Feminism’s sex strike: How the 4B movement is spreading

Christine Ivans says it was tough when she first swore off men. She was 30 and had decided to reassess her priorities: What if she invested all of her energy into herself instead of into trying to find the “right” man? 
A few months passed. Then a few years. “I am happy. I got a promotion, a raise, and my mental health improved,” Christine says some eight years later.
But it wasn’t until a few years ago, when she discovered the 4B movement on TikTok, that she realized she was not alone.
“The four ‘no’s’,” she explains, are: no marriage, no children, no dates or sexual relationships with men — all of which I have been practicing for a while.”
The 4B movement, which emerged in South Korea in the mid 2010s, gradually made it to American social media feeds.
Earlier this year, US actress Julia Fox declared her abstinence in response to the overturning of Roe v. Wade — the 1973 Supreme Court case that established the constitutional right to abortion in the US. In 2022, the Supreme Court overturned Roe, thereby eliminaing the constitutional right to abortion.
“I felt like if they were going to take away the rights to our bodies, this is my way of taking them back,” she said in a May episode of the Zach Sang Show podcast.
But after November’s US elections, the 4B movement went viral. Within the first five days, Google searches hit half a million. On TikTok, thousands of women share their abstinence journeys, or shave their heads on camera — short hair is mark of distinction among 4B activists. 
Mingyeong Lee, a feminist South Korean author who has been a member of the movement since its foundation, is happy to see 4B’s profile suddenly rising so fast. “I have been waiting for this to happen. It took eight years to reach you guys,” she tells DW. 
Mingyeong sees similarities between the struggles for women’s rights in the US and South Korea.
“Eight years ago, we found out that our friends, fathers, or others close to us, didn’t share our perspective on gender issues,” she explains. 
The 4B pioneer is referring to the Gagnam Station femicide — in which a man killed a woman in the restroom of a Seoul karaoke bar and later testified he did it because she had ignored him all his life.
The murder set off a new wave of feminism in South Korea, led by young women decrying the country’s misogyny problem — online and in the streets.
The femicide was the straw that broke the camel’s back, with 4B activists like Mingyeong resisting a deep-seated patriarchal culture.
Widespread violence and harassment of women regularly includes spy-cams in public bathrooms, digital sex crimes and ongoing sexism in the workplace. In 2019, nine-of-ten victims of violent crimes like mugging, rape or murder were women, according to South Korea’s Supreme Prosecutors’ Office.
The new feminist movement has seen young women building solidarity through resistance. But it was also faced a backlash. 
“Women who wear short hair were labeled as mentally ill, harassed and even physically assaulted, because they look like feminists,” says Seohee Lee, a South Korean student and 4B activist. 
Still, Seohee says that the movement isn’t about revenge but about creating safety and a community for women.
“Korean women are resisting the threats of patriarchy in a quiet yet highly effective way,” she tells DW.
Author Mingyeong Lee is 32 years old. Not long ago, she was preparing to marry a man — because of the social pressure, she tells DW. Today, she identifies as a lesbian. Like many other 4B activists, she discovered her queer side on her 4B journey.
Mingyeong doesn’t want children. She was born at a time when the abortion of female fetuses was still popular in South Korea, even though South Korea enacted a law in 1988 that prohibited doctors from revealing a fetuses’ gender. 
Still, South Korea today has the lowest birth-rate in the world — a development its president Yoon Suk-Yeol blames on feminism.
With Korean women at the wrong end of the highest gender-pay gap among OECD countries and, according to the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, shouldering most of the care work, it’s no wonder many don’t want to have babies, Mingyeong says.
“This is a cruel place for women,” she explains. “If we give birth to girls, they’ll be neither safe nor happy.” 
Christine Ivans lives on the other side of the Pacific Ocean, 8,000 kilometers (4,971 miles) away in Seattle, Washington. She doesn’t want children either.
Like Mingyeong and Seohee, Christine came to realize that very few of the men in her life shared her regard for women’s rights.
One of the many who didn’t was her father. 
Despite having almost lost his wife due to a high-risk pregnancy, she says he voted for Donald Trump.
During his first term in office, Trump nominated three of the Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn Roe. Trump called the ensuing restrictions on abortion “a beautiful thing to watch.”
The idea of becoming pregnant and not having access to a safe abortion terrifies Christine. “My father says he cares about women’s rights. But when it comes to voting, he says, ‘there are more important things,'” she tells DW. 
“So, at this point, when influencers are screaming slogans like ‘your body, my choice’ all over the internet, the next logical step is something like the 4B movement.” 
The comments Christine is referring to were uttered by far-right, white supremecist influencer Nick Fuentes just after Trump’s election win. They sparked outrage but are more than just words.
According to the National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey, two-out-of-ten women in the US are raped at some point in their lives, and almost half experience sexual violence other than rape. 
Having their rights and bodies attacked, women like Christine are drawing inspiration from South Korean feminists and their methods of resistance.
“Sex is a language that men understand,” Christine explains. “The 4B movement says: ‘Hey, I’m going to take this away until you’re listening.’ Not as a punishment, but as an attention-grabber.” 
Activist Seohee Lee is glad American women are embracing the 4B movement.
She wonders if they are experiencing what she felt when South Korea narrowly elected a president, Yoon Suk Yeol, whose anti-feminism campaign promised to abolish the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family. 
Seohee is not surprised that women in the US also face pushback for using abstinence to stand up for abortion rights.
She knows these attacks too well from her home country, where many women don’t dare identify as feminists.
“After all, I am a feminist whom men loathe and detest,” she says.
Edited by: Stuart Braun