After Republican Donald Trump’s victory in the US Presidential elections, some American women say they are turning to a movement that advocates no sex, no dating, no marriage and no children. They are inspired by South Korea’s 4B movement.
The 4B movement has seen a surge online after Donald Trump’s victory in the US Presidential elections 2024. Trump’s victory- fuelled by male voters and to many looked like a referendum on reproductive rights — some young American women are talking about boycotting men. It has become one of the top trends on TikTok and online search engines. The 4B movement calls for boycotting men by women.
The idea comes from South Korean movement known as 4B, a vow to swear off men. Many American women are swearing they’ll join the 4B movement in light of Trump’s victory in the US elections. The 4 No’s (bi means “not” in Korean). It calls for the refusal of dating men (biyeonae), sexual relationships with men (bisekseu), heterosexual marriage (bihon) and childbirth (bichulsan).
Why South Korea’s 4B Movement has seen a surge online
Interest in the 4B movement has surged in the days since the election, with Google searches spiking and the hashtag taking off on social media. Scores of young women are exploring and promoting the idea in posts on platforms like TikTok and X. Disappointed by the 2024 US election results, dozens of women posted videos stating their intention to participate in their own version of the 4B trend. There were over 500,000 search inquires for “4B movement” on Google over the span of 48 hours this week, seeing an escalating response with women joining it online.
Why 4B movement is gaining traction in US
Throughout his election campaign, Donald Trump celebrated the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision to overturn the historic judgment Roe vs Wade, a ruling that ended a nationwide right to abortion. It was also reproductive rights that propelled many women to the polls on Election Day as Missouri became the first state to undo a restrictive abortion ban.
However, when Trump won the election some Americans felt reaffirmed in their belief that most of the United States would rather anyone else as president than a woman. Perhaps that’s why interest in South Korea’s 4B movement – a movement against patriarchy – has spiked in the US just hours after Trump’s win.
The interest in South Korea’s 4B movement gained traction in the aftermath of an election in which gender played a major role. Some thought that questions about the future of women’s reproductive rights would turn voters out for Vice President Kamala Harris and deliver Trump a crushing defeat. But the opposite happened and women ended up gravitating toward him. Harris won women by 8 percentage points, while President Joe Biden won that cohort by 15 percentage points in 2020, according to NBC News’ exit polling.
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What is the South Korea’s 4B movement?
The 4B movement started in South Korea in 2018 in the wake of the #MeToo movement, has become a way for some women to protest misogyny, gender discrimination and violence against women, according to Meera Choi, a Ph.D. candidate in the department of sociology at Yale University who studies heterosexual refusal among South Korean women, reports NBC.
“The 4B Movement is a powerful example of women pushing back against the roles society expects them to fill,” psychologist and dating expert Leah Levi told Newsweek. According to a report, there was widespread protest and outrage after a 23-year-old woman in a Gangnam station bathroom was murdered by the hands of a man who reportedly resented women.
“That event, and the frustrating lack of accountability from authorities, pushed women to their limit,” Levi explained. “They were tired of feeling unsafe, sidelined, and undervalued—so 4B became a way to reclaim their lives on their own terms.”
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“Women started thinking about how the government and the state and the men are failing them,” Choi told NBC, and they subsequently began “not rewarding men by not participating in heterosexual relationships.”
Members of the 4B movement view marriage as an existential threat to women, and their concerns are well-founded, according to The Independent. Much like in the US, South Korean women are also subjected to a gender pay gap. While American women typically earn 82 cents for every dollar earned by men, South Korean women earn 31 percent less than men – the highest gender pay gap in democratic countries.
What are women saying in US on 4B movement?
The 4B movement has been gaining more interest and popularity on an international stage in recent years, particularly as young women across the world have learned about it on social media, according to Choi.
“American women, looks like it’s time to get influenced by Korea’s 4B movement,” one woman wrote on X/Twitter.
“American women, it’s time to learn from the Koreans and adopt the 4B movement,” another user echoed, while a third person said: “The women in South Korea are doing it. It’s time we join them. Men will NOT be rewarded, nor have access to our bodies.”
“Trump’s victory has lit a flame for a lot of women,” Abby told The Newsweek, a 27-year-old from Florida with the TikTok handle @rabbitsandtea. In a video with 1.7 million likes and 9.3 million views, she shared her story of breaking up with her Republican boyfriend and officially joining the 4B movement.
“Ladies, we need to start considering the 4B movement like the women in South Korea and give America a severely sharp birth rate decline: no marriage, no childbirth, no dating men, no sex with men. We can’t let these men have the last laugh… we need to bite back,” X user @lalisasaura wrote on Wednesday in a tweet that has now garnered over 469,000 likes, 75,000 retweets and 19.9 million views.
Many responded to her tweet. One said, “If South Korean women can successfully do this, it is not impossible!!!!!!” Another tweeted, “It’s a bold move, but women reclaiming control could send a powerful message.” A third person tweeted, “I’m a man and I completely agree with this.”