Social media posts about and online interest in the South Korean “4B” feminist trend are surging as American women join the call for men to be shunned.
Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election has sparked interest among Americans in South Korea’s “4B” fringe feminist movement, which urges women not to date, marry, sleep with, or have children with men.
Across Instagram, TikTok and X, American women have been sharing 4B’s tenets — “bihon” (no marriage with men), “biyeonae” (no dating), “bichulsan” (no giving birth) and “bisekseu” (no sex with men) — and calling for the movement to take off in the US. Many of the videos about 4B posted on TikTok have gone viral, gaining millions of views.
“Doing my part as an American woman by breaking up with my Republican boyfriend last night and officially joining the 4B movement this morning,” said one user on X.
On Wednesday, when Trump’s win was confirmed, Google searches for 4B soared by 450%, with more than 200,000 people looking up the movement. It was one of the search engine’s top trending topics, and most of the interest came from US users.
The surge in interest in 4B reflects concern among women in the US about the risk of a rollback of female freedoms and reproductive rights under Trump as president.
The 4B trend is said to have started in South Korea following the country’s #MeToo movement in 2018. There was widespread anger and national protests in the East Asian nation against the spycam epidemic: the use of tiny, hidden cameras to film victims naked, urinating or mid-sex.
The 4B movement — which is reportedly practised by a few thousand women in South Korea — takes aim at the country’s deeply conservative and patriarchal culture and highlights issues from violence against women to the gender wage gap. South Korea ranks 94th out of 146 nations in the World Economic Forum’s global gender gap index.
The US presidential election had been characterised in some quarters as a referendum on women’s rights in the country.
A key pillar of Democratic challenger and Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign was her support for access to abortion and a warning that Trump would further erode such rights. The US Supreme Court’s decision in 2022 to overturn the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling — a result that Trump took credit for — ended the constitutional right to abortion and fuelled a series of restrictive laws in Republican-controlled states.
In the US elections this week, 10 states held votes on whether or not to expand abortion rights. Seven states voted in favour, while three states — Florida, Nebraska and South Dakota — rejected the measures, representing the first wins for US anti-abortion advocates since the Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling. Abortion rights activists have said they fear the Trump administration will reduce access to reproductive rights and services.
Despite the pre-election debates and focus on abortion from the Democrats, the issue was not as prominent among voters as anticipated by the Harris campaign. An Edison Research exit poll found that 14% of voters viewed abortion as their main election issue, compared to 34% who cited the state of democracy and 32% who said the economy.
Furthermore, while Harris had the lead among women voters with 53% of female votes compared to Trump’s 46%, her margin was ultimately narrower than President Joe Biden’s 55% share when he won the 2020 election.
