By Kiersten Sipe

“Your body, my choice” is a chant that circulated on social media following Donald Trump's victory in the 2024 election. One of Trump’s most prominent online supporters, Nick Fuentes made the statement. Fuentes's speech infuriated women across the country. Such a chant made many women genuinely feel as if America was moving “backward,” returning to a society that has proven to be thoroughly anti-woman. To maintain their power amid the fear of losing it within the next four years, many women are turning to a movement coined by South Korean women in the mid-to-late 2010s: The 4B Movement.

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 The 4B movement started as a reaction to the oppressive culture for women in South Korea. South Korean women were facing high rates of murder, rape, and other sex crimes, and domestic violence. Because the most likely place for a woman to be raped, killed, or assaulted is with men she knows. The 4B Movement aimed to keep women safe while also decentering men in their lives, combatting beauty standards, and fighting for women to be seen not as vessels for reproduction, sex, or violence, but as human people. 

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 The 4B movement consists of four lifestyle rules for women participating to follow: no dating men, no sex with men, no marriage to men, and no having children with men. Those rules not only kept women safe from their largest threats but also made a serious statement to men that they would no longer tolerate their abuse and would no longer center men in their lives. The 4B Movement aims to make women's lives fully about themselves, separate them from oppressive systems, and keep them safe. As much as 4B is a protest against male violence, it is also a lifestyle meant to improve women's quality of life. 

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 4B spreading to America has brought very mixed reactions from men and women alike. Many women have embraced the movement, while others have thought it was too drastic. Men of all political affiliations have opposed it. Men have thrown fits about the possibility of not having every woman available for sex and even flooded 4B women’s inboxes with rape threats. Criticism has been thrown around claiming the movement is transphobic, even though the movement is not a transphobic one. 

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The reactions to 4B have only further proven the necessity of such a movement. When women decide they’re no longer having sex because men are abusive and rape women, men decide to send rape threats to said women. When women say they no longer want to have children, men reduce them to reproductive beings made only for that. Rape culture has proven 4B to be incredibly valuable to women's liberation.

 Women, too, have been negating the benefits of 4B by contorting what being part of the movement means. The requirements for being in the 4B movement are to not date men, not have sex with men, not marry men, and not have children with men. If you don’t follow those guidelines, you cannot be a part of 4B. Many women are insisting they are taking part in 4B while not following the actual 4 Bs (also known as the four “no”s). 

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 4B can be a movement that brings about real social change, but only if those who participate in it truly abide by its rules. Watering down South Korean women's progress with 4B by not actually doing 4B will hinder its progress.