"The election of Donald Trump has sparked a surge of interest in the United States in South Korea’s 4B movement, a radical feminist crusade that preaches the four B’s: bi-hon (no marriage), bi-yeonae (no dating), bi-sekseu (no sex) and bi-chulsan (no childbirth),” the Los Angeles Times reports.
“Since Nov. 5, there have been more than 500,000 Google searches for ‘4b movement,’ while on TikTok, Instagram and X, support for the cause has been trending among young women voters who are vowing to swear off men.”
I’m not following the logic here. The only thing I can see is it would drive a wedge between feminists and sympathetic men. Seems like the sort of thing that would only make sense to someone uninterested in men or withdrawing from the guy they are with.
If someone has a take I’m missing, I’m all ears. I’m married 15 years and I don’t have a dog in the fight, so if I’m wrong just explain how.
I have to admit I don’t understand the friendly fire aspect of this. I totally get wanting to withhold everything positive, including any sort of affection at all, from anyone that voted for this, but doing it uniformly?
I also understand wanting to fully vet just what kind of “ally” you might be dealing with while dating. Obviously guys will lie about such a thing since they know that voting for donvict is a huge turnoff, at minimum, never mind this movement.
I also don’t have a dog in the fight.
If you were a woman in today’s world, why would you take the risk of dating someone who can rape, impregnate, and either leave or stay and dominate your life?
The reality is that tender, gentle, trusting relationships will still form… and the rest of the men will have to decide whether to try to be better men or not.
It makes sense to me to not date men who won’t stand up for your rights, but that’s not my read of 4B.
How do you know you’re with one of those men, really? What happens when they change their tune?
A lot of men will say whatever they need to so they can get laid. Or think they really believe it until the relationship is threatened.
It’s not that women can’t do all that too but that women now have less ways to extricate themselves from such relationships.
Why risk it?
I feel like a person would know, or at least could know. But I guess you have a point. I have a much different perspective on dating at fifty than would have at twenty.
I’m fifty as well, and I can be fairly certain my wife would not have risked dating me in the current political climate.
We were both a bit older and she had never had a very serious relationship prior to meeting me.
Who knows how the math would’ve played out? My life was a wreck and she took a gamble on me.
I’ve made sure that gamble paid off.
But nowadays the odds have changed.
I can identify with a lot of that. She was a recent divorcee, though, and I was supposedly the one with my shit together.
But I will say that there was a point in my late tens or early twenties where maybe I was going to go a different path. I could’ve turned bitter had I had to deal with loneliness at the time.
I was doing a lot of work on myself and it was messy, trying to figure out who I was. So I guess maybe I feel a certain amount of sympathy for young men in that situation. But also I’m really beyond such things at this point. It just struck me as something that gets attention but sufferers from fundamental flaws (like either they are going to find the one and have sex anyway, or they just aren’t all that interested in sex with men to begin with and this is just a way to sort of turn their lack of interest into leverage).
But I’m just not twenty any more. Times are different. Kinda glad I don’t have to navigate it.
I absolutely feel sympathy for young men. They didn’t ask for any of this either. And they might have to do some work on themselves to get to a healthier place.
I certainly struggled with relationships, to the point of not understanding signs of clear interest.
It’s hard to notice this stuff when your head is down with despair.
Why risk it? Because human companionship can be an extremely rewarding thing.
People can find all sorts of reasons to shut themselves off and create walls to protect themselves from “what if”. I hope they are happy with their decision, but in my experience, that road is a one way ticket to loneliness, ineffectiveness, and resentful feelings.
There is a word for people who make this sort of negative stereotyping of a whole sex.
I’m a sympathetic man and this makes total sense and I support them fully.
There is no wedge.
Here here!
Are you in a relationship?
Yes but it wouldn’t change my opinion. Because I don’t need to be getting my dick wet to support women.
It’s hilarious how much incel sympathy materializes on lemmy the very microsecond critical support starts involving the prospect of some deferred male orgasms.
Hint for those who don’t get it - it’s not about the sex. It’s about sending a message.
I’m asking because you seem to be an ally. How would your partner withholding sex from you improve the national situation at all? How does lack of sex enhance your already current position of being a supportive ally? How does others knowing that your partner is denying you sex entice them to adopt your views as their own?
My point is that the people this is likely to be deployed against are not the ones causing the problem.
If my partner were part of this movement she’d be breaking up with me entirely, not just withholding sex. But if she was withholding sex from me because of this there’s not really anything I can do because I’m not going to force her to do it because I’m not an asshole. Plus I’m not with her just for sex so withholding sex wouldn’t severely impact our relationship or my wanting to be an ally.
Maybe if the ones not causing the problem caused more problems for the ones causing the problem they would stop causing problems.
Short of shooting people, what step should the average man take beyond voting, protesting, donating, and holding other men in our circle accountable? Trump gained ground with women too.
Maybe not shooting. Maybe it’s a swift kick in the nards. /s
Clearly all those things haven’t been working, so now we need to be more radical. Hence these women taking this radical approach.
You didn’t answer my question about what allied men should do though.
The logic is to prevent pregnancy in an environment that has become hostile towards women’s rights. Sex becomes far more dangerous if you don’t have access to contraceptives and abortion.
Fwiw, I’m in a LTR with a “4B ally” (and also consider myself an ally). A key points here is that I’ve also had a vasectomy.
I know it doesn’t seem fair, and if you look at it through the lens of punishing men then maybe it isn’t. But if you view it as women protecting themselves (e.g. from pregnancy) then it makes perfect sense.
I’m not really looking at it through the lens of fairness, I think, other than maybe sympathetic. I’m just not sure it addresses the problem. Seems to be the biggest issue for liberal men who wouldn’t date a conservative woman. And they aren’t likely to be the problem, nor is creating a rift the solution.
But I can 100% see a woman who is simply unwilling to risk pregnancy in this environment regardless of partner.