4B Movement Against Trump Supporters

After Republican Donald Trump's victory in the US Presidential elections (in November, 2024), 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.

1. The 4B movement has seen a surge online after Donald Trump's victory. 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.
2. Donald Trump has a history of misogynist remarks, and among his more vocal supporters were men with anti-progressive views on women’s rights and autonomy — although polling numbers show that a large number of women also voted for him.

About 4B movement

1. The 4B movement originally emerged from the fringes of the South Korean feminist movement.
2. It developed in South Korean feminist circles and on social media in the mid-to-late 2010s during a wave of violence against women in the country, and in protest over other manifestations of sexism and inequality in South Korean society.
3. 4B is shorthand for four words that start with “bi”, which means “no” in Korean.
4. The movement calls for:

• Bihon, which means no heterosexual marriage
• Bichulsan, no childbirth
• Biyeonae, no dating
• Bisekseu, no heterosexual sexual relationships

5. The 4B movement belongs to the strain of radical feminism that believes that heterosexual relationships at their heart remain structures of oppression, and women need to break free of them to be truly independent and happy.
6. In the Indian context, consider this — marriage often involves dowry, the burden of running the married home and raising the child is disproportionately on women, many women are penalised at their workplaces for motherhood duties, and intimate partner violence is common.
7. While women are supposed to endure all this for the sake of love and duties, there are very little expectations from men except earning money.
8. The proponents of the 4B movement believe that unless men work more actively for a gender-just society, women should not reward them with children, love, and emotional and other forms of labour.

South Korea’s Story Behind 4B Movement The movement started in South Korea around 2016, when a young woman was murdered in a Seoul subway station. Her killer said he had “felt ignored by women”. This was also the time when multiple women in South Korea reported having been filmed by spycams in washrooms or while having sex, by strangers as well as men known to them. In many cases, the police were hostile to the victims. The MeToo movement gave further impetus to women talking about their struggles and their rights more vocally. 4B is largely an online movement and it is difficult to measure its impact. South Korea does have very low birth rates, but that can be attributed to a range of factors.

But how does 4B movement help women?

1. In criticisms and backlash online, 4B is often shown as a deranged movement of women who hate men and want to destroy family life. However, there is more to 4B than just saying “no” to men.
2. The 4B movement encompasses not only criticisms of the pro-natalist turn in state policy and protests against it, but also various forms of self-help discussions and practices that are explicitly oriented towards women’s individual futures.
3. Essentially, the movement wants women to imagine more roles for themselves than just wife and mother. Women not bogged down by domestic duties and not being controlled by a man can focus on their own aims, hobbies, comfort and happiness; the movement’s followers believe.
4. They also advocate women building strong solidarities with other women. This includes, but is not limited to, lesbian relationships. Women can depend on each other for comfort, companionship and emotional support, while working together to achieve common goals.
5. 4B is sometimes expanded to 6B4T, which advocates staying away from firms perceived as misogynist, rejecting the fandom culture, rejecting beauty standards that conform to the male gaze, etc.

Is 4B a new idea?

1. Not at all. Before 4B and Trump, the American social media had seen a trend called ‘boysober’, where women were staying away from romantic and sexual relationships with men to prioritise their own happiness, well-being, and safety.
2. In the 1960s to 1980s, strains within second wave feminism had also advocated political lesbianism and ‘separatist feminism’, which basically believed women should stay away from the gender that oppresses them.
3. Possibly the best-known paper capturing these ideas is ‘Love Your Enemy’, co-authored by Sheila Jeffreys and others in 1979. The paper in effect said that instead of keeping all women in a giant slave camp, heterosexual marriage has provided each man with his personal assistant, and disguised it as love.
4. “The heterosexual couple is the basic unit of the political structure of male supremacy. In it each individual woman comes under the control of an individual man. It is more efficient by far than keeping women in ghettoes, camps or even sheds at the bottom of the garden. In the couple, love and sex are used to obscure the realities of oppression, to prevent women identifying with each other in order to revolt, and from identifying ‘their’ man as part of the enemy,”
5. Apart from this, there was the Cell 16 movement in the US in the late 1960s and early 1970s, which advocated that women should stay celibate, stay away from men, and learn martial forms of self-defence such as karate.

Why do some non-sexist people also oppose 4B?

1. Apart from sexist and violent comments on social media, 4B and its predecessor movements have seen thoughtful and reasoned criticism too.
2. Some point out that just cutting off contact with men is not a solution — this puts the onus of staying away from men on the woman, instead of demanding change and accountability from men.
3. Believing men as incapable of reform can play into the ‘boys will be boys’ school of thought, it is argued.
4. Meaningful change can come by raising awareness and a sense of responsibility among men, and this can happen by pushing back from within relationships, it is pointed out.
5. Others point out that such totalising movements can be exclusionary of transgender rights.

Yet others say that these movements rob women of choice: one can be frustrated with inequality but still want children, or in the case of heterosexual women, sexual pleasure.

Conclusion

The 4B movement represents a radical response to deeply ingrained gender inequalities. While it has sparked debate and criticism, it highlights the frustrations and aspirations of women seeking a more equitable society. By encouraging women to prioritize their own needs and challenge traditional norms, the 4B movement contributes to the ongoing conversation about gender roles and women's empowerment.

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