Following Donald Trump’s re-election to the presidency, fears about the rise of male supremacist ideologies and the rollback of reproductive rights have driven an interest in radical alternatives.
A feminist movement known as “4B” is centered on four core tenets—no sex with men, no having children with men, no dating men and no marriage with men. 4B represents a rejection of heterosexual relationships as a means of resisting patriarchal structures.
The movement emerged in South Korean feminist circles on Twitter in 2016 following a widely publicized femicide in a Gangnam station restroom that sparked online outrage about the treatment of women in South Korea. 4B emerged as a radical outlier in the backdrop of the larger Me Too movement happening around the world, which prompted a widespread conversation about misogyny, sexual harassment and patriarchal abuses of power on social media platforms like Twitter (now X).
At its peak, the movement amassed around 4,000 members in South Korea. However, the extremist nature of the movement has proved to be polarizing for the country. 4B was met with a surge in anti-feminist sentiment in South Korea, with many men associating feminism with its most extreme measures of misandry, which further entrenched social divisions.
This societal divide was evident in the 2022 election of President Yoon Suk Yeol, whose anti-feminist platform—which included promises to abolish the Ministry of Gender Equality— appealed to male voters. In response to growing hostility towards feminist sentiment, Korean women have begun to practice quiet feminism, opting for less extreme forms of advocacy to avoid societal ostracization and potential violence.
While it is still too early to tell how popular the 4B movement will become in the U.S., the current climate of uncertainty has made its ideology increasingly palatable to American women. The movement’s message recently regained traction on social media, with posts on platforms like X and TikTok going viral and Google searches for the term skyrocketing following the election.
Even if the 4B movement loses steam in the U.S. as it did in South Korea, the anger that fueled the movement’s inception, and its advocacy for bodily autonomy deeply resonate with American women and could potentially leave a major impact on American politics and society.