The whole 4B movement, while I know they are not advocating this, reminds me a little bit of political lesbianism. Women in the 70s advocating for lesbianism even if a woman wasn’t actually sexually attracted to other women; you didn’t have to fuck other women but you could identify as a lesbian because of how separated your life was from heterosexual life and how you completely disassociated from men, eschewing sex and desire in hopes of liberation. I’m not saying we should bring this back because I am a lesbian and would like to have sex with other women who are attracted to women but it’s an interesting piece of history to look back on now.
I suppose the idea of political lesbianism could probably be very helpful to bisexual women in this time. Taking conscious measures to not include men in your life, choosing only to date women and hang around women. I know some bisexual women who have done this almost subconsciously, women who I often forget are bisexual because I have only know them to date other women.
100 percent. I also think it's interesting to consider that among Gen Z, almost 3 in 10 women identify at LGBTQ, so not having sex with men doesn't necessarily entail giving up sex with people you're attracted to lol
I commented already that I'm a proud 4B-er for 8 years now but I thought it was applicable to mention that I also consider myself bisexual (or pan, really) but I've only ever actually dated 1 woman, the rest of my history has been with men. I would still be open to dating someone other than a hetero man but since the 4B movement specifically references not dating MEN.. I think hopefully I'm still safe to claim my 4B status :)
From what I've read 4B is only a fringe movement in Korea, and has received a disproportionate amount of attention compared to it's prevalence.
As a concept though it seems only effective in the realm of casual hookups, where a progressive woman is most likely to encounter a conservative man. Surely progressive women are predominantly seeking or in long term relationships with progressive men, and abstinence will only hurt these allies of the cause.
To the progressive women in committed relationships with conservative men, 4B seems like an ultimatum of sorts which are typically not productive in relationships. Dialogue and attempt at mutual understanding is much more useful and acceptable in the setting of a committed relationship.
And if dialogue and mutual understanding is not possible then one has to question the judgement of both parties in entering such a poorly matched relationship. The only exception is the fact that people do change and may have been closer in the beginning but drifted apart. Even so, drifting apart seems more like the product of apathy and can be avoidable.
Again, I suggest some vetting, both for compassion and passion. It’s a canard from the nutbase right that men who admire and are attracted by strong and confident women are themselves somehow weak and dithering, or passionless and inept sexually. (Of course, people can be all kinds of things, and we are all not at our best all the time.)
This is a fascinating reaction to the proliferation of misogyny across the world. I’m deeply ashamed of the society I have inadvertently benefited from as a white dude for three decades. A close friend of mine was raped by a popular guy when I was sixteen, and I remember feeling so powerless and confused why so few of my male friends believed it had happened. From that moment onwards, i.e. forever, I’ve had a lingering fear that while sure, “not all men …”, more than enough men who’ve been told they have the power will consistently take advantage of it, because such is the nature of power. I’m once again at a loss as to how to explain the feelings of shame and confusion and rage at a world in which rapists are afforded such power. Mostly I’m gutted for all of the women across the world who can’t walk outside without feeling seen as an object. My instinct is to want to protect but then I remember this desire to protect is ALSO a function of the patriarchal model. Maybe I think we should all just be gay for a while.
I really appreciate this post. I get people who have been traumatized by men wanting distance and protection. But I also hate the gender essentialism of the idea that a woman can only thrive by being entirely separate from an enormously diverse half of the population, and I hate the cynicism of believing that any kind of human is irredeemable. It's the reason I oppose the death penalty: the idea that a person who has done bad things is inherently evil and not reformable product of a toxic social context lets the systems of power off the hook for producing those humans. I'm not saying women need to go around trying to reform badly behaved, at times monstrous men, but is entirely separating ourselves off from them really going to reduce the amount of violence and toxic masculinity in the world? I think not.
I've been learning a little about alternativity as opposed to oppositionality in social movements -- alternativity being the practice of trying to create an alternative model of being entirely separate from the current one, and oppositionality being an attempt to build a new model of being through direct opposition the current one. A movement should be both alternative and oppositional, actively dismantling the system while building something new and better. But oppositionality without trying to build an alternative does not provide a future to step into once the battle is won, and alternativity without opposition to the system allows the status quo to continue enacting its harm. 4b feels like alternativity without oppositionality: creating a small, gender essentialist, woman only space inside patriarchy without actually excising the roots of what allows patriarchy to thrive (which, spoiler, is not women having sex with men).
I am opposed to the death penalty on account of its profoundly unjust political and operational execution (pun not intended).
At the same time, I do think it is possible to go down a road toward irredeemability so far that there is no coming back. (And in saying this, I acknowledge the exception of those so damaged that they have been made into monsters in childhood by abuse, toward which our only appropriate response would rightly be to compassionately separate them from unsupervised society without punishment.) To be sure, there are truly irredeemably evil people out there, many in surprisingly high places.
