I received a flurry of emails from journalists covering this story this week, which was a bit surprising. Really? 4B in the U.S.? Huh?
4B refers to a relatively small strand of South Korean feminist movement that calls for no dating men (biyeonae), sexual relationships with men (bisekseu), heterosexual marriage (bihon) and childbirth (bichulsan). Its focus is obviously on straight cisgender women in hetero relationships, and there’s a whole long complicated story about how this movement so strongly espoused the gender binary (male/female) that it also became a hotbed of noxious trans-exclusionary “radical feminism,” also known as TERF.
After not responding to the first few media inquiries, I finally started doing some interviews, and here’s a story that came out on NPR. It’s pretty good, I think, especially because they took the time to flesh out the structural and historical contexts. They don’t go into the transphobia stuff, but that would have taken too long to explain. I’m quoted for saying things like, “It’s about young women saying to policymakers: ‘You want us to get married and have children, you have to make this world a better place for us to live.’”
“Boycott men? South Korea’s 4B movement gains traction in the U.S. after Trump’s win“
Rachel Treisman for NPR, November 8, 2024
https://www.npr.org/2024/11/08/nx-s1-5182888/4b-movement-trump-south-korea
I see that most major news outlets have now covered this:
- “After the Election, a Call for Women to Swear Off Men” (The New York Times)
- “Trump win spurs interest in 4B, fringe South Korean movement to swear off men” (The Washington Post)
- “‘No man will touch me until I have my rights back’: why is the 4B movement going viral after Trump’s win?” (The Guardian)
Hopefully soon I’ll get to talk more about the implications of all this for queer and trans* politics in Korea. I’d hate for the 4B movement to take up so much space that they speak for all of South Korean feminism. Stay tuned.