No dating, no sex, no marriage and no babies. Of all the impassioned reactions to Trump’s presidential election, the embrace of South Korea’s controversial “4B” movement – where women reject any interpersonal contact with men – is probably the most eye-catching.
In the hours following Trump’s victory last week, there was a surge in Google searches in the United States about 4B, according to Google trends.
Many American women are concerned that Donald Trump’s victory proves to them that men don’t respect them, or their bodily autonomy.Credit: Reuters
The radical feminist movement – which stands for the four pledges that begin with “bi”, meaning “no” – emerged in South Korea in about 2017. It was an enraged response to the stabbing murder of a 23-year-old woman in the public bathroom of Gangnam subway station, by a man who said he killed her as revenge for all the women who looked down on him.
Its timing merged with general female outrage over what is dubbed South Korea’s “spy-cam epidemic” – it is common for men to film sexual partners and women using the bathroom, without their consent, with the resulting footage exploited as pornography. 4B also coincided with the emergence of South Korea’s “Escape the Corset” cause, which calls on women to reject toxic beauty standards. Adherents shave their heads and shun plastic surgery and make-up.
But these issues were just the catalysts – despite its affluence and sophistication, South Korean society still has rigidly traditional gender roles.
It has the most highly educated female population in the OECD, but also the largest gender pay gap in the........