Totally. I think what I should have explained in greater detail is that I'm against setting the precedent of irredeemability, because I believe in working towards a justice system that focuses on rehabilitation and recognises the reality that most crime is a product of an unjust society and that society therefore needs to change to reduce the number of criminals, rather than killing the criminals themselves. But I get you, there is nuance to the discussion of redeemability. I think I just want to develop checks and balances that hold our systems to as great an account as possible.
I have a lot of similar questions about this movement. We already live in a world where women’s pleasure is oppressed and it makes me afraid this takes it a step further. I also love and support all my sisters who have done this and it makes them happy.
Personally, I take the opposite approach: I’m going to be taking even more ownership over my body than ever before to do what feels good with other consenting adults.
I doubt it'd be oppressing the pleasure aspect as sex toys exist. Something i realized is that most women truly enjoy the physical connection aspect of sex.
Co-opting a movement from Korea, a country that is moving towards extinction with a high youth suicide rate seems on point for progressive women. Is there anything about progressive politics, that taken to its logical conclusion, isn’t anything other than nihilism?
My friends are now a few years beyond the point where it'd have mattered, but honestly, go back ten years and if very liberal women had cleared themselves out of dating apps it'd have been fantastic for us. Finding a woman who is stable and doesn't hold extreme political views is pretty a tedious task in today's environment (the polling numbers speak for themselves), and a lot of men dream of finding a nice right wing woman who won't engage in nasty misandry and other toxic behaviors. If the most extreme ones just delete their dating profiles entirely, it'll speed up the process of wife-finding for the decent men quite a bit.
Reproductive rights is an evil fabrication. If you don’t want to get pregnant there are so many ways to contracept from condoms to the pill to injected progesterone to IUDs. Tell the truth, you want to kill your own flesh and blood at any time! This is demonic and I am deeply grateful for any of you killers who abstain and therefore have no baby to kill⚔️⚔️
I note toward the end of your article, you suggested women date good (ie "not right-leaning") men. This seems a clarion call to the "sneaky fucker" types who pretend to have feminist-esque ideals in the hope of getting laid. Attractive males (not just looks-- but status, "game," social intelligence, sense of humor, drive toward some sense of mission, etc) tend to "lean right, in my experience. Are you suggesting girls only sleep with people who they find idealistically palatable, and ignore their innate attraction cues?
The only women who will join your stupid 4B movement are those who voted for the woeful DEI hire Kamala Harris.
Believe me, no real man wants to associate with misandrists and in particular, 4B women. You are ugly inside and out, full of rage, unattractive and unintelligent, and now, courtesy of Trump's landslide win, you are irrelevant.
In fact, as a man, I encourage you to keep going - you will be doing all real men and women a favor by removing yourselves from society in general.
Instead, go and hang out together with your cats in your pathetic, warped little ragebubble. It means we dont have to put up with you anymore, and increases the chances you'll turn on each other.
And they have no interest in associating with angry, hateful misandrists like this.
FYI you can try to ingratiate yourself with these misandrists all you want, but they're never going to sleep with you. They hate you & men in general. In fact, by trying to appease them, they'll hate you even more.
Bold of you to assume that A) these women are actually straight, and B) they're "holding their own desires hostage." A lot of women are actually bisexual or gay without even realizing it, and an even larger number of them don't even enjoy penetrative sex to begin with. The cure for this problem is less about women just accepting bad to mediocre heterosexual intercourse and more about everyone becoming some kind of queer sex shaman and learning about the kama sutra or something so that sex is actually desirable lol.
Good. I think women should definitely evaluate the risk-benefit ratio of heterosexual relationships. Women are wading through a complex war leveraged against them. Abstinence is self-defense. For myself, unless I find a partner whom I feel I can truly trust with my life, sex is overrated. Unfortunately, I don't expect I will ever find such a partner. It is something I try to make peace with every day.
The whole 4B movement, while I know they are not advocating this, reminds me a little bit of political lesbianism. Women in the 70s advocating for lesbianism even if a woman wasn’t actually sexually attracted to other women; you didn’t have to fuck other women but you could identify as a lesbian because of how separated your life was from heterosexual life and how you completely disassociated from men, eschewing sex and desire in hopes of liberation. I’m not saying we should bring this back because I am a lesbian and would like to have sex with other women who are attracted to women but it’s an interesting piece of history to look back on now.
I suppose the idea of political lesbianism could probably be very helpful to bisexual women in this time. Taking conscious measures to not include men in your life, choosing only to date women and hang around women. I know some bisexual women who have done this almost subconsciously, women who I often forget are bisexual because I have only know them to date other women.
