosexual sexual
relationships). It began to emerge around 2018 when gender tensions reached a fever pitch
after years of a growing cultural demonization of feminism. In 2014, Ilbe,
an online alt-right,
misogynistic community
began to grow more and more popular among young men. In 2016, a young woman
was murdered
in a public bathroom
in Seoul by a young man who was angry that women kept ignoring him. (Despite
his alarming reasoning, police did not label the murder a hate crime.) That
same year, triggered by the low birth rate,
the government
released a “National Birth Map,” which showed where all the women of
reproductive age lived. (Women, understandably, were furious to be labeled
like livestock.) In 2018, another movement emerged called “escape the corset,” which
rejected the laborious beauty efforts expected of Korean women.
………
But don’t interpret the aforementioned spike in interest as support. Search the phrase on TikTok and you’ll have to dig through thousands of videos of American women mocking the movement, calling it a disgrace, and declaring that they won’t be shaving their heads anytime soon, before you’ll get to anyone saying they’re opting into it. (Again, even in South Korea, 4B is considered fringe.)
I don't think that this will go anywhere, not even in Korea, where misogyny is an even more entrenched political force than it is in the United States, but this is interesting.
