The 4B question originated successful South Korea, and encourages women to opt retired of matrimony (bihon), childbirth (bichulsan), romance (biyeonae), and intersexual relationships (bisekseu). Born retired of protests against South Korea’s culture—instances of dating violence, revenge porn, and gender wage gaps are widespread—the question has grown successful caller years. South Korea has the lowest commencement complaint of immoderate country, and contempt authorities incentives, galore women inactive consciousness the country’s patriarchal operation makes the outgo of motherhood excessively high, and garbage to beryllium “baby-making machines,” according to reporting from the New York Times.
Although it started successful the precocious 2010s, the question didn't truly summation attraction successful the US until earlier this year. New York mag published a agelong diagnostic connected it successful March successful which writer Anna Louie Sussman laid retired the ways successful which 4B adherents were, arsenic Barbieri demonstrated connected TikTok, cutting their hairsbreadth and eschewing quality products. “The blowback and fearfulness that 4B practitioners acquisition underscores their condemnation that Korea is inactive a frightening spot for women,” Sussman wrote, noting the threats and attacks women, and specifically 4B protesters, receive.
Some creators who spoke to WIRED were already participating successful the question earlier the election. Dalina, who uses they/them pronouns and asked to withhold their past sanction for privateness reasons, was casually seeing a antheral when, they say, “he made a gag on the lines of like, ‘I considered coming wrong of you.’” Dalina says astatine that infinitesimal their humor ran cold. “I thought, ‘Why does that dependable similar a threat?’ It's like, due to the fact that it is simply a menace … He besides knew that it was a threat.”
Since then, Dalina, who goes by @senoracabrona connected TikTok, says they person sworn disconnected romanticist and intersexual entanglements with men. Their video, including substance telling women to look up the 4B movement, has garnered much than 130,000 views connected TikTok.
With the predetermination of Trump, and each the threats to reproductive rights and LGBTQ+ rights and misogyny that entails, women online seemed to beryllium channeling the fearfulness they felt into enactment successful akin ways.
Barbieri says erstwhile she posted her archetypal 4B video it was the effect of thing she’d been investigating for respective months via her engagement successful feminist spaces connected Reddit, Facebook, and Instagram. After her station went up, she got respective antagonistic comments from men, but was amazed to find a batch of support, peculiarly from women funny successful the movement.