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After former President Donald Trump won the 2024 presidential election, defeating Vice President Kamala Harris, searches for the feminist 4B movement spiked on social media platforms.
4B originated in South Korea around 2019, encouraging women to refuse to date, have sex with, and partner with men.
Google searches for the 4B movement rose steadily on Wednesday in the US. Meanwhile, some American women took to social media platforms to post about it — with one TikTok reaching millions of views as of Wednesday evening.
On social media, users are pointing to the overturning of Roe v. Wade and the sexual assault allegations against Trump as motivations for wanting to abstain from sex and relationships with straight men.
"Ladies, we need to start considering the 4B movement like the women in South Korea and give America a severely sharp birth rate decline," an X user said in a message that had been viewed more than 8 million times as of Wednesday evening. The user added, "We need to bite back."
"The women in south korea are doing it," another X user wrote in message that's been viewed more than a million times. "it's time we join them. men will NOT be rewarded, nor have access to our bodies."
4B was partly influenced by the #MeToo movement, in which many women, particularly in Hollywood, spoke up against sexual misconduct. The #MeToo movement, created by activist Tarana Burke, originated in the US in 2017 and spread to South Korea a year later.
"Bi" is short for "no" in Korean, and the 4B movement stands for four "no's" when it comes to heterosexual women's interactions with straight men:
It also drew inspiration from South Korea's 2018 "Escape the Corset" wave, in which 300,0000 women campaigned to defy beauty standards. It led to a drop in K-beauty sales.
4B was first coined when the South Korean government published a map identifying how many fertile women lived in each district, The Cut reported. It was part of a campaign to combat tumbling fertility rates.
South Korea has one of the lowest birth rates in the world. The South Korean government has tried to increase incentives for young people to start families, from paying new parents to offering money in exchange for vasectomy reversals.
Women responded to the map by holding protests and carrying banners that said, "My womb is not a national public good."
Since the start of 4B, some South Korean women have envisioned a future without men entirely. Taekyung, a woman interviewed in The Cut, said she practices "political lesbianism": She doesn't date women but chooses to be in all-female spaces as much as possible, such as attending an all women's university.
Given its online nature, it is impossible to quantify how widespread or impactful the 4B campaign has been. Still, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol recently blamed feminism for the country's low birth rate, though experts say there are other more impactful reasons, such as a high cost of living, a demanding work culture, and a lack of childcare support from men.
The recent buzz over the 4B movement echoes #celibacyjourney, a US TikTok trend that has been bubbling up for over a year, garnering millions of views. Creators — mainly young women — post about abstaining from sex with men, with some saying they feel undervalued by men.
It is trending in the US in the wake of an election that centered gender roles, and masculinity in particular. Trump's campaign focused on attracting young male voters. His super PAC ads targeted young men, he appeared on Joe Rogan's podcast, and "Macho Man" was played at his rallies.
Some people posting about the 4B movement in the US this week describe themselves as Harris voters, angered by issues such as the loss of reproductive rights and the sexual assault allegations against Trump.
One TikTok that amassed more than 8.8 million views by Thursday morning had the national anthem playing in the background, with the words: "Doing my part as an American woman by breaking up with my republican boyfriend last night & officially joining the 4b movement this morning."
