What’s 4B? A South Korean feminist movement 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 girls are speaking about boycotting males.

The thought comes from the South Korean motion referred to 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 for the reason that election, with Google searches spiking and the hashtag taking off on social media. Scores of younger girls are exploring and selling the concept in posts on platforms like TikTok and X.

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

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

“It’s time to shut off your wombs to males,” reads one other viral put up. “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 giant social media followings would appear for example 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 selection. Perpetually,” because the outcomes turned in Trump’s favor on Election Evening. The tweet bought 40,000 likes.

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

One other, Jon Miller, who describes himself as a average and “truthful & balanced political commentator,” tweeted on Wednesday, “girls threatening intercourse strikes like LMAO as if in case you have a say.” The put up has gotten over 50 million views, sparked appreciable backlash and was appended with a group 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, that is about American girls 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 instructed NPR.

That mentioned, she was shocked to see it take off so out of the blue 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 elsewhere?

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 World Gender Hole Index, and for many years has had the most important pay hole among the many nations 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 nation for working girls in 2022, partially due to strict maternity go away insurance policies that pressure many ladies to decide on between profession and household. That’s one of many causes South Korea has the bottom fertility charge on the planet, 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 related actions, Han says. However she says it might be a stretch responsible 4B for inflicting the decline in childbirths, and in reality, sees it as a response.

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

President Yoon Suk-yeol, who was elected in 2022, campaigned partially on abolishing the Ministry of Gender Equality and Household, which coordinated and applied insurance policies selling girls’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 sequence 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 lavatory in Seoul’s central Gangnam Station, which the perpetrator later mentioned he did as a result of “girls have at all times ignored me.”

“Numerous feminists and a whole lot of girls 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 type of a reboot, I suppose, of feminist activism in Korea.”

In the meantime, South Korea skilled an increase in what the nation calls “digital intercourse crimes,” with hidden cameras recording girls in public areas like bogs 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 in all them. These protests continued within the years that adopted because the #MeToo motion took maintain within the U.S. and world wide.

There was additionally an increase in on-line feminist activism across the similar time, together with the controversial social motion referred to as Megalia. One other, known as Break the Corset, noticed younger South Korean girls smashing their make-up palettes and chopping 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 girls have participated.

“It’s not a church, it’s not a cult. It’s extra, I believe, type of a way of thinking and a set of priorities,” Han mentioned. “What I believe is most necessary is that it’s about girls recognizing that they’re in a collective battle, and that there’s a collective sense of frustration.”

4B is a dedication not with out penalties

Han says given the dire scenario in South Korea — together with a notably excessive suicide charge amongst girls 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 attempting to disentangle their lives from the patriarchy within the title of lasting social and financial independence.

“It’s not meant to be a motion or a type of activism that you just’re capable of simply decide 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 presupposed to be type 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 mentioned. For instance, the nation’s president final yr urged that feminism is responsible for blocking “wholesome relationships” between women and men.

Han thinks it probably that American girls exploring 4B may see backlash from their fast 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 mentioned. “I believe any type of refusal to take part in the established order may clearly have some detrimental penalties.”

As some social media customers have identified, 4B is as a lot about chopping ties with males as it’s supporting different girls. Sivakumar says the supposed goal is girls’s autonomy slightly than essentially searching for to punish males, calling it an “particular person effort on behalf of girls.”

The assist of a collective is what makes the motion so highly effective, Han mentioned, including that she hopes it would 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 mentioned. “However after they acknowledge different girls doing the identical factor or eager 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 girls’s rights.

The previous president has been accused of sexual misconduct by dozens of girls relationship again a long time and was discovered chargeable 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 working 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 characteristic of her finally unsuccessful marketing campaign to turn out to be the primary feminine president.

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

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

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

Even so, Sullivan thinks it’s a very good factor that individuals are speaking a couple of U.S. 4B motion. She’s already seeing girls who will not be normally outspoken about feminism becoming a member of the discourse for the primary time — and, like Han, hopes it would result in extra direct motion.

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