What’s 4B? A South Korean feminist motion reaches the U.S. : NPR

Following President-elect Trump’s victory — which was fueled by male voters and to many regarded like a referendum on reproductive rights — some younger American ladies are speaking about boycotting males.

The concept comes from the South Korean motion often known as 4B, or the 4 No’s (bi means “not” in Korean). It requires the refusal of relationship males (biyeonae), sexual relationships with males (bisekseu), heterosexual marriage (bihon) and childbirth (bichulsan).

Curiosity within the 4B motion has surged within the days because the election, with Google searches spiking and the hashtag taking off on social media. Scores of younger ladies are exploring and selling the concept in posts on platforms like TikTok and X.

“I think it’s time for American women to participate in our own 4B movement,” one girl posted on TikTok. “If men won’t respect our bodies, they don’t get access to our bodies.”

“Ladies, we need to start considering the 4B movement like the women in South Korea and give America a severely sharp birth rate decline,” reads one tweet with over 470,000 likes. “We can’t let these men have the last laugh… we need to bite back.”

“It’s time to close off your wombs to males,” reads one other viral submit. “This election proves now more than ever that they hate us & hate us proudly. Do not reward them.”

A number of current tweets from far-right males with giant social media followings would appear for instance their level.

Nicholas Fuentes, a white nationalist and Holocaust denier — whom Trump was criticized for internet hosting at a dinner at his Mar-a-Lago resort in 2022 — tweeted, “Your body, my choice. Forever,” because the outcomes turned in Trump’s favor on Election Night time. The tweet acquired 40,000 likes.

Social media customers have since seen a sample of males commenting that phrase, or comparable, on ladies’s TikTok posts.

One other, Jon Miller, who describes himself as a average and “fair & balanced political commentator,” tweeted on Wednesday, “women threatening sex strikes like LMAO as if you have a say.” The submit has gotten over 50 million views, sparked appreciable backlash and was appended with a neighborhood be aware clarifying that intercourse with out consent is rape.

Ju Hui Judy Han, a gender research professor on the College of California Los Angeles who additionally focuses on Korean research, says the rising curiosity in 4B at this second is comprehensible.

“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 informed NPR.

That stated, she was shocked to see it take off so instantly this week, largely as a result of the motion is so particular to South Korean society and what she describes as its “culture of compulsory marriage” and childbirth.

The place did 4B come from — and will it catch on some place else?

For context, gender inequality is deeply rooted in South Korea

Han describes 4B as a comparatively small motion that started as an offshoot of the rising feminist motion in South Korea, pushed by structural misogyny and gender discrimination.

South Korea ranked 99 out of 146 within the World Financial Discussion board’s 2024 International Gender Hole Index, and for many years has had the biggest pay hole among the many nations within the Organisation for Financial Co-operation and Growth (OECD) — it was 31% in 2021, in comparison with about 16% within the U.S.

The Economist’s glass-ceiling index ranked it the worst OECD nation for working ladies in 2022, partly due to strict maternity depart insurance policies that drive many ladies to decide on between profession and household. That’s one of many causes South Korea has the bottom fertility charge on the earth, all the way down to 0.78% in 2023.

The low fertility charge has been a supply of alarm amongst Korean policymakers, and criticism by anti-feminists who blame 4B and different comparable actions, Han says. However she says it will be a stretch guilty 4B for inflicting the decline in childbirths, and actually, sees it as a response.

“It’s about young women saying to policymakers: ‘You want us to get married and have children, you have to make this world a better place for us to live,’ ” she stated.

President Yoon Suk-yeol, who was elected in 2022, campaigned partly on abolishing the Ministry of Gender Equality and Household, which coordinated and carried out insurance policies selling ladies’s rights. That transfer was condemned by many ladies in South Korea and human rights teams internationally.

Excessive-profile incidents spurred feminist actions like 4B

A collection of occasions over the previous near-decade fueled the South Korean feminist motion and the rise of 4B.

One in every of them was the 2016 homicide of a 23-year-old girl in a public rest room in Seoul’s central Gangnam Station, which the perpetrator later stated he did as a result of “women have always ignored me.”

“A lot of feminists and a lot of women came together and posted sticky notes all over the station talking about their own stories,” says Shruti Sivakumar, an Indiana College senior who’s writing her capstone on the 4B motion. “And that was just sort of a reboot, I guess, of feminist activism in Korea.”

