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 the usage of South Korea’s “4B Motion” in america.
The presidential election was seen by many as a referendum on ladies’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 ladies as “childless cat girls.” 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 Courtroom choice Roe v. Wade, which Trump has taken credit score for.
Now, some ladies are swearing to abide by the code of the “4B motion,” a South Korean feminist method that swears off males. This is what to know concerning the 4B motion.
What’s the 4B motion?
Briefly, the 4B motion is a vow to swear off males. It’s referred to as the 4B motion as a result of in Korean, the 4 tenets every start with bi, which suggests no, in response to a paper revealed by two South Korean researchers at Yonsei College’s Institute of Humanities.
The motion particularly requires the refusal of relationship males (biyeonae), sexual relationships with males (bisekseu), heterosexual marriage (bihon), and childbirth (bichulsan) in response to what South Korean ladies 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 members name themselves “nameless ladies” and share few private particulars. It has no official management construction.
JUNG YEON-JE/AFP by way of Getty Photographs
Girls within the nation have fought towards what Human Rights Watch calls “shockingly widespread” gender-based violence and referred to as for harsher penalties for what’s referred to as “spy cam porn.” They’ve additionally criticized the nation’s excessive gender wage hole, which noticed ladies paid 31.2% lower than males in 2022, in response to the KoreaTimes, and referred to as out hiring discrimination and harassment within the office.
What impression 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 had been “blocking wholesome relationships” between women and men within the nation.
The nation has been battling a declining start price for a number of years, which some credit score to the 4B motion, in response to The New York Instances.
The 4B motion in america
After Trump’s election victory on Tuesday, ladies on social media have expressed curiosity in following the “4 Nos” of the motion. Trump made sturdy inroads with younger males below 30, in response to exit polls from CBS Information.
Because the election, a number of far-right figures have made alarming statements about ladies’s rights on social media. White nationalist Nick Fuentes, who dined with Trump at Mar-a-Lago in 2022, wrote “Your physique, my selection. Eternally.” in a widely-criticized submit on X. Comparable posts have percolated throughout social media.
In response, ladies have referred to 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 ladies participate in a intercourse strike to persuade the lads of their lives to finish a struggle.
“We will not let these males have the final giggle… we have to chew again,” wrote one X person in a submit that has garnered almost 450,000 likes.