The 2024 Election saw women’s safety and their bodies on the ballot. With President-elect Donald Trump’s unfortunate landslide victory, South Korea’s 4B movement is seeming appealing to some American women.
South Korea’s 4B movement gained popularity in 2019 following a string of violence against women in the country.
South Korean researchers have defined the movement as “encompass[ing] not only criticisms of the pro-natalist turn in state policy and protests against it, but also various forms of self-help discussions and practices that are explicitly oriented towards women’s individual futures.”
The movement sees women refusing heterosexual relationships, marriage and childbirth.
In the U.S., Google searches for the 4B movement skyrocketed on Nov. 6, after Trump’s win. Women in America almost immediately took to social media after the results of the election were confirmed, saying that they were swearing off men and inviting others to join them.
User @rabbitsandtea posted a TikTok on Wednesday, Nov. 6, following election day, saying she would join the 4B movement: “Doing my part as an American woman by breaking up with my Republican boyfriend last night,” she wrote, adding “& officially joining the 4B movement this morning.”
I would love to see women band together with the 4B movement, especially after this devastating election that demonstrated a clear disregard for our rights from the majority of our country; however, I don’t think this is the way women will continue to protest in the U.S.
Sure, the results of this election will change the way left-leaning women view and interact with the men in their lives for at least the next four years, if not forever. However, I think that America is so structured around the patriarchy and we are so affected by the coming and going of trends on social media, that not enough women will separate themselves from the men in their lives or keep enough interest in the movement to make an actual impact.
I’m not trying to negate the impact or importance of the 4B movement in South Korea or the choices of the American women choosing to take part, I just think it will take an extensive amount of participation and a significant amount of effort to get our voices heard through a movement like 4B in the states.
In a New York Times article going in-depth about how the 4B movement might translate in American politics and activism, Marie Solis talks about heteropessimism — quoting Asa Seresin, a gender and sexuality scholar — to define it as “performative disaffiliations with heterosexuality, usually expressed in the form of regret, embarrassment, or hopelessness about straight experience.”
Noting that this type of activism can be seen as performative is just another reason I feel like this movement wouldn’t have an impact on America.
This does not mean that we couldn’t do something similar to 4B — true impact starts with community organizing. Women — and everyone for that matter — need to band together, share ideas and create support to push back against individualism to build a community. It’s important for us to talk about the issues affecting us so that they get addressed.
Kami Rieck, in an opinion piece for the New York Times, notes that there are more effective and sustainable ways for women to protest. Rieck also says that sex strikes hardly work.
“In response to rising gender inequality, women should harness their political and economic power to demand change rather than limit ourselves to our sexual power,” said Rieck. “We would be best served by rejecting unequal household duties, engaging in a consumer strike or boycotting discriminatory companies.”
jhammer@ramapo.edu
Featured photo courtesy of @Chelsi_Peter, Pexels