In the meantime, South Korea skilled an increase in what the nation calls “digital sex crimes,” with hidden cameras recording ladies in public areas like loos and altering rooms and importing the footage to pornographic web sites.

These elements, mixed with a presidential corruption scandal in 2016, noticed tens of millions of South Koreans protesting within the streets for varied causes, Han says, and ladies’s rights was one in all them. These protests continued within the years that adopted because the #MeToo motion took maintain within the U.S. and all over the world.

There was additionally an increase in on-line feminist activism across the identical time, together with the controversial social motion often known as Megalia. One other, referred to as Break the Corset, noticed younger South Korean ladies smashing their make-up palettes and reducing their hair quick in defiance of magnificence requirements.

Enter 4B, someplace round 2019. It doesn’t have an elected chief or membership construction. It spreads on social media and thru phrase of mouth, and there’s no solution to know precisely what number of ladies have participated.

“It’s not a church, it’s not a cult. It’s more, I think, kind of a state of mind and a set of priorities,” Han stated. “What I think is most important is that it’s about women recognizing that they’re in a collective struggle, and that there’s a collective sense of frustration.”

4B is a dedication not with out penalties

Han says given the dire state of affairs in South Korea — together with a notably excessive suicide charge amongst ladies of their 20s — the 4B motion isn’t coming from a playful or flippant place.

Equally, Sivakumar describes it as a “last resort” for girls who’re making an attempt to disentangle their lives from the patriarchy within the identify of lasting social and financial 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.”

That dedication can include penalties.

Feminists — together with 4B individuals — in South Korea have confronted appreciable backlash, particularly from males, Han stated. For instance, the nation’s president final 12 months prompt that feminism is guilty for blocking “healthy relationships” between women and men.

Han thinks it possible that American ladies exploring 4B may see backlash from their instant circle only for “exercising their right to do these obvious things.”

“Declaring yourself to be a feminist in an anti-feminist world can have consequences,” Han stated. “I think any sort of refusal to participate in the status quo could obviously have some negative consequences.”

As some social media customers have identified, 4B is as a lot about reducing ties with males as it’s supporting different ladies. Sivakumar says the supposed goal is ladies’s autonomy quite than essentially looking for to punish males, calling it an “individual effort on behalf of women.”

The help of a collective is what makes the motion so highly effective, Han stated, including that she hopes it can result in extra hands-on organizing for social change.

“One individual refusing to have sex is just one individual refusing to have sex,” Han stated. “But when they recognize other women doing the same thing or wanting to share their frustration and their pursuit of agency in doing something collectively, now that’s a start of something else.”

May 4B catch on within the U.S.?

Many within the U.S. see Trump’s victory as a referendum on ladies’s rights.

The previous president has been accused of sexual misconduct by dozens of girls relationship again a long time and was discovered accountable for sexual abuse by a jury. Regardless of saying he opposes a nationwide abortion ban, Trump has bragged about appointing the Supreme Court docket justices who led to the reversal of Roe. His operating mate, Vice President-elect Vance, drew widespread ire for his feedback about “childless cat ladies” over the summer season.

And Vice President Harris had made defending abortion rights a central function of her finally unsuccessful marketing campaign to turn out to be the primary feminine president.

Trump made slender positive factors amongst each ladies and men in comparison with 2020, based on the Related Press — however gained males in each single age group. Exit polls present 55% of American males voted for Trump.

“I completely see the appeal right now after the election, I’m just so angry with men as a whole,” stated Keara Sullivan, a 25-year-old comic based mostly in Brooklyn who has been listening to quite a bit about 4B on-line in current days.

Sullivan feels strongly that girls “should stop dating and marrying and having sex with men who actively vote against their human rights.” However she has issues about facets of the 4B motion, together with worrying that girls abstaining from intercourse could possibly be seen as enjoying proper into ultra-conservatives’ needs.

Even so, Sullivan thinks it’s factor that individuals are speaking a few U.S. 4B motion. She’s already seeing ladies who should not often outspoken about feminism becoming a member of the discourse for the primary time — and, like Han, hopes it can result in extra direct motion.

“I’m hoping that this newfound sense of solidarity women are finding on social media can propel us into more direct feminist organizing and disruption that makes specific demands of our government,” Sullivan stated.