100 percent. I also think it's interesting to consider that among Gen Z, almost 3 in 10 women identify at LGBTQ, so not having sex with men doesn't necessarily entail giving up sex with people you're attracted to lol
I commented already that I'm a proud 4B-er for 8 years now but I thought it was applicable to mention that I also consider myself bisexual (or pan, really) but I've only ever actually dated 1 woman, the rest of my history has been with men. I would still be open to dating someone other than a hetero man but since the 4B movement specifically references not dating MEN.. I think hopefully I'm still safe to claim my 4B status :)
Proud 4B-er for 8 years now. I'm 51 and I've never been as happy as I've been since removing men from the equation entirely.
From what I've read 4B is only a fringe movement in Korea, and has received a disproportionate amount of attention compared to it's prevalence.
As a concept though it seems only effective in the realm of casual hookups, where a progressive woman is most likely to encounter a conservative man. Surely progressive women are predominantly seeking or in long term relationships with progressive men, and abstinence will only hurt these allies of the cause.
To the progressive women in committed relationships with conservative men, 4B seems like an ultimatum of sorts which are typically not productive in relationships. Dialogue and attempt at mutual understanding is much more useful and acceptable in the setting of a committed relationship.
And if dialogue and mutual understanding is not possible then one has to question the judgement of both parties in entering such a poorly matched relationship. The only exception is the fact that people do change and may have been closer in the beginning but drifted apart. Even so, drifting apart seems more like the product of apathy and can be avoidable.
Again, I suggest some vetting, both for compassion and passion. It’s a canard from the nutbase right that men who admire and are attracted by strong and confident women are themselves somehow weak and dithering, or passionless and inept sexually. (Of course, people can be all kinds of things, and we are all not at our best all the time.)
This is a fascinating reaction to the proliferation of misogyny across the world. I’m deeply ashamed of the society I have inadvertently benefited from as a white dude for three decades. A close friend of mine was raped by a popular guy when I was sixteen, and I remember feeling so powerless and confused why so few of my male friends believed it had happened. From that moment onwards, i.e. forever, I’ve had a lingering fear that while sure, “not all men …”, more than enough men who’ve been told they have the power will consistently take advantage of it, because such is the nature of power. I’m once again at a loss as to how to explain the feelings of shame and confusion and rage at a world in which rapists are afforded such power. Mostly I’m gutted for all of the women across the world who can’t walk outside without feeling seen as an object. My instinct is to want to protect but then I remember this desire to protect is ALSO a function of the patriarchal model. Maybe I think we should all just be gay for a while.
Reading this I’m again incensed with anger at the “your body, my choice” meme.
I honestly believe the world would be a better place if some careful and clever amateur ‘justice minister’ popped a cap in that dude’s head.
I really appreciate this post. I get people who have been traumatized by men wanting distance and protection. But I also hate the gender essentialism of the idea that a woman can only thrive by being entirely separate from an enormously diverse half of the population, and I hate the cynicism of believing that any kind of human is irredeemable. It's the reason I oppose the death penalty: the idea that a person who has done bad things is inherently evil and not reformable product of a toxic social context lets the systems of power off the hook for producing those humans. I'm not saying women need to go around trying to reform badly behaved, at times monstrous men, but is entirely separating ourselves off from them really going to reduce the amount of violence and toxic masculinity in the world? I think not.
I've been learning a little about alternativity as opposed to oppositionality in social movements -- alternativity being the practice of trying to create an alternative model of being entirely separate from the current one, and oppositionality being an attempt to build a new model of being through direct opposition the current one. A movement should be both alternative and oppositional, actively dismantling the system while building something new and better. But oppositionality without trying to build an alternative does not provide a future to step into once the battle is won, and alternativity without opposition to the system allows the status quo to continue enacting its harm. 4b feels like alternativity without oppositionality: creating a small, gender essentialist, woman only space inside patriarchy without actually excising the roots of what allows patriarchy to thrive (which, spoiler, is not women having sex with men).
Perhaps if men were carefully vetted…90% of them thar ‘real men’ are giving 10% of us a bad name.
I am opposed to the death penalty on account of its profoundly unjust political and operational execution (pun not intended).
At the same time, I do think it is possible to go down a road toward irredeemability so far that there is no coming back. (And in saying this, I acknowledge the exception of those so damaged that they have been made into monsters in childhood by abuse, toward which our only appropriate response would rightly be to compassionately separate them from unsupervised society without punishment.) To be sure, there are truly irredeemably evil people out there, many in surprisingly high places.
Totally. I think what I should have explained in greater detail is that I'm against setting the precedent of irredeemability, because I believe in working towards a justice system that focuses on rehabilitation and recognises the reality that most crime is a product of an unjust society and that society therefore needs to change to reduce the number of criminals, rather than killing the criminals themselves. But I get you, there is nuance to the discussion of redeemability. I think I just want to develop checks and balances that hold our systems to as great an account as possible.
