What is the 4B movement? South Korea movement popularizes in US amid Trump’s re-election

Donald Trump’s victory in the 2024 presidential election has prompted a range of responses, from Texans as well as a handful of America’s celebrities. Access to reproductive healthcare, and abortion especially, was a key issue for many voters this election cycle.

Now, references to a South Korean feminist movement are circling social media, as some fear what a second Trump term will mean for abortion access and women’s rights in general.

Trump aligns with ‘pro-life movement,’ with 3 exceptions

Trump has repeatedly emphasized his anti-abortion stance, and has even claimed credit for the overturn of Roe v. Wade in June 2022.

During the September debate between Trump and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, Trump said of Harris, “Her vice-presidential pick says abortion in the ninth month is absolutely fine.”

There is no record of Tim Walz saying this, though he did sign a bill that removed limits to abortion based on gestational duration.

Presidential debate fact check: Analyzing Trump, Harris on abortion, immigration, more

In a social media post last month, Trump again accused Democrats of supporting late-term abortions while also clarifying what he believes are necessary exceptions to an abortion ban. He has also stated he would not support a federal abortion ban and would instead maintain the states’ authority to regulate abortion access.

“LIKE RONALD REAGAN BEFORE ME, I FULLY SUPPORT THE THREE EXCEPTIONS FOR RAPE, INCEST, AND THE LIFE OF THE MOTHER,” Trump wrote on Oct. 1. “I DO NOT SUPPORT THE DEMOCRATS [sic] RADICAL POSITION OF LATE TERM ABORTION LIKE, AS AN EXAMPLE, IN THE 7TH, 8TH, OR 9TH MONTH OR, IN CASE THERE IS ANY QUESTION, THE POSSIBILITY OF EXECUTION OF THE BABY AFTER BIRTH.”

Upon Trump’s success in securing a second term as president, some left-leaning Americans have expressed anxiety and fear about the impact on women’s health. Some women are encouraging each other online to bring a South Korean feminist movement to the United States, in protest of Trump and other Republicans seeking to place more restrictions on abortion.

What is the 4B movement? What does it mean in the US in 2024?

Discussions of joining the 4B movement are becoming increasingly popular among women. But what exactly is the 4B movement?

Originating as a protest against misogyny and sexism in South Korea, the movement has four requirements for women who participate: No dating men, no marrying men, no sex with men and no childbirth. The 4B movement took off in the mid- to late-2010s, mostly spread by online discourse. It gained traction as young South Korean women were subjected to “instability of housing, digital sexual violence, economic disparities and cultural pressure,” according to The Conversation.

Self-identified 4B feminist Ashli Pollard told USA TODAY she was joined the movement two years ago, for nonpolitical reasons. She reports being happier as a single women as opposed to dating men. However, she says, the movement is now catching on among liberal women fed up with people who support policies that they believe put their rights in jeopardy.

“A lot of women don’t feel taken care of by the government in their homes in many different ways. We see Brock Turner getting let off. We see Brett Kavanaugh walking. We see Trump becoming president,” Pollard says. “And so there comes a time when women going through life start to notice all of these experiences, noticing all of these cultural moments, and feeling completely overlooked.”

Beyond its inherently political nature, the 4B movement is controversial for many reasons. For starters, political issues — even ones steeped in gender politics like abortion — don’t cleanly split along gender lines. Plenty of women oppose abortion, and plenty of men support it. Plenty of women voted for Trump (45%, according to NBC News data), and plenty of men for Kamala Harris (42%). Plus, mental health and relationship experts say, taking your political frustrations out on the person you’re dating isn’t a good idea. After all, what if your partner shares your values and feels just as upset about the state of politics as you do?

For Pollard and other women, however, the 4B movement gets at something larger.

“Somebody in my comments had a really great analogy where she said: ‘If you had a bowl of Skittles, and you were told that one of those Skittles was poisonous, would you dissect and study and take hours and hours to understand which one of the Skittles was going to do it? No. You would dump out the bowl. You would walk away,’ ” Pollard says. “That’s what we’re seeing with the 4B movement.”

Why are so many people talking about the 4B movement online?

The 4B movement has garnered interest among women angry with the results of the presidential election. “We can’t let these men have the last laugh… we need to bite back,” one X user wrote in a post with 470K likes. “If they want to take over your bodies, Don’t let them have it,” wrote another. “don’t give in until they start listening. then they will start to panic,” another added.

One X user noted the movement isn’t just about women avoiding men but also about supporting each other: “Seek out relationships with women, women-owned businesses, women-made media, etc; surround yourself with women and our culture.”

Pollard, who makes videos on TikTok about why she doesn’t date men, says she’s seen an uptick in content about the 4B movement on the app since the election.

“I saw four back-to-back videos of young women saying we have to start the 4B movement here,” she says. “4B starts today. We have to be doing this immediately. Men don’t look out for us; we don’t look out for them.”

Mental health, relationship experts say the 4B movement ‘won’t create a better world’

Still, mental health and relationship experts are skeptical about the 4B movement as a response to Trump’s election. While every American has the right to peacefully protest the election however they please, they say swearing off dating and relationships as a whole is largely misguided.

Amy Chan, a dating coach and author of “Breakup Bootcamp: The Science of Rewiring Your Heart,” says one positive aspect of the 4B discourse is it might encourage women to prioritize self-development, personal growth and discerning the values that matter most to them in a partner.

Outside of this, she says encouraging people to swear off relationships as a form of political protest is likely counter-productive.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea to cut yourself off from romantic relationships or intimacy as a way to punish men or the administration — it ultimately ends up being self-punishing,” she says. “It also fuels the rhetoric that just because some men are harmful or anti-feminist, all men must be. We won’t create a better world by seeing men as evil or as the enemy.”

What does the 4B movement bode for the dating world post-election?

Whether or not the 4B movement will have a major impact on American dating culture remains to be seen. Still, the discourse its started online might signal some newer dating trends for the next four years.

Psychotherapist Stephanie Sarkis says the divisive election has likely motivated singles to think more deeply about what values they want to share with a partner − and what deal breakers they won’t tolerate.

“It’s important that your values align,” she says. “When you have fundamental differences in that, it’s really hard to bridge that gap.”

Chan says the 4B movement might also motivate people to stand up for themselves and what they want in a relationship.

“Maybe the extreme of joining the 4B movement might not be the answer,” she says. “But for those who want long-term, committed relationships, adopting a stance that doesn’t tolerate ambiguous situationships and hookup culture can be healthy. We may witness a shift away from casual hookups toward more intentional dating practices that prioritize emotional connection and compatibility.”

Pollard says she’s gotten a lot of backlash to her 4B TikToks, but also support. Some of the support, she says, has come from men privately messaging her saying they need to do better standing up for women to their friends.

Her goal with sharing her videos, she says, is not to insist every woman must forsake sex, dating and marriage with men. Rather, she says, she wants women to know they have options − and, if they feel they would be happier single, that’s OK.

“I had been dating, and all of these men kind of mirrored what my friends, my female friends who are married, tell me are bad marriages. I have friends who tell me about the fact that they have to cook and clean for their husband, that they have to tiptoe around their emotions, that they can’t tell them who they voted for,” she says.

Choosing to not pursue dating, she says, is her choice, and it’s one other women, regardless of how they voted, are free to make too.

“Marriage is not what I’m made for as a woman,” she says. “I’m made for so many more beautiful things. There’s so many other deep relationships I can have.”

— USA TODAY contributed to this report.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: 4B movement: Why women are swearing off sex after Trump’s re-election