What are the South Korean origins of the feminist 4B movement rising in the United States?
Some women in South Korea are rejecting relationships with men — a movement that is gaining interest in the United States.
American women are pledging sex strikes and rejecting relationships with men — as well as motherhood and marriage — in what's known as the 4B movement.
The surge of interest in the movement comes in the wake of online misogyny from male commentators emboldened by Donald Trump's election win.
But the 4B movement has its roots in South Korea, where an online community of women has been rejecting traditional gender roles for years.
Here's why some women are adopting a radical way of life — without men.
What are the four Bs?
The four Bs stand for the Korean word "bi", which means "no".
The tenets of the movement are "biyeonae" (no dating), "bisekseu" (no sex), "bihon" (no marriage), and "bichulsan" (no childbirth).
Lee Min-gyeong, feminist author of Reclaim the Language, said women in Korea were traditionally expected to orient their lives around men.
"The 4B movement is about crying out that it is no [longer] possible to get in relations [with] a man, in any way," she said.
Feminist author Lee Min-gyeong says 4B is more than a 'sex strike' — it's a way of life.
The 4B movement, which emerged in the mid- to late-2010s, is closely related to other feminist trends in South Korea, such as the "Escape the Corset" movement — a rejection of restrictive beauty standards.
The simple act of shunning cosmetics can also be seen as a drastic act in South Korea, which is renowned for high rates of plastic surgery and elaborate 10-step skincare routines.
A potent mix of economic insecurity and systemic gender inequality created fertile ground for the movement to take root, according to Ming Gao, a researcher from the Australian Catholic University's Gender and Women's History Research Centre.
"Living an alternative life without men emerged as a radical strategy for young digital feminists to challenge the rigid patriarchy in South Korea," he wrote in The Conversation.
Lee and others trace one of 4B's galvanising moments to the shocking murder of a women in a train station bathroom in 2016.
"We were in despair … it is an urgency for us," she said.
"Now Trump is elected again … it is a similar emergency for women. So it is very natural, and I'm not surprised at all.
"I'd like to say, welcome to American women, to this new world."
Spy cams and pay gaps
Lee said there were two main factors pushing women to refuse the demands of the "heterosexual narrative".
Firstly, a "double-burden" placed on women across Asia to do the lion's share of domestic labour while also engaging in paid work; and secondly, the spy-cam epidemic, where women are filmed during sex and exploited — a trend which has evolved into AI-generated deepfake pornography.
Spy cams are regularly found in change rooms, bathrooms and hotel rooms in South Korea.
"Even with our boyfriends, they recorded our body image without our consent," Lee said.
"There's more anxiety than pleasure.
"I would say in Korea, the men who engage in the deep fake pornography is the same as the number of taxis in Seoul.
"It is not at all in extreme cases — it is very normal."
Femicide and intimate partner violence is also a concern in the country.
The Korea Times reported at least 138 women were killed by male partners last year, and a further 311 survived attempts on their lives by their intimate partners.
There were more than 57,000 cases of dating violence in 2021, according to the National Police Agency — tripling the previous year's figure.
The employment landscape is also difficult for working mothers in South Korea, which has recorded the worst gender pay gap 27 years in a row out of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries.
Korean women earn 68.8 cents to the dollar compared to men, according to 2022 data — the lowest in the OECD.
South Korea ranked last on the Economist's Glass Ceiling Index for 12 years running — an index that looks at salaries and childcare to gauge women's obstacles at work.
Korea also has the lowest birth rate in the world at 0.92, meaning that women are having less than one child on average.
That has alarmed politicians who fear the consequences of an aging population, but some strategies to address fertility rates have caused more anger.
As noted by Dr Gao, a "pink map" showing the number of women of reproductive age by district in the country sparked outrage, with some saying: "a woman is not a baby-making machine".
Backlash against 'female incels'
Much like in the US, 4B has faced significant backlash in Korea from politicians and male commentators online.
"They don't like the feminist movement because it has some power. So they like to label this movement as like a 'female incel movement'," Lee said.
Dr Gao said in the Korean context, feminism is often considered a "dirty" word.
Shim Haein, a women's rights activist and researcher at Stanford University's Clayman Institute for Gender Research, agreed.
"Openly identifying as a feminist in Korea can unfortunately expose individuals to serious cyberbullying, stalking, and harassment, with some activists even facing physical threats," she said.
Shim Haein says 4B women are highly organised and live happily.
Dr Gao told the ABC feminists in South Korea are often derogatorily referred to as "pemi-nyeon" (femi-b*tches).
Since 4B is seen as a radical form of feminism, "the backlash has been particularly intense", he said.
"Many critics see it as 'selfish', 'immature', or (showing) 'a lack of understanding about how the world works'."
Dr Gao pointed out that Democratic Party candidate Lee Seung-cheon vowed to bring in "measures to reject the 4B movement" during his campaign in 2020.
The movement has also been criticised for being "favourable to lesbians" — although Dr Gao said there was a lack of data to substantiate that claim.
What's the future of the movement?
Dr Gao said some scholars see 4B as less of a mass mobilisation movement and more of a lifestyle choice to do with individual expressions of resistance.
"It's been around for some years, but I wouldn't say it has ever been mainstream or widely recognised in South Korea," Dr Gao said.
"It remains a largely online phenomenon, practised by a small group of individuals whose numbers are difficult to determine."
Some estimates suggest there could be between 5,000 and 50,000 participants in 4B, but Dr Gao pointed out many were in their 20s and had not yet approached the life stages of marriage and childbirth.
"So far, we lack empirical data on how these choices evolve in later life stages, as the 4B is still relatively new," he said.
For Shim Haein, 4B is a sustainable lifestyle choice, but she said people might assume otherwise if they didn't fully understand the nature of the movement.
She said 4B women were mobilised and create petitions about sexual assault, domestic violence, and wrongful termination cases involving women, as well as attending public trials to show solidarity with survivors of gendered violence.
"Once women join the 4B community, many of them love the idea of living their daily lives with other women — playing sports, travelling, learning, loving, and simply existing together," she said.
"They don't have time for men."
Lee said while some referred to the movement as akin to a "sex strike" — where women boycott relationships with men until things improve — she said it was much more than that.
She likened it to veganism — while some vegans might take the view that eating meat would be permissible if animal cruelty stopped, for others, it was about redefining how humans interact with animals.
Similarly, she said 4B was about "redefining how we are meant to live without those four 'Nos'".
"Dating a man, finding my husband, waiting for a baby, and getting married. This is so over-represented in my life, so I want to get rid of them."
By：ABC(责任编辑：admin)
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