Opting out: The 4B Movement is spreading like wild on Tiktok and X, or Why We Shouldn’t Wanna Give Up
Facing the camera, Maria Barbieri had the clippers out. Donald Trump had just been elected US president and the creator, who posts under the handle @girl_dumphim, woke up “feeling spicy.” She tried to shave her head and then used scissors to slice off bits at a time. “Giving up on America? She said in a TikTok post Wednesday morning that she had. “Also given up on coloring this hair, because, right? I hate coloring my hair. Fuck having my hair be long and luxurious … Fuck being all the things that the patriarchy wants us to be because, clearly, they don’t give a shit about us.”
A floating bit of text on the video reads “Opting out. The 4B movement began in South Korea and encourages women to not marry, date, sleep with or have children with a man until they have equal rights for men and women. As of this writing, it’s gotten more than 3 million views.
The 4B movement has seen an increase in interest in the days since the election. Many young women are posting about the idea on platforms like TikTok and X.
The 4B Movement: Why Do Lesbians Live in a White House? When Sex Without Consent is Against Violence in South Korea
TikTokker Regan Gillam, who is lesbian, says that there is no room for sleeping with men that are worth sacrificing your life for. They don’t support you when they don’t value who you are and they don’t vote for you. It is important that you protect yourselves when they don’t want to.
A white nationalist who was criticized for hosting at a dinner at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort said that his body was his choice. Forever,” as the results turned in Trump’s favor on Election Night. The 35,000 likes came from the same Twitter account.
Another, Jon Miller, who describes himself as a moderate and “fair & balanced political commentator,” tweeted on Wednesday, “women threatening sex strikes like LMAO as if you have a say.” The post has gotten over 50 million views, sparked considerable backlash and was appended with a community note clarifying that sex without consent is rape.
The emergence of a feminist movement in South Korea was the basis on which 4B began.
“Clearly, this is about American women trying to find sources of leverage, sources of empowerment that can, in the short-term, make them feel like they have some agency … in these dire times, with the election and Roe v. Wade behind us,” Han told NPR.
That said, she was surprised to see it take off so suddenly this week, in large part because the movement is so specific to South Korean society and what she describes as its “culture of compulsory marriage” and childbirth.
South Korea has the largest pay gap among the countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and for decades has had the biggest pay gap in the US.
Han says given the dire situation in South Korea — including a notably high suicide rate among women in their 20s — the 4B movement isn’t coming from a playful or flippant place.
President Yoon Suk-yeol, who was elected in 2022, campaigned in part on abolishing the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, which coordinated and implemented policies promoting women’s rights. In South Korea and around the world, that move was condemned by many women.
The murderer of the woman in a public bathroom in Gangnam Station later said he did it because women had always ignored him.
Source: Boycott men? South Korea’s 4B movement gains traction in the U.S. after Trump’s win
The 4B movement: What does it bring about? How does it drive South Korea’s digital sex crimes and what can it teach us about social change?
Sullivan thinks it’s a good thing that people are talking about the 4B movement. She’s already seeing women who are not usually outspoken about feminism joining the discourse for the first time — and, like Han, hopes it will lead to more direct action.
Meanwhile, South Korea experienced a rise in what the country calls “digital sex crimes,” with hidden cameras recording women in public areas like bathrooms and changing rooms and uploading the footage to pornographic websites.
There was also a rise in online feminist activism around the same time, including the controversial social movement known as Megalia. Young South Korean women broke their makeup and cut their hair short as a protest against beauty standards, in Break the Corset.
Enter 4B, somewhere around 2019. It doesn’t have an elected leader. It spreads on social media and through word of mouth, and there’s no way to know exactly how many women have participated.
Similarly, Sivakumar describes it as a “last resort” for women who are trying to disentangle their lives from the patriarchy in the name of lasting social and economic independence.
“It’s not meant to be a movement or a form of activism that you’re able to just pick up for one month and just drop as soon as you find someone that you really like and want to talk to,” she added. “It’s supposed to be sort of a form of sacrifice, that for the rest of your life you’re going to be independent from men.”
Han thinks it likely that American women exploring 4B could see backlash from their immediate circle just for “exercising their right to do these obvious things.”
“Declaring yourself to be a feminist in an anti-feminist world can have consequences,” Han said. “I think any sort of refusal to participate in the status quo could obviously have some negative consequences.”
The support of a collective is what makes the movement so powerful, she said, adding that she hopes it will lead to more hands on organizing for social change.
“One individual refusing to have sex is just one individual refusing to have sex,” Han said. It is a start of something else when they recognize other women doing the same thing and sharing their frustration with each other.
Source: Boycott men? South Korea’s 4B movement gains traction in the U.S. after Trump’s win
The 4B movement gains traction in the U.S. after Donald Trump’s win: Comment on Kristin Sullivan, M.A.Vance and Kaehler
The former president has been accused of sexual misconduct by dozens of women dating back decades and was found liable for sexual abuse by a jury. Trump has bragged about appointing justices who reversed the Supreme Court’s position on abortion, despite his opposition to a nationwide abortion ban. His running mate, Vice President-elect Vance, drew widespread ire for his comments about “childless cat ladies” over the summer.
The Vice President Harris made protecting abortion rights a priority in her unsuccessful campaign to become the first female president.
According to The Associated Press, Donald Trump won men in every age group compared to 2020. According to exit polls, more than 50 percent of American men voted for Trump.
“I completely see the appeal right now after the election, I’m just so angry with men as a whole,” said Keara Sullivan, a 25-year-old comedian based in Brooklyn who has been hearing a lot about 4B online in recent days.
Sullivan thinks that women should stop dating and marrying and having sex with men who vote against their rights. But she has concerns about aspects of the 4B movement, including worrying that women abstaining from sex could be seen as playing right into ultra-conservatives’ wishes.
Sullivan hopes that the solidarity women are finding on social media will lead to more direct feminist organizing and disruption of the government.
It is time to close off your wombs to males, says one post. “This election proves now more than ever that they hate us & hate us proudly. Don’t reward them.
“I think it’s time for American women to participate in our own 4B movement,” one woman posted on TikTok. “If men won’t respect our bodies, they don’t get access to our bodies.”
The idea comes from the South Korean movement known as 4B, or the 4 No’s (bi means “not” in Korean). It also calls for the refusal of dating men, sexual relationships with men and heterosexual marriage.
Source: Boycott men? South Korea’s 4B movement gains traction in the U.S. after Trump’s win
Anti-Women: Is Trump Coming on the Dime? Young Women and the Bose-Einstein Condensation in the Era of the Trump Era
There is talk among young American women of boycotting men in the wake of President-elect Trump’s victory.