When women go on strike, everything comes to a standstill. All the care work is left behind, the apartment is not cleaned, the education and care system collapses. But what happens when women don't strike at work, but men do? No sex with men. No dating men. No heterosexual marriage. No children. That sounds radical.
But it's understandable that women are mad at men right now and don't feel like paying attention to them anymore. After all, the majority of them voted for Trump and thereby accepted that women will soon be living in a country ruled by a sexist - and in which basic women's rights such as the right to abortion are increasingly being restricted.
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Since Donald Trump won the US election, more and more women in the US have joined the 4B movement. Thousands of videos have already been shared on social media with the hashtag #4bmovement. In their videos, the followers explain that they want to turn away from straight men completely: stop looking at them, stop talking to them, stop laughing at their jokes.
Some women even consider having their uterus removed in protest. Their stated goal: Through “deprivation” they want to get men to take women and their rights seriously.
Where does the 4B movement come from?
The 4B Movement has its origins in South Korea. The trigger was an incident in 2016 when a man murdered a strange woman in the South Korean capital Seoul. The reason he gave was that he felt ignored by women and that's why he killed the first woman he saw. This case has sparked a debate about misogyny. In South Korean society, women are also discriminated against and experience violence.
Even though the country is technologically very advanced, the social role of women in South Korea is about the same as in Germany in the 1960s. For example, the gender pay gap in South Korea is around 30 percent and eight out of ten women have been sexually harassed at work. The women in South Korea didn't want to put up with this anymore. Through their protest they wanted to make men rethink their role in the patriarchy. The 4B movement was born.
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According to estimates, between 5,000 and 50,000 women belong to the movement. In Korean, all of the planned measures begin with b: “bihon” means “no to heterosexual marriage”, “bichulsan” stands for “no to childbirth”, “biyeonae” means “no to dating heterosexual men” and “bisekseu” is Korean for “No to sex with straight men.”
In recent years, the 4B movement has no longer played a major role in South Korea. But after Trump's election, the movement spilled over into the United States. A week after Donald Trump was elected as the new president of the United States, a TikTok creator named Maria B. (@girl_dumphim) said on the platform: “Delete the (dating) apps, cancel your wedding, get sterilized.” Her Video has been viewed more than four million times.
Does the 4B movement make sense?
Anyone who says that men helped Trump to power and therefore should be ignored is making it pretty easy for themselves. It is true that the majority of men, 55 percent, voted for Donald Trump in the US election on November 5, 2024. However, among women it was also 45 percent. And that's where we come to the problem: sexism and misogyny doesn't just come from men, but runs through our entire society.
Of course, it's understandable that women don't want to date Trump supporters - and if you exclude them, the choice is pretty limited. Of course, it is also tempting to no longer play by the rules that men have imposed on us for centuries, but by our own. But the question is also: Is it really the right way if we no longer fight the patriarchy but simply ignore it?
