What is the 4B movement? | US News

A feminist movement that originated in South Korea is gaining ground on social media following Donald Trump's US election victory.

Kamala Harris devoted much of her campaign to winning women's votes, with a particular focus on abortion rights, with measures aimed at both to protect existing abortion rights or to expand them on the ballot in 10 US states.

Exit polls show she received a majority of US women's votes, as expected, but not nearly enough to secure the presidency.

Winner Donald Trump expressed mixed views on his stance on abortion during his campaign – but his three Supreme Court appointees were part of a majority that changed Roe v. Wade in 2022 – Women will be stripped of their legal right to an abortion.

His second election victory has prompted some women to talk about joining the 4B movement – an unofficial group that originated in South Korea Women have given up sexual relationships with men in protest against perceived misogyny and oppression.

4B attracted minimal attention on social media in the US in the run-up to the election, but interest skyrocketed after Mr Trump's victory, with more than 50,000 mentions on X on November 6 from American accounts. Since Election Day, X-posts mentioning 4B have been viewed more than a million times, potentially reaching more than 45 million accounts.

Its exact origins are not known, but it is believed to have started in 2019, around the time conservative President Yoon Suk Yeol was elected.

Although it started as a small movement, it has spread across Asia and around the world, becoming a popular topic of conversation on social media.

4B is an acronym for four Korean words that all start with “bi” — meaning “no,” according to journalist Anna Louie Sussman reported on the movement for The Cut magazine last year.

These are the four words that are essentially promises of the movement:

• Bihon: the rejection of heterosexual marriage
• Bichulsan: the refusal to give birth
• Biyeonae: Avoid dating men
• Bisekseu: the rejection of heterosexual sexual relationships altogether

Some women who consider themselves part of the movement have also taken to shaving their heads and refusing to wear makeup to distance themselves from society's sexualization of women.

A tweet posted on November 6th with hundreds of thousands of likes calls on women in the US to “think about the 4B movement like women in South Korea and bring America a drastic decline in the birth rate,” adding: “We can't do that. “Let these men have the last laugh… we must hold back.

How women voted in the US election

Election polls conducted by Sky News' US partner NBC News show that women made up 53% of voters overall.

The majority of female voters, 53%, voted for Ms. Harris, while 45% voted for Mr. Trump. Among men, 55% voted for Mr. Trump and 42% for Ms. Harris.

But Ms Harris actually had less support from women in the 2024 election than Democrat Joe Biden did in 2020, when he received 55% of the female vote, compared to 43% for Mr Trump.

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Experts say her level of support from women has been unremarkable, pointing out that the majority of women have favored the Democratic candidate in every presidential election since 1996, according to the Center for American Women in Politics at Rutgers University.

The polls also show that white women, who made up 37% of voters, voted 53% for Mr. Trump and 45% for Ms. Harris.

Women of all other races were more likely to vote for Ms. Harris, especially black women, who gave her 91% of their votes — but they make up just 7% of all voters.