The 4B Movement grows in popularity: Why US women are swearing off men – The Front Page

Women in the US are choosing celibacy after Trump's win.

Some women in the United States are vowing off men as Donald Trump’s re-election victory sparked an uptick in hate towards women online.

The decision to be celibate was influenced by the “4B movement”, a feminist movement in South Korea in the mid to late 2010s.

It came about at a time when the country was grappling with violence against women and other gender equality issues – something that’s rung true with American voters who felt the latest election was akin to a referendum on women’s rights.

Since Trump’s victory, online vitriol against women has reportedly skyrocketed. Posts calling for the repeal of the 19th Amendment, which gives women the right to vote, surged by 663% on X in just one week.

The backlash has spurred interest in the 4B movement, which attempts to correct the gender imbalance by refusing to marry, have children, date, or have sex with men.

Young women across social media are sharing information about the movement as a reaction to many of their male counterparts voting for a candidate who was found liable for sexual abuse and whose appointment of three conservative Supreme Court justices led to the overturning of national abortion rights protections.

While New Zealand may seem too far afield to feel the effects of such a trend, University of Otago PhD candidate Rachel Billington said that is not the case.

She has researched how young people interact with each other online and told The Front Page that New Zealand is a part of the global community online.

“We certainly may well be affected by these kinds of narratives, particularly when we know that our young boys in schools and young men here, like many places across the world, are seeing content made by misogynistic influencers on TikTok, Instagram, and X based on their demographics.

“Whether they choose to or not, this content ends up in their social media feeds and becomes normalised. They start to absorb these ideas that are being shared with them and that’s definitely the case in New Zealand,” she said.

Amnesty International figures already show that in New Zealand around one in three women surveyed said they had experienced online abuse and harassment.

Recently, a male white nationalist influencer and Holocaust denier’s social media post – where he coined the phrase ‘Your body, my choice’ –- went viral and fuelled some of this 4B discussion.

At least one American school district has warned parents about the video.

“In the days after the election, we have received reports of some students using the phrase, ‘Your body, my choice,’ often directed at female students,” the superintendent of Stevens Point School District in Wisconsin wrote.

Billington said this shows there is a real chance insults targeted at women online can easily translate to the real world.

“There is that fear. Even if they’re bringing it into school, work, or university as a joke, jokes can change the atmosphere of a place, making people feel less safe and making others feel more emboldened to express potentially more extreme views.

“It normalises the sense that these are actually fine things to think and express... They have a way of becoming more insidious the more they are said,” she said.

Listen to the full episode for more on the 4B Movement, and how young men and women are interacting online.

The Front Page is a daily news podcast from the New Zealand Herald, available to listen to every weekday from 5am. The podcast is presented by Chelsea Daniels, an Auckland-based journalist with a background in world news and crime/justice reporting who joined NZME in 2016.

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