A feminist campaign has emerged on-line in a daring response to Donald Trump’s election and the rollback of reproductive rights in the united statesand it is taking inspiration from South Korea’s radical “4B” motion.
It is a motion born from anger, frustration, and a deep sense of betrayal prompting girls to say “no” to all the things regarding males: intercourse, marriage, childbirth, and relationship. This refusal to interact with a male populace set on taking away girls’s bodily autonomy is a political assertion and demand for equality that refuses to be ignored.
“No matter how loud, how kind, how respectful, how cute, men will still fucking hate you,” mentioned a TikTok consumer in a compilation video displaying girls on-line getting ready to stick to 4B in America.
And why are American girls taking motion? As a result of in Tuesday’s election, a majority of Gen Z males, or “podcast bros,” solid their votes for Trump—a person whose handpicked conservative Supreme Court docket majority stacked the deck in opposition to girls’s rights and overturned Roe v. Wade. The president-elect can also be a textbook misogynist who used sexist language within the weeks main as much as the election when he mentioned he’d “protect” girls “whether they like it or not.” He’s a serial adulterer who was additionally discovered answerable for sexual abuse and has been accused of assault by dozens of others—and American girls have had sufficient.
With mounting solidarity, they’re banding collectively (with some even shaving their heads in protest in order to not attraction to the male gaze) to undertake the 4B technique: no extra youngsters, no extra marriages, no extra relationship males till girls’s rights are restored.
Late on Election Day, when it was clear Trump had gained his newest bid for president, 26-year-old white nationalist Nick Fuentes posted a brief and infuriating assertion on X: “Your body, my choice. Forever.”
Fuentes, who dined with Trump at Mar-a-Lago, later went on his present “America First” and mentioned to his 113,000 followers, “Hey bitch! We control your bodies. Guess what? Guys win again, okay? Men win again.”
This comes after reviews by ProPublica of girls like Amber Thurman and Josseli Barnica dying preventable deaths resulting from being turned away from hospitals in states with abortion bans.
On TikTok, girls have been airing their rage, grief, and disappointment in highly effective waves of shared emotion. Inside 48 hours after Trump’s victory over Vice President Kamala Harris, the “4B movement” hashtag began trending. Ladies becoming a member of the motion refuse to let their our bodies be used as bargaining chips in a patriarchal society.
This second is not nearly a lack of rights: It is a reclamation of energy.
American girls taking cues from South Korea
TikToker Mrs. Sallee shared her uncooked emotions with followers, her voice trembling with emotion.
“I just looked up what the 4B movement is, and I literally fell to the ground crying,” she mentioned. “I cannot believe that that was something that had to be done and that now we’re at rock bottom, and this is where we are at. I feel like I’m living in a different world today. This is so heartbreaking.”
Social media influencer Drew Afualo, identified for her daring feminist takes, weighed in on South Korea’s 4B marketing campaign throughout an interview on the podcast “Soul Boom” with actor Rainn Wilson.
“It turns out women are a lot more essential than you would think, than men believe them to be, because now the government is panicking,” she mentioned. “They’re like, ‘What are we gonna do? We’re gonna die out unless women decide to start having kids again!’ And women are refusing until they are awarded the exact same rights and respect that men are awarded in this society.”
Though a intercourse strike is novel within the U.S., Carrie Reiling, assistant professor of political science at Washington School, mentioned it’s “part of a long history of sex strikes to achieve a particular political goal.”
“What is different about the 4B movement is the inclusion of not dating men, rather than simple refusal to have sex with men, which was the focus of many of the other movements,” Reiling mentioned.
“The question for these women is if their goal is concrete enough to achieve anything. Will the connection between saying ‘no’ to men and their political aims be clear enough?” she requested. “While a 4B movement might draw attention and jumpstart a conversation about new feminist activist goals, women joining such a movement should ensure that their anger is not just toward men. They should also ask what compels women to vote this way and if a 4B movement can lead to progress on this front as well.”
An epidemic of lonely—and violent—males
Lengthy earlier than “podcast bros,” the conservative male digital sphere had coined language for the way males see themselves and the way they relate to girls.
The time period “incel” took flight in 2016, changing into the favored identifier for chronically on-line younger males on the far-right who frequented message boards and platforms like Reddit, 4chan, and Twitter. The time period is brief for “involuntary celibate,” which means males who don’t select to be celibate however are compelled to as a result of girls gained’t date or sleep with them. Different stereotypes like “Chads” (fashionable males who get plenty of feminine consideration) and “Stacys” (unattainable girls who solely date Chads) emerged out of this era.
Incels have since been linked to mass violence and terrorism. Fuentes is the evolution of the incels, now unafraid of voicing their abhorrent, sexist views as a result of they really feel emboldened by the nation’s newly elected leaders.
In 2017, Surgeon Common Vivek Murthy wrote about an American “loneliness epidemic” within the Harvard Enterprise Assessment. Later, Boston Globe columnist Billy Baker wrote the guide, “We Need to Hang Out,” on male loneliness. In 2023, a New York Instances article urged younger folks underneath 30 to “have more sex” as they have been probably the most sexless era in U.S. historical past. An NPR piece walked males by way of the best way to make associates.
The upshot: Males are lonely—and this has made them susceptible to changing into radicalized.
This all factors to a disconnected, lonely, and socially awkward era of Gen Z and millennial males who discover Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance’s simplistic masculinity and alpha male posturing interesting. Harris’ working mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, tried to attraction to this group by displaying a extra advanced model of masculinity, with little success.
Whereas girls are simply as more likely to battle with loneliness, they’re used to preventing to search out their place in a world that wishes to form them into their model of acceptable. As a result of girls know the best way to construct neighborhood for his or her well-being and survival, they’re constructed for occasions like these.
In one other highly effective present of solidarity, “blue bracelet” began trending on TikTok. White girls are working to craft shops to make and put on blue friendship bracelets, distinguishing themselves from Trump-supporting MAGA girls to sign their help to girls of coloration. It is a transfer grounded in the true threat of being recognized as maybe a “fellow traveler” in a local weather that’s more and more hostile and unsafe to marginalized teams. For a lot of, these bracelets are greater than only a image: They’re a lifeline.
“I think many women are at a loss for what to do, and are absolutely dismayed and betrayed by men who chose their wallet, or who knows what, over a women’s right to choose,” mentioned Samantha Karlin, founding father of Empower International.
Karlin has spearheaded a feminine management workshop in Washington, D.C.
“I teach a concept called the locus of control—many things are outside of your control that can give you anxiety—and the election results certainly are causing many women to feel completely out of control,” she mentioned. “Choosing to abstain from sex, dating, marriage—those are all things an individual can control, even if the country voted for a sexual predator, canned three abortion resolutions, and decided, again, a woman shouldn’t be president.”
The 4B and blue bracelet actions aren’t about what girls are withholding, however what they’re demanding—like security, equality, and respect. And if the respect isn’t willingly given, girls will emulate the numerous political actions that got here earlier than and mobilize to create it for themselves.
Marketing campaign Motion
