will the 4b movement deepen our gender divide?

on justified rage, tactical withdrawal, and why isolation isn't liberation

There's a theory in social psychology called the "pendulum effect" – how movements for change often swing from one extreme to another before finding equilibrium. As I watch the 4B movement explode across my TikTok feed post-election, I can't help but wonder if we're witnessing that pendulum mid-swing, hurtling toward its furthest point. Not because I don't understand the rage fueling its momentum – believe me, I do – but because I'm seeing something more insidious: a self-perpetuating cycle of alienation that's pushing men and women further apart than ever before.

The Rise of 4B

For those who haven't fallen down this particular TikTok rabbit hole yet: The 4B movement originated in South Korea around 2019 as a wholesale rejection of what its followers saw as an irredeemably patriarchal society. The "4B" stands for four Korean words meaning "no dating men, no marrying men, no sex with men, and no having children." Unlike the individual-level critiques we often see online, this wasn't about judging personal choices – it was a collective uprising born from a perfect storm of increasing femicide rates, rampant digital sex crimes, and systemic workplace discrimination. It was a collective middle finger to a society that seemed determined to treat women as second-class citizens. The movement gained thousands of followers in Korea, and now, in our post-Roe America, it's finding a receptive audience among women who are feeling similarly betrayed by their own society.

From the epidemic of revenge porn (affecting 1 in 12 American adults) to the persistent wage gap, to the systematic dismantling of reproductive rights, we're watching the predictable outcome of a pressure cooker society. When South Korean women launched this protest against their patriarchal system, they were responding to specific cultural wounds. But as American women adapt these ideas in the wake of Trump's victory, we're faced with a troubling question: Could our justified rebellion be accelerating the very radicalization we're fighting against?