A feminist campaign has emerged on-line in a daring response to Donald Trump’s election and the rollback of reproductive rights in the usand it is taking inspiration from South Korea’s radical “4B” motion.
It is a motion born from anger, frustration, and a deep sense of betrayal prompting ladies to say “no” to all the things referring to males: intercourse, marriage, childbirth, and courting. This refusal to interact with a male populace set on taking away ladies’s bodily autonomy is a political assertion and demand for equality that refuses to be ignored.
“No matter how loud, how kind, how respectful, how cute, men will still fucking hate you,” mentioned a TikTok person in a compilation video displaying ladies on-line making ready to stick to 4B in America.
And why are American ladies taking motion? As a result of in Tuesday’s election, a majority of Gen Z males, or “podcast bros,” forged their votes for Trump—a person whose handpicked conservative Supreme Court docket majority stacked the deck in opposition to ladies’s rights and overturned Roe v. Wade. The president-elect can also be a textbook misogynist who used sexist language within the weeks main as much as the election when he mentioned he’d “protect” ladies “whether they like it or not.” He’s a serial adulterer who was additionally discovered answerable for sexual abuse and has been accused of assault by dozens of others—and American ladies have had sufficient.
With mounting solidarity, they’re banding collectively (with some even shaving their heads in protest in order to not attraction to the male gaze) to undertake the 4B technique: no extra kids, no extra marriages, no extra courting males till ladies’s rights are restored.
Late on Election Day, when it was clear Trump had received his newest bid for president, 26-year-old white nationalist Nick Fuentes posted a brief and infuriating assertion on X: “Your body, my choice. Forever.”
Fuentes, who dined with Trump at Mar-a-Lago, later went on his present “America First” and mentioned to his 113,000 followers, “Hey bitch! We control your bodies. Guess what? Guys win again, okay? Men win again.”
This comes after reviews by ProPublica of ladies like Amber Thurman and Josseli Barnica dying preventable deaths because of being turned away from hospitals in states with abortion bans.
On TikTok, ladies have been airing their rage, grief, and disappointment in highly effective waves of shared emotion. Inside 48 hours after Trump’s victory over Vice President Kamala Harris, the “4B movement” hashtag began trending. Girls becoming a member of the motion refuse to let their our bodies be used as bargaining chips in a patriarchal society.
This second is not nearly a lack of rights: It is a reclamation of energy.
American ladies taking cues from South Korea
The “4B” comes from South Korea, the place ladies determined to protest gender-based violence and a big wage hole by saying “no” to 4 B’s: biyeonae (courting males), bisekseu (intercourse with males), bihon (marrying males), and bichulsan (childbirth), in accordance with CBS Information. The motion has contributed to a plummeting beginning fee within the nation, in accordance with The New York Occasions.
TikToker Mrs. Sallee shared her uncooked emotions with followers, her voice trembling with emotion.
“I just looked up what the 4B movement is, and I literally fell to the ground crying,” she mentioned. “I cannot believe that that was something that had to be done and that now we’re at rock bottom, and this is where we are at. I feel like I’m living in a different world today. This is so heartbreaking.”
Social media influencer Drew Afualo, identified for her daring feminist takes, weighed in on South Korea’s 4B marketing campaign throughout an interview on the podcast “Soul Boom” with actor Rainn Wilson.
“It turns out women are a lot more essential than you would think, than men believe them to be, because now the government is panicking,” she mentioned. “They’re like, ‘What are we gonna do? We’re gonna die out unless women decide to start having kids again!’ And women are refusing until they are awarded the exact same rights and respect that men are awarded in this society.”
Though a intercourse strike is novel within the U.S., Carrie Reiling, assistant professor of political science at Washington School, mentioned it’s “part of a long history of sex strikes to achieve a particular political goal.”
“What is different about the 4B movement is the inclusion of not dating men, rather than simple refusal to have sex with men, which was the focus of many of the other movements,” Reiling mentioned.
“The question for these women is if their goal is concrete enough to achieve anything. Will the connection between saying ‘no’ to men and their political aims be clear enough?” she requested. “While a 4B movement might draw attention and jumpstart a conversation about new feminist activist goals, women joining such a movement should ensure that their anger is not just toward men. They should also ask what compels women to vote this way and if a 4B movement can lead to progress on this front as well.”
An epidemic of lonely—and violent—males
Lengthy earlier than “podcast bros,” the conservative male digital sphere had coined language for a way males see themselves and the way they relate to ladies.
The time period “incel” took flight in 2016, turning into the favored identifier for chronically on-line younger males on the far-right who frequented message boards and platforms like Reddit, 4chan, and Twitter. The time period is brief for “involuntary celibate,” which means males who don’t select to be celibate however are compelled to as a result of ladies received’t date or sleep with them. Different stereotypes like “Chads” (fashionable males who get numerous feminine consideration) and “Stacys” (unattainable ladies who solely date Chads) emerged out of this era.
Incels have since been linked to mass violence and terrorism. Fuentes is the evolution of the incels, now unafraid of voicing their abhorrent, sexist views as a result of they really feel emboldened by the nation’s newly elected leaders.
In 2017, Surgeon Basic Vivek Murthy wrote about an American “loneliness epidemic” within the Harvard Enterprise Evaluate. Later, Boston Globe columnist Billy Baker wrote the ebook, “We Need to Hang Out,” on male loneliness. In 2023, a New York Occasions article urged younger folks beneath 30 to “have more sex” as they have been probably the most sexless technology in U.S. historical past. An NPR piece walked males by means of the way to make buddies.
The upshot: Males are lonely—and this has made them susceptible to turning into radicalized.
This all factors to a disconnected, lonely, and socially awkward technology of Gen Z and millennial males who discover Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance’s simplistic masculinity and alpha male posturing interesting. Harris’ operating mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, tried to attraction to this group by displaying a extra advanced model of masculinity, with little success.
Whereas ladies are simply as more likely to battle with loneliness, they’re used to combating to search out their place in a world that desires to form them into their model of acceptable. As a result of ladies know the way to construct group for his or her well-being and survival, they’re constructed for instances like these.
In one other highly effective present of solidarity, “blue bracelet” began trending on TikTok. White ladies are operating to craft shops to make and put on blue friendship bracelets, distinguishing themselves from Trump-supporting MAGA ladies to sign their assist to ladies of colour. It is a transfer grounded in the actual threat of being recognized as maybe a “fellow traveler” in a local weather that’s more and more hostile and unsafe to marginalized teams. For a lot of, these bracelets are greater than only a image: They’re a lifeline.
“I think many women are at a loss for what to do, and are absolutely dismayed and betrayed by men who chose their wallet, or who knows what, over a women’s right to choose,” mentioned Samantha Karlin, founding father of Empower World.
Karlin has spearheaded a feminine management workshop in Washington, D.C.
“I teach a concept called the locus of control—many things are outside of your control that can give you anxiety—and the election results certainly are causing many women to feel completely out of control,” she mentioned. “Choosing to abstain from sex, dating, marriage—those are all things an individual can control, even if the country voted for a sexual predator, canned three abortion resolutions, and decided, again, a woman shouldn’t be president.”
The 4B and blue bracelet actions aren’t about what ladies are withholding, however what they’re demanding—like security, equality, and respect. And if the respect isn’t willingly given, ladies will emulate the numerous political actions that got here earlier than and mobilize to create it for themselves.
