Profile: What is the 4B movement and why is it trending online?

What is it? The 4B movement originated in South Korea as a radical feminist statement to abstain from interactions with men due to the country’s patriarchal society.

And 4B means? 4B stands for the four “B”s or “Nos” in Korean. They are “bisekseu” (no sex with men); “biyeonae” (no dating men); “bihon” (no marrying men); and “bichulsan” (no having children).

Where did this idea come from? It’s actually a pretty old idea for women to abstain from contact with men as a way of whipping them into shape. Probably one of the oldest examples is from Aristophanes’ ancient Greek comedy play ‘Lysistrata’. Originally performed in 411 BC, it follows a group of Greek women who withhold sex from men to force them to end the Peloponnesian War.

How did the movement get started in South Korea? It all kicked off around 2016 with the Escape the Corset movement, a social media-led movement that saw South Korean women discussing the ways in which Korean society’s restrictive female standards contributed to a misogynistic society. The 4B movement gained even more momentum the year later when South Korean women started coming forward about the abused they’d faced as part of the #MeToo movement.

If the 4B movement is from 2016, why is it trending now? Donald Trump, obviously. After the results of the 2024 presidential elections became clear earlier this week, Google searches for the movement went up by 450%, with 200,000 people looking into it on Wednesday.

What’s the connection? President-elect Trump and the Republican Party have made it very clear how they feel about women’s rights. It’s due to the Trump-appointed Supreme Court Justices that Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022, making abortion no longer a federal right. Restricting women’s access to abortion across the country is a big part of his agenda. From a broader angle, Trump’s election legitimises a man who has been accused by many women of sexual assault and has been found liable for sexual abuse and paid $80 million (€74 million) in damages to a victim. What’s also become clear with the election results is that Trump’s attitude to women is reflected in many other US men. Whether that’s due to Trump’s influence directly or if his rise is the result of a shift in culture, young men are increasingly falling under the spell of misogynist influencers like Andrew Tate and Joe Rogan. One of the principal examples of the culture around Trump’s campaign victory has been a tweet on Wednesday by Jon Miller saying “women threatening sex strikes like LMAO as if you have a say” that currently has over 50 million views and 17,000 likes.

Will the 4B work? It depends what you mean by “work”. Is this going to be the end of all women having any interaction with men across the US? Absolutely not. There’s not even that big a discrepancy between the way women voted for the two candidates. 43% of women aged 18-44 voted for Trump. Perhaps more surprising, 53% of white women voted for him over 46% for Kamala Harris.

So it’s pointless? Not so fast. Widespread hetrosexual abstinence isn’t going to happen, sure. But that doesn’t mean the 4B movement won’t have an impact. If nothing else, that it’s taken over social media in a matter of days and articles like these are popping up show that the movement is having a cultural effect. A minority of women might actually uphold the tenets of the movement, but the majority of people discussing it are using it as a talking point to highlight the deeply ingrained misogyny in society. Even just the threat of the movement has driven many Trump fans into a tizzy. As more women register their discontent with the way men are acting, maybe it will drive some form of change.