4B in the West, and why I don’t think it will work

Thanks ChatGPT, I hate copyright

Not many days ago, the world woke up to four impending years of Donald Trump being in charge of the United States. I have already said it before, but Trump embodies the reactionary cultural revolution Russia has tried to stoke in the West for over a decade now.

The world has, unsurprisingly, taken these news with varying degrees of euphoria or apprehension. Whereas the tyrants of the world show glee for a likeminded strongman pushing the Overton window rightwards for a while, progressives and democratic forces are left reeling as the West prepares to reckon with a second tide of nationalism.

And through all of this, no place is the left as geared to go on the defensive as in the United States. From talks of organizing and protecting their communities, to the — at this point in progressive circles, very traditional — custom of outlining of unworthy demographics that will bear the blame for the Harris-Walz campaign debacle.

Naturally, the topic of feminism and reproductive rights is being broadly discussed online, as it seems abortion is not coming back during the next four years. Given that I dip my toes into multiple circles with different leanings, I ended up noticing the 4B movement being discussed, not the Korean one, but a hypothetical Western one, to last, supposedly, throughout Trump’s mandate.

And it was upon reading the many, many manifestos of why the 4B movement that I realized one thing: progressive women do not actually understand their political opponents — the real opponents of feminism, diametrically opposed to them. But before I can go into that, I must explain what on earth the 4B movement even is.

What are the four Bs?

Thanks, BingAI, I still hate copyright

The 4B movement was born in South Korea, as a response to the rampant sexism present in their society, and the turbulent gender wars that make the West seem like an egalitarian paradise in comparison.

I won’t delve into the semantics of the words, but the four Bs essentially boil down to “no dating, having sex with, having children with, or marrying men.” Essentially, a vow of celibacy.

Given it has been spread by its supporters, a lot of the 4B movement’s less savory aspects do not get nearly as much prominence on our social media. Namely homophobia, transphobia, sexual assault and murder of boys and men being perpetrated and/or celebrated, among other things.

But that hardly matters. I am quite convinced the women who talk about 4B are not intentionally omitting the horribleness of the original movement. I think of it as them not having done any research into it, a bit how “spiritual” westerners often talk about Buddhism as a peaceful religion without delving into any literature concerning its history or beliefs.

I digress. The fact is, 4B is essentially a punitive self-segregation to be undertaken by women with one or more feminist goals in mind. We can ignore the rest for now.

Is it working in Korea?

This might well be the first question you’ll be tempted to ask. The answer, from the bottom of my heart, is that we cannot really know yet. 4B took shape in the mid-2010s. There are some factors to its advantage. Korea, undergoing a fertility crisis with few possible immigration policies that can counteract it, is bound to feel the burn if the movement grows.

That being said, in 2019, 4B claimed to have 4000 members, which is not nearly enough to have thus far been responsible for Korea’s demographic woes.

Given Korea’s much stricter immigration policies, the women that do exist there have a certain bargaining power, though. There are few new women coming from abroad, which makes the deliberate removal of the native women from the dating pool an actual power play with potential.

Depending on whether the gender wars get even worse or improve over there, the 4B movement might still become an issue the Korean politicians take seriously.

Will it work here?

The West is not facing a sharp demographic decline like Korea is, but it does have a far more entrenched recreational culture surrounding dating and the like — or so I’m told.

Still, my bet is that it will have a much harder time making waves here. Due to Western politicians being generally more predisposed to letting in immigrants — even though I am very critical of such policies — the matter of demographic collapse is less critical here.

Moreover, there is the matter of said immigration including women that may not actually subscribe to the 4B movement. From my limited experience using dating apps, I can certainly attest to foreign women seeking dates even before learning my country’s language. In other words, the argument I make about immigration harming labor similarly applies to dating— there is simply more supply, which makes your individual political capital diluted.

And let’s not forget, the more mainstream this gets, the less likely it becomes for people to be telling the truth. 4000 radical feminists in Korea might be all abstaining. Can you trust 200,000 lukewarm Reddit users, many of whom try their hardest to fabricate stories for internet points?

Let me tell you, as a guy in an academic environment of the humanities, a lot of the bitterness surrounding the gender wars is a forgery. Simply put, there are perks to having a relationship. The students and professors might talk big game about patriarchy in the classrooms, and Dworkinesque political lesbianism, but the majority of them have boyfriends or husbands. And yes, plenty of incel pages online are run by married dudes too, for the sake of getting money out of bitter, single men.

And if you do have a boyfriend you love and are happy with, and you do swear to live by the 4B code for the next four years… well, there might just be one night when you can’t help but break that vow of abstinence. And if it does happen, who on the internet is gonna find out?

This is to say nothing of the primary issue, which I mentioned right at the start of this article…

You probably don’t understand the opposing voting bloc

Again, thanks BingAI

A lot of people voted for Trump. A surprisingly diverse set of people voted for him, in my opinion. But few of them were all that concerned about feminism or reproductive rights to begin with.

I won’t autopsy the Harris campaign in this article, but I think it’s fair to say it was far from one of the most successful in Democratic history. We need only compare the iconic pictures in Trump’s clownish run to the ones of Harris, and we already notice a big discrepancy.

But 4B has its sights on a significant slice of the Trump voters. The ones that do hate feminism and abortion, and have been acting smug on the internet for a whole week already since his victory.

These men are, in my opinion, the key reason why the 4B movement can’t even hope to work in the way its proponents are hoping it does. In short, because these men — the real perpetrators and supporters of a war on women — will not be, at all, punished by it.

We are talking about late-blooming young men who have gone years on end without being hugged (if ever). Many of them probably never interacted with a woman with any hope of getting a date. These are the people you see on those graphs regarding male virginity rates on the rise. If they subscribe to some toxic manosphere grifter, they might think making money is a way out for them. But as we’re all well aware, the West no longer believes in social mobility all that much either. They are bitter, angry, and have most likely given up on the idea of a better life for themselves or others.

In other words, this is a group of people that is not voting for its own self-interest, because they don’t even believe in that. It is a voting bloc of people that want to punish the world for being a disappointment to them. To them, abortion is not about saving the fetus. To them, abortion is about punishing people who have sex recreationally. And if you do abstain from sex (with men that, presumably, would be having sex otherwise), then their day will be a little brighter for it. Rejection is not a punishment to them, just a continuation of their reality. But they’d gladly see more people going through their plight.

Conclusion

I really don’t have much of a dog in this fight. I don’t date, I don’t sleep around, I am not American, and I am reluctantly pro-choice. Regardless, I figured I’d drop my two cents in an issue that both sides of the dating scene (meaning everyone that’s decidedly not included in this aforementioned voting bloc) seem to be misunderstanding for the sake of sensationalism and a bit more intergender hatred.

If you still want to go 4B, go for it. If you’re a guy and you want to swear off sex too until something happens, you’re free to have a go at that too. Just don’t assume the guys and gals that are not getting any by your strike are the real culprits cheering on our backsliding.