I have a lot of similar questions about this movement. We already live in a world where women’s pleasure is oppressed and it makes me afraid this takes it a step further. I also love and support all my sisters who have done this and it makes them happy.
Personally, I take the opposite approach: I’m going to be taking even more ownership over my body than ever before to do what feels good with other consenting adults.
I doubt it'd be oppressing the pleasure aspect as sex toys exist. Something i realized is that most women truly enjoy the physical connection aspect of sex.
Fair point!
Co-opting a movement from Korea, a country that is moving towards extinction with a high youth suicide rate seems on point for progressive women. Is there anything about progressive politics, that taken to its logical conclusion, isn’t anything other than nihilism?
> femcel
The term incel was coined by a woman, to describe herself (she also founded a community). https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-45284455
You don't need to coin another word
My friends are now a few years beyond the point where it'd have mattered, but honestly, go back ten years and if very liberal women had cleared themselves out of dating apps it'd have been fantastic for us. Finding a woman who is stable and doesn't hold extreme political views is pretty a tedious task in today's environment (the polling numbers speak for themselves), and a lot of men dream of finding a nice right wing woman who won't engage in nasty misandry and other toxic behaviors. If the most extreme ones just delete their dating profiles entirely, it'll speed up the process of wife-finding for the decent men quite a bit.
Reproductive rights is an evil fabrication. If you don’t want to get pregnant there are so many ways to contracept from condoms to the pill to injected progesterone to IUDs. Tell the truth, you want to kill your own flesh and blood at any time! This is demonic and I am deeply grateful for any of you killers who abstain and therefore have no baby to kill⚔️⚔️
I note toward the end of your article, you suggested women date good (ie "not right-leaning") men. This seems a clarion call to the "sneaky fucker" types who pretend to have feminist-esque ideals in the hope of getting laid. Attractive males (not just looks-- but status, "game," social intelligence, sense of humor, drive toward some sense of mission, etc) tend to "lean right, in my experience. Are you suggesting girls only sleep with people who they find idealistically palatable, and ignore their innate attraction cues?
The only women who will join your stupid 4B movement are those who voted for the woeful DEI hire Kamala Harris.
Believe me, no real man wants to associate with misandrists and in particular, 4B women. You are ugly inside and out, full of rage, unattractive and unintelligent, and now, courtesy of Trump's landslide win, you are irrelevant.
In fact, as a man, I encourage you to keep going - you will be doing all real men and women a favor by removing yourselves from society in general.
Instead, go and hang out together with your cats in your pathetic, warped little ragebubble. It means we dont have to put up with you anymore, and increases the chances you'll turn on each other.
Win-win.
“nO rEAl mAn…”
(No real Scotsman…)
Yes Peter, real men do exist.
And they have no interest in associating with angry, hateful misandrists like this.
FYI you can try to ingratiate yourself with these misandrists all you want, but they're never going to sleep with you. They hate you & men in general. In fact, by trying to appease them, they'll hate you even more.
I wish you well.
So, I get it. There’s such a thing as misandry, but no such thing as misogyny.
Ok.
Think we’re done here.
You're shifting the goalposts. I never said there was no such thing as misogyny, and my point had nothing to do with that issue. Stick to the point.
I’ll leave all that for you to figure out on your own. I know that if you really try, you might get it.
Oh, one other thing. Thank you for knowing so much about the life of this happily married man.
Oh, wait…
What on earth has your marital status got to do aith the discussion? It's irrelevant. BTW please pass on my regards to your husband.
It’s your life. Live it as you think best. And reread Aristophanes’ Lysistrata.
I’M not going celibate… i’m a sex columnist lol
With a sense of humor!
And see, that’s what I’m thinking, too!
See, that’s what I’m thinking…
I agree. If women had boycotts men immediately after the Donns decision, things could possibly have been different.
Never forget Lorena Bobbitt.
Bold of you to assume that A) these women are actually straight, and B) they're "holding their own desires hostage." A lot of women are actually bisexual or gay without even realizing it, and an even larger number of them don't even enjoy penetrative sex to begin with. The cure for this problem is less about women just accepting bad to mediocre heterosexual intercourse and more about everyone becoming some kind of queer sex shaman and learning about the kama sutra or something so that sex is actually desirable lol.
Good. I think women should definitely evaluate the risk-benefit ratio of heterosexual relationships. Women are wading through a complex war leveraged against them. Abstinence is self-defense. For myself, unless I find a partner whom I feel I can truly trust with my life, sex is overrated. Unfortunately, I don't expect I will ever find such a partner. It is something I try to make peace with every day.