Boycott men? South Korea’s 4B movement gains traction in the U.S. after Trump’s win-ZoomTech News

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 generally known as 4B, or the 4 No’s (bi means “not” in Korean). It requires the refusal of courting males (biyeonae), sexual relationships with males (bisekseu), heterosexual marriage (bihon) and childbirth (bichulsan).

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

“I believe it’s time for American ladies to take part in our personal 4B motion,” one lady posted on TikTok. “If males received’t respect our our bodies, they don’t get entry to our our bodies.”

“Women, we have to start thinking about the 4B motion like the ladies in South Korea and provides America a severely sharp delivery price decline,” reads one tweet with over 470,000 likes. “We are able to’t let these males have the final giggle… we have to chew again.”

“It’s time to shut off your wombs to males,” reads another viral post. “This election proves now greater than ever that they hate us & hate us proudly. Don’t reward them.”

A number of current tweets from far-right males with massive 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 physique, my alternative. Endlessly,” because the outcomes turned in Trump’s favor on Election Evening. The tweet received 40,000 likes.

Social media customers have since noticed a pattern of men commenting that phrase, or related, on ladies’s TikTok posts.

One other, Jon Miller, who describes himself as a reasonable and “truthful & balanced political commentator,” tweeted on Wednesday, “ladies threatening intercourse strikes like LMAO as you probably have a say.” The publish has gotten over 50 million views, sparked appreciable backlash and was appended with a neighborhood notice 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, that is about American ladies looking for sources of leverage, sources of empowerment that may, within the short-term, make them really feel like they’ve some company … in these dire instances, 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 “tradition of obligatory marriage” and childbirth.

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

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 Global Gender Gap Index, and for many years has had the largest pay hole among the many international locations within the Organisation for Financial Co-operation and Improvement (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 country for working ladies in 2022, partially 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 lowest fertility price on this planet, all the way down to 0.78% in 2023.

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

“It’s about younger ladies saying to policymakers: ‘You need us to get married and have kids, it’s a must to make this world a greater place for us to reside,’ ” she stated.

President Yoon Suk-yeol, who was elected in 2022, campaigned partially 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 groups 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.

Certainly one of them was the 2016 homicide of a 23-year-old lady in a public rest room in Seoul’s central Gangnam Station, which the perpetrator later said he did as a result of “ladies have all the time ignored me.”

“Quite a lot of feminists and a number of ladies got here collectively and posted sticky notes everywhere in the station speaking about their very own tales,” says Shruti Sivakumar, an Indiana College senior who’s writing her capstone on the 4B motion. “And that was simply kind of a reboot, I suppose, 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 thousands and thousands of South Koreans protesting within the streets for varied causes, Han says, and ladies’s rights was one among them. These protests continued within the years that adopted because the #MeToo motion took maintain within the U.S. and around the globe.

There was additionally an increase in on-line feminist activism across the identical time, together with the controversial social motion generally known as Megalia. One other, referred to as Break the Corset, noticed younger South Korean ladies smashing their make-up palettes and slicing 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 approach to know precisely what number of ladies have participated.

“It’s not a church, it’s not a cult. It’s extra, I believe, form of a mind-set and a set of priorities,” Han stated. “What I believe is most essential is that it’s about ladies recognizing that they’re in a collective wrestle, 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 high suicide rate amongst ladies of their 20s — the 4B motion isn’t coming from a playful or flippant place.

Equally, Sivakumar describes it as a “final 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 motion or a type of activism that you just’re in a position to simply choose up for one month and simply drop as quickly as you discover somebody that you just actually like and wish to speak to,” she added. “It’s alleged to be kind of a type of sacrifice, that for the remainder of your life you’re going to be impartial from males.”

That dedication can include penalties.

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

Han thinks it doubtless that American ladies exploring 4B may see backlash from their rapid circle only for “exercising their proper to do these apparent issues.”

“Declaring your self to be a feminist in an anti-feminist world can have penalties,” Han stated. “I believe any kind of refusal to take part in the established order may clearly have some destructive penalties.”

As some social media customers have identified, 4B is as a lot about slicing ties with males as it’s supporting other women. Sivakumar says the supposed goal is ladies’s autonomy fairly than essentially in search of to punish males, calling it an “particular person effort on behalf of ladies.”

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

“One particular person refusing to have intercourse is only one particular person refusing to have intercourse,” Han stated. “However once they acknowledge different ladies doing the identical factor or desirous to share their frustration and their pursuit of company in doing one thing collectively, now that’s a begin of one thing 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 ladies courting again a long time and was discovered answerable 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 girls” over the summer time.

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

Trump made slim good points amongst each ladies and men in comparison with 2020, in keeping with the Associated Press — however received males in each single age group. Exit polls present 55% of American men voted for Trump.

“I fully see the enchantment proper now after the election, I’m simply so offended with males as a complete,” stated Keara Sullivan, a 25-year-old comic primarily based in Brooklyn who has been listening to rather a lot about 4B on-line in current days.

Sullivan feels strongly that girls “ought to cease courting and marrying and having intercourse with males who actively vote in opposition to their human rights.” However she has issues about features of the 4B motion, together with worrying that girls abstaining from intercourse may very well be seen as taking part in proper into ultra-conservatives’ needs.

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

“I’m hoping that this newfound sense of solidarity ladies are discovering on social media can propel us into extra direct feminist organizing and disruption that makes particular calls for of our authorities,” Sullivan stated.