What is the South Korean 4B movement and why are American women claiming to embrace it?

In a TikTok post that’s been liked by more than a million users, TikTok user @rabbitsandtea, who goes by “A,” sits on a couch dressed in sweatpants and a sweatshirt. Her long brown hair untied, she sits petting her cat while hawk-like bird calls play in the background. Text on the screen reads: “Doing my part as an American woman by breaking up with my Republican boyfriend last night & officially joining the 4b movement this morning.”

She is one of several American women who now say they are going to abstain from dating, marrying, having sex with, and bearing children for men as a form of political protest. The term 4B refers to a feminist movement that started in South Korea which espouses these principals.

The video, posted two days ago, has been shared more than 45,000 times and seen a similar number of comments that ranged from “Why did you have a republican bf in the first place?” to “You won’t be missed. MAGA women are hotter than you.”

For many women in the country, the reelection of former president Donald Trump has sounded a death knell on reproductive freedom and women’s rights. Trump, who has been accused of sexual abuse, has also supported a House bill that outlawed most late-term abortions. In March, he voiced support for a nationwide ban on pregnancies older than 15 weeks, and has cited his government’s overturning of Roe v. Wade as a major win for his last presidency.

As a result, anxious and scared, several American women have voiced their intention to adopt 4B.

The name 4B refers to four words that all start with bi, meaning no, in Korean.

South Korean society is plagued with high rates of sexual violence against women including technology-powered abuse like using spy cams to film women in private and public spaces. The society, where women continue to be pushed out of the workforce, has strict gender norms that inspired the movement to start out online as a way for women to organize against the sexism prevalent in the society, especially as a response to a 2016 murder of a woman in a public toilet in Seoul. The murderer, who said he did it because women “have always ignored” him, was not charged with hate crime.

The #MeToo movement in 2018 added strength to feminist organizing in the country and the burgeoning “Escape the Corset” movement. The emerging resistance stressed upon women breaking away from societal expectations of wearing makeup, donning “feminine” clothes, and not pandering to the male gaze.

Per the World Inequality Database, South Korea “is characterized with relatively higher gender inequality and lower old-age income shares compared to the United States and France.”

“South Korean women have increasingly joined the workforce in recent years. Despite the rise of the female labor force participation rate, it is still far below the average of the member countries of the Organization for Economic cooperation and Development (OECD). In addition, the difference in pay between men and women is, unfortunately, a prevailing trend across all occupations,” a gender pay gap survey on Statista.com reads.

Korean feminists have often cited wage inequality and women’s dependence on their higher-earning male partners as the main reason why more women haven’t been able to embrace 4B.

South Korea also has a low birthrate that dipped to 0.72 births per person in 2023. The cause, President Yoon Suk Yeol said, is feminism and women. Women, in response, have opposed being treated as mere childbearing machines.

The 4B movement gained traction over social media and group chats. It resulted in many women cutting their hair short, wearing androgynous clothes, and refusing to wear makeup. Against the global demand for Korean beauty products, which was worth an estimated USD 91.99 billion in 2022, Korean women’s abstaining from beauty products is a stand against patriarchal beauty standards but also an economic boycott which manifested itself in several videos of young women breaking their makeup products on social media.

The Cut reports that around 2014 and 2015, Ilbe, “a virulently misogynistic and antifeminist community” grew to prominence in South Korea. Its members demonized women for asking for too much when demanding equality with men. “To the Ilbe community, the entire female populace is gold-digging and shallow,” the Cut’s Anna Louie Sussman writes.

Young South Korean women who follow the 4B movement, have reported higher incidences of violence directed at women with short hair. The Cut article speaks to women who are worried of being photographed and doxed.

TikTok user Lebabob has posted a video explaining the expansion of the movement to 7B now; adding refusal to do emotional labor for men, building solidarity among 4B movement members, and boycotting products with pink tax and misogynist taglines. Other users have devised ways in which married women can help the movement.

With more young American men voting for Trump, women are viewing the adoption of 4B somewhat as a sex strike à la Aristophanes’ ancient Greek comedy Lysistrata, where women withheld sex from their husbands, in an effort to end the Peloponnesian War. The assumption is that these men agree with Trump’s views on abortions and therefore should be denied sexual and emotional relationships, as a punishment.

Some American women on TikTok, dismayed with Trump’s reelection, have taken to shaving their heads on social media videos, while some have claimed to have embraced the movement since the overturning of Roe v. Wade. “It’s the best thing I have ever done for my mental health,” TikToker Ashli P said of her decision to cut men out of her life completely. The “no men movement,” has drawn criticism from more conservative women who have used TikTok to express their joy at bearing more children and raising them as Republicans to compensate.