What Is the 4B Movement? After Trump’s Reelection, American Women Are Adopting South Korea’s Radical Feminism

In the times since Donald Trump received the 2024 election, you could have been seeing references to the 4B motion pop up in your FYP. It’s billed as a means for girls to construct solidarity with one another and to withstand the patriarchy of their day-after-day lives. But what’s the 4B motion, and will it truly work?

How did 4B begin?

The 4B motion originated in South Korea within the 2010s, at across the similar time the #MeToo motion took maintain within the United States. In Korean, “B” is shorthand for the phrase bi, that means “no.” The 4 “Bs” are bisekseu (no intercourse with males), bichulsan (no giving beginning), biyeonae (no relationship males), and bihon (no marrying males), per The Cut.

The motion started in response to excessive charges of violence towards girls, together with the 2016 homicide of a younger lady in a public lavatory in Seoul, per the Washington Post. Since the mid-2010s, the motion has grown, principally on-line on TikTok and Instagram, with girls vowing to stop private romantic relationships with males.

Jung Se-young, a 4B YouTuber, has stated, “Marriage is the basis reason behind patriarchy in South Korea,” per Reuters.

What are the 5B, 6B, and different actions?

Recently, the 4 Bs have grown to incorporate extra protests, together with no buying “pink tax” objects similar to make-up and sweetness merchandise, and a dedication by 4B girls to help different 4B girls. Some social media users additionally embrace a seventh “B,” which refers to no extra free emotional labor for males.

The motion has additionally unfold to China, the place it’s known as “6B4T,” and have become topic to authorities censorship in 2021, per Reuters.

What has the affect been?

South Korea now has the bottom fertility price on the planet, per the New York Times, and in 2020, it recorded extra deaths than births. The Conservative-led authorities has been responding to the disaster, however in some methods it has led to crack downs towards feminist efforts relatively than increasing gender equality.

As common feminist TikTok comic and influencer Drew Afualo defined, “Turns out girls are much more important than you’d suppose, huh?”

Is there a 4B motion within the United States?

Like the #MeToo motion, 4B has unfold throughout international locations via on-line platforms, and it’s starting to be picked up by American girls. “Young males count on intercourse, however in addition they need us to not have the ability to have entry to abortion. They can’t have each,” one younger 4B proponent advised the Washington Post.