After a month since the US election, talks of the 4b movement have ceased in local and global media while ‘male loneliness epidemic’ is on the rise.
Originating in South Korea, the 4B Movement is an unofficial Feminist protest group that has chosen to cut out men from their lives, for a ‘variety of many different reasons.’
Whether the reason is inequality in the workplace, generational oppression, or personal reasons, women across South Korea and now the rest of the world have started joining this movement.
There is no evidence of where or when this movement originated from, however it is believed it started around 2019 after the elected Yoon Suk Yeol took his place as President of South Korea.
The name comes from the ‘4 B’s’ where the word ‘Bi’ means ‘No’, following 4 rules:
- Bihon – refusal of heterosexual marriage
- Bichulsan – refusal of childbirth and pregnancy
- Biyeonae – abstaining from dating men
- Biseksu – abstaining and rejection of heterosexual sexual relationships
Due to this movement, it is one of the reasons why South Korean pregnancy and birth rates are the lowest across the whole world, with 0.72 births per person in 2023.
After the US elections and Donald Trump’s victory against Kamala Harris, the 4B movement started circulating on platforms such as X (formerly known as Twitter) and TikTok.
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With the movement rising in popularity online, women across the world shared the pain and disappointment in Trump’s win and have started joining the movement themselves.
Now, a month after the US elections, after some declared ‘swearing off’ men and not engaging with them in any way or relationship whatsoever, there are those who are sceptical over the movement and its rise in popularity amongst women in the US.
Although Harris’ numbers revealed that a majority of women voted for her during the election, there are women that voted for Trump too, so Trump’s victory does not only rely on men in the US.
Many have stated that those who want to engage in the 4B Movement and cut off their male counterparts from their lives ‘should focus within themselves and examine their own contribution to patriarchy instead.’
However, it’s been stated that patriarchy and its effects ‘should not fall on women’s shoulders’, and that it ‘should not be women’s responsibility to bring down a system that wasn’t created by them’.
Patriarchy has been a system that has held its ground for centuries, and women have particularly taken interest in the 4B movement to, ‘play fire with fire’, by removing themselves from the system altogether.
The 4B Movement in America is not just about removing men from their lives, it’s also about protecting themselves and their bodily autonomy to be able to choose.
With Roe v Wade overturned, it has made women’s right to choose that much harder, with half of states banning abortion around 12-18 weeks (dependant on the state) or banning it all together from the moment of conception.
With this holding power over women’s bodies and their right to bodily autonomy, or lack thereof, the radical feminist movement that is 4B gives women the chance to ‘fight the ones who keep our bodies in a tight-fisted grasp’.
Whether this movement will take place and skyrocket in popularity, or disappear into archives of news headlines, we might not be able to predict.
The 4B movement’s goal has not made radical changes, yet, but with pregnancy and birth rates falling from year to year in South Korea, it can lead to more long-term effects causing disruption in the economy, population and day-to-day life.
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Additionally, if the 4B movement ‘catches on’ in countries like the US or the UK, it could start a trend of changes that could either be positive or negative for the world as a whole.