By: Sofia Chassomeris, News Writer
Content warning: mentions of gender-based violence, sexual assault, and Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.
November 25 marks the first day of the annual 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-based Violence. The international campaign begins on the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, and ends on December 10, Human Rights Day. It is a time to reflect and make a “commitment to ending violence against women, girls, and 2SLGBTQIA+ individuals.” Following the re-election of Donald Trump as the 47th President of the US, more American women have shown interest in joining the South Korean feminist 4B movement.
In the past few years, South Korea’s National Police Agency reported on the country’s “sharp increase” in dating violence against women, including sexual assault and homicide. The Agency stated a record high of over 77,000 cases in 2023, with only 310 individuals prosecuted for their crimes. Critics of South Korea’s legal system, such as the Korea Women’s Hotline, point out that the small percentage of violent crimes against women that actually get reported are also treated as minor or “accidental” occurrences.
As a response to this, the 4 B’s in “4B” represent the “four no’s” that participating South Korean women follow in response to misogynistic violence. They are “bihon, bichulsan, biyeonae, and bisekseu, which translate to no marriage, no childbirth, no dating, and no sex with men.” For most women, the movement takes the form of “quiet feminism,” in which women practice its principles but refrain from disclosing their feminist position publicly for their safety.
The 4B movement started on an extremist South Korean online forum called “Womad.” Experts note “Womad is a product of ‘Ilbe Storage,’ a right-wing website that expresses hatred toward women” with a history of members sharing nude photos of women without their consent. Despite “consistent public requests to shut down Ilbe,” the forum remains unrestricted. “This is a society where a trusting boyfriend commits a crime like this because they think it is nothing serious,” said one petitioner.
According to The Korea Times, many “radical feminist” communities “have wrongly developed the original concept of pursuing gender equality to a gender war,” with forums like Womad “mirroring” gendered hate speech and sharing posts about committing violence against men. Some of these women were part of the 4B movement, but it does not represent the whole.
The 4B movement caught attention abroad in the weeks following the 2024 US presidential election. The election of Trump and his party’s promise to implement Project 2025 — what the BBC calls a comprehensive “set of proposals that would expand presidential power and impose an ultra-conservative social vision” — has worsened concerns about reproductive rights. The Guardian reported that searches for 4B “spiked by 450%” the day after the election.
Canada has also experienced a rise in support for conservative politics. With increasing “dissatisfaction with the federal Liberal Party,” leader of the Conservative Party Pierre Poilievre and conservative premiers have appealed to many Canadians concerned with the heightening cost of living. Across Canada, conservative parties are imposing barriers for 2SLGBTQIA+ children in their education and medical needs. In Alberta, premier Danielle Smith’s government passed a bill requiring parents to “opt-in for their child to be taught” about gender identity and sexual orientation. In 2023, the United Nations’ Commission on Population and Development stressed that “deprivation of access to education on sexual and reproductive health and rights results in a range of harmful practices,” including “high levels of gender-based violence.”
Indigenous women remain the most “disproportionately affected by gender-based violence.” They are more likely to be victims of homicide, intimate partner violence, and sexual assault. It has been five years since the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls released their final report in 2019, which includes 231 calls for justice “intended to address the root causes that sustain violence against First Nations, Inuit, and Métis women, girls, two-spirit, and gender-diverse people.” However, only two calls to action have been fulfilled, and more than half haven’t been started. The National Inquiry’s most recent Interim Report stressed that the government needs to take responsibility and “support accountability” for transformational change to be possible.
Speaking on the rise of the 4B movement, Ju Hui Judy Han, an assistant professor in gender studies at the University of California, told NPR, “What I think is most important is that it’s about women recognizing that they’re in a collective struggle and that there’s a collective sense of frustration.”
She also told CNN that this “movement is unlikely to become mainstream in the US.” She predicts it will be short-lived, and that “those inspired to join it as a result of the election are overlooking the fact that plenty of women voted for Trump, too.” Exit polls show that 45% of women, specifically, a majority (53%) of white women, voted for Trump in the 2024 election. In the recent BC election, 25% of BC Conservative voters were women, while 60% of women voted for BC NDP.
Read the full extended article on The Peak’s website, the-peak.ca.
