After President-elect Donald Trump’s victory towards Vice President Kamala Harris within the 2024 presidential election was pushed partially by younger male voters, some are calling for using South Korea’s “4B Motion” in america.
The presidential election was seen by many as a referendum on girls’s rights. Trump has been discovered accountable for sexual abuse and defamation, and his vice chairman, former Ohio senator JD Vance, has beforehand referred to some girls as “childless cat women.” The Harris marketing campaign additionally ran on a platform of supporting a lady’s proper to abortion, one thing that has been jeopardized in lots of states after the autumn of Supreme Court docket determination Roe v. Wade, which Trump has taken credit score for.
Now, some girls are swearing to abide by the code of the “4B motion,” a South Korean feminist strategy that swears off males. This is what to know concerning the 4B motion.
What’s the 4B motion?
In brief, the 4B motion is a vow to swear off males. It’s known as the 4B motion as a result of in Korean, the 4 tenets every start with bi, which implies no, in response to a paper printed by two South Korean researchers at Yonsei College’s Institute of Humanities.
The motion particularly requires the refusal of courting males (biyeonae), sexual relationships with males (bisekseu), heterosexual marriage (bihon), and childbirth (bichulsan) in response to what South Korean girls see as a patriarchal and misogynistic tradition. The motion is also called the “4 Nos.”
The 4B motion started in 2017 and gained extra consideration in 2019, amid a #MeToo-style reckoning in South Korea. A lot of the motion has been constructed on-line, the place individuals name themselves “nameless girls” and share few private particulars. It has no official management construction.
JUNG YEON-JE/AFP by way of Getty Pictures
Ladies within the nation have fought towards what Human Rights Watch calls “shockingly widespread” gender-based violence and known as for harsher penalties for what’s known as “spy cam porn.” They’ve additionally criticized the nation’s excessive gender wage hole, which noticed girls paid 31.2% lower than males in 2022, in response to the KoreaTimes, and known as out hiring discrimination and harassment within the office.
What influence has the 4B motion had in South Korea?
The 4B motion has been controversial in South Korea. The nation’s president Yoon Suk-yeol stated in 2021 that feminist actions have been “blocking wholesome relationships” between women and men within the nation.
The nation has been battling a declining delivery price for a number of years, which some credit score to the 4B motion, in response to The New York Occasions.
The 4B motion in america
After Trump’s election victory on Tuesday, girls on social media have expressed curiosity in following the “4 Nos” of the motion. Trump made sturdy inroads with younger males beneath 30, in response to exit polls from CBS Information.
Because the election, a number of far-right figures have made alarming statements about girls’s rights on social media. White nationalist Nick Fuentes, who dined with Trump at Mar-a-Lago in 2022, wrote “Your physique, my alternative. Ceaselessly.” in a widely-criticized submit on X. Related posts have percolated throughout social media.
In response, girls have known as for an American model of the 4B motion. Use of the phrase on social media and in searches has skyrocketed. Some have additionally referenced “Lysistrata,” a Greek comedy the place girls participate in a intercourse strike to persuade the boys of their lives to finish a battle.
“We will not let these males have the final snicker… we have to chew again,” wrote one X consumer in a submit that has garnered practically 450,000 likes.
