The result of the 2024 US election was a slap in the face for women.
When millions of people vote for a misogynist and an alleged rapist over a woman, you understand why. And yes, gender had a lot to do with the outcome of the election.
The result was especially hurtful for women from marginalised communities – Black, Latinx, migrant, LGBTQIA+ women and women with disability. It was these groups of women that largely voted for Vice President Kamala Harris: in fact, according to exit polls, more than 90 per cent of Black women voted for the Democratic nominee.
It’s also these women who are disproportionately impacted by rape and sexual assault, and who rely on abortion and reproductive healthcare at higher rates than their straight, white, able-bodied counterparts.
Women’s reproductive rights was a huge point of contention between Harris and Donald Trump, and the majority of the US voting for Donald Trump sent a very clear message to women: that their rights do not matter.
So women are starting to send a very clear message back.
A movement originating in South Korea called the 4B movement is making headway in the US. It is grounded on four key principles: bihon (no marriage), bichulsan (no childbirth), biyeonae (no dating) and bisekseu (no sex).
Women in the US are adopting this movement, some taking it further by doing other things, including shaving their heads.
The 4B movement is prolific on social media: a widely-shared post on X calling on women to “bite back” and “give America a severely sharp birth rate decline” has been shared more than 21,000 times, and viewed 21.3 million times.
“We can’t let these men have the last laugh,” the post reads.
On TikTok, thousands of women are pledging their support to the movement, with videos receiving millions of views.
The movement is even gaining traction in Australia: on Google Trends, you can see a huge spike in the number of people searching the 4B movement on Google.
It will perhaps be the most effective protest against president-elect Donald Trump to date.
Why? The 4B movement directly attacks men’s ego. And it is precisely ego that fuelled Donald Trump’s campaign.
Because it’s not just women posting on TikTok about the 4B movement: men are too. And they are not happy about it.
“This ‘4B movement’ is funny as hell… you really acting like anyone wanted you to begin with… I think you’ll be abstinent for a while,” one man wrote on TikTok.
“Men are not really loved by women… it’s only a time (sic) before they come for every single man,” another said in his video.
News flash: men are not the victims here. Plus – and this may come as a shock to some men – not everyone wants to sleep with you either!
Ego-bruising aside, women swearing off men altogether comes from a safety perspective as well. Analysis from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) found a particular spike in comments promoting gendered violence in the immediate aftermath of the US election. In the 24 hours after the election was called in Trump’s favour, there was a 4,600 per cent increase in posts on X that used the terms “your body, my choice”, a subversion of the pro-abortion phrase “my body, my choice”.
Since the 4B movement emerged in South Korea in the mid-to-late 2010s, the nation now has one of the lowest birth rates in the world. The South Korean government views the low birth rates as a national crisis.
Women adopting the 4B lifestyle could have similar implications in the US, and that could be problematic for Trump, the man who promised the men of America to restore traditional family values (read: oppression of women), and acted as a saviour of masculinity and real-man mentality.
There are legitimate drawbacks to the Americanised version of the 4B movement, however. On TikTok, white women are dominating the conversation on the 4B movement in the US. In many ways, this undermines the feminists in South Korea who started it, and who face extreme inequality when it comes to the gender wage gap, social mobility, sexual assault, and femicide. Especially as exit polls show 53 per cent of white women voted for Donald Trump.
But a Trump presidency poses very real threats to women’s safety and equality in the US, particularly marginalised women. America’s version of the 4B movement must always highlight that.
Time will tell of the effectiveness of the 4B movement in the US. Who knows, it might even take off in Australia. I just hope men understand why.