No dating. No straight sex. Not to marry. No children.
A trend is now spreading on Tiktok, X and other social platforms where women are being urged to boycott men and even divorce their partners.
The so-called 4B phenomenon set off the Republicans Donald Trump’s after winning the US presidential election. Trump’s election campaign was marked by tearful, sometimes misogynistic rhetoric.
In one of the more than 1.7 million likes on Tiktok-in the video a young woman writes:
I’m doing my part as an American woman, as last night I broke up with my Republican boyfriend and officially joined the 4B movement.
The graphic below shows how the number of 4B Google searches increased in the United States during the election week. The scale on the vertical axis shows the popularity of the search “4B” in the given time period, not the number of searches. With a value of 100, the search was at its most popular.
The phenomenon’s popularity may be a backlash to Trump’s election, says the professor of cultural studies at the University of Eastern Finland Tuija Saresma.
– Trump’s behavior has supported the idea that women are men’s consumables. It’s as if the same game is being played in this movement: we’re talking about the existence or non-existence of bodily self-determination, culture and gender researcher Saresma tells .
According to Saresma, 4B is about turning frustration into action. Those involved want to show that they cannot be walked over no matter what, says Saresma.
“The phenomenon can have influence”
According to Saresma, 4B is also a way to oppose so-called gender populism, i.e. how gender has been harnessed for reactionary political use.
This has been seen in different countries, for example, as a violation of women’s rights.
– If politics is made under the guise of gender, women then make politics by even refusing a relationship, Saresma describes the 4B phenomenon.
– This demonstrates that even those who might be trying to subjugate have power.
In many videos published on social media with the 4B subject tag, people tell for example hoping that 4B would change expectations for women.
In some videos, men encourage women to follow the trend. They justify this for example saying that women have lost the right to their own bodies with Trump’s victory.
does not know whether the people who filmed the videos follow the 4B guidelines in practice.
According to Saresma, it is really difficult to assess how the phenomenon would possibly spread to the physical world, i.e. to what extent women would on a large scale begin to refuse, for example, sex or a relationship with a man.
– This can be a certain kind of clique activism. But it can also really be channeled into women’s lives and thereby also into men’s lives, says Saresma.
Although 4B can be an escalation and a provocation, according to Saresma, it is interesting that it has become something of a hit.
– Maybe it’s a marginal phenomenon of a small group, but it can still have influence. It can wake people up to think about bodily self-determination, says Saresma.
– A more effective way to influence things is still in the field of politics, through democracy, he points out.
4B is from South Korea
The 4B movement was originally born a few years ago in South Korea, when women had enough of the hate and abuse directed at them. The name 4B comes from four non-phrases in Korean.
4B was a response to the phenomenon where men, for example, snooped on women in toilets and during sex without consent. In protest, the demonstrators announced to end heterosexual relationships.
Refusal of heterosexual relationships or reproduction as a political tool is, however, a much older thing that has been used in different parts of the world, says Professor Tuija Saresma.
4B has also appeared in the number of Google searches in Finland in the past week:
In social media, the 4B phenomenon has also aroused backlash.
The phenomenon is opposed, for example, by a far-right podcast celebrity Nick Fuentes. Fuentes is a Trump supporter and an opponent of abortion rights. He has commented on the trend in the message service X with the words “Your body, my choice. Forever.”
The phrase is a translation of the slogan “my body, my choice”. It was used by feminists who defended women’s abortion rights in the 1960s.
Fuentes’ version has spread quickly on social media. According to the British newspaper Independent among other things, many social media influencers who promote women’s rights talk about the comments they receive, in which the phrase is modified.