Millions of women are hurt by Donald Trump’s victory in the 2024 presidential election in America.
Thousands of American women are joining the ‘4B Movement’ considering it to be men’s fault.
Under this movement, they are refusing to have sex, relationships, marriage and having children, so that it can be a way of protest and a sign of revenge. This movement originally started in South Korea and has now become increasingly discussed in the US after Trump’s victory.
In the campaign of Democratic Party candidate Kamala Harris, Trump was described as anti-feminist, due to which many women expected Trump’s defeat.
Now, many American women are taking to social media, disappointed and emotional over Trump’s victory, and announcing their involvement in the 4B movement.
The name of this movement is taken from the Korean word “bi”, which is used as a symbol of negativity. This movement emerged in South Korea after movements like #MeToo and ‘Escape the Corset’, which led to significant changes in the society there.
It developed in South Korean feminist circles and on social media during the mid-to-late 2010s wave of violence against women in the country and in protest against gender discrimination and other manifestations of inequality in South Korean society. 4B is an acronym for four words that start with “bi,” which means “not” in Korean.
The “4Bs” include four key things:
Beihong (Birthing): The decision not to have children.
Bihon (Marriage): Decision not to marry.
Dating: The decision not to date.
Bisex: Decision not to have physical relations.
Women are fed up with the scale of male violence in South Korean society. A report published in 2018 showed that over the past nine years, at least 824 women in South Korea were murdered and 602 were at risk of death due to violence at the hands of their intimate partners.
But there are also economic factors. According to data from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), South Korean men earn an average of 31.2 percent more than women.
South Korean society is also quite conservative when it comes to families. Ayo Wahlberg, a professor in the department of anthropology at the University of Copenhagen, told Al Jazeera that responsibility for child care and household chores, as well as caring for the elderly, generally falls on women.
But, with rising inflation, women have no option but to work outside the home, which means their responsibilities have doubled.
According to the report, the impact of this movement in South Korea was so great that in 2021, President Yoon Suk-yeol called it “an obstacle to healthy relationships between men and women.” This movement also affected the birth rate in Korea, which is a matter of concern.
Now American women are joining the movement, especially those who were hoping that Kamala Harris’s victory would protect their reproductive rights.
But after Trump’s victory, women are becoming aware of their rights and freedom and moving towards 4B Movement.
In the 4B movement they have vowed not to have sex, not to have relationships, not to marry and not to have children as a form of revenge and protest.
“Women are beginning to think that the government and men are failing them,” Mira Choi, a sociology PhD candidate at Yale University, told NBC.
The idea behind this movement is that women should have the power to decide about their bodies. However, this movement is also being criticized on social media.
In South Korea, this movement gave women the opportunity to break away from traditional beauty norms and gender-based societal expectations.
In the first phase of the movement, women kept their hair short and wore simple clothes without adornment, as part of the Escape the Corset Movement, to protest the norms of patriarchal society.
Now the inclination towards this movement is being seen among American women also. However, it remains to be seen what impact this movement has on American society and whether it can bring about the same social and cultural changes there as it did in South Korea.
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