Could the 4B movement ever happen in America?
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Are women obtaining .

from sex to protest Donald mps y election. That's the impression you get if you spend time reading the media over the past few weeks.

now that my food firmly planted in the anger phase of grief, ve, its time for action. And my first form of action is actually in action. IT is actually to really embrace this. For b movement.

since election, the four b movement has been gaining traction online. But where did the four b movement come from? How does that work? And could something like this really take off in america?

My friend E. J. Dixon has been covering all of this.

He writes about internet culture for the cut high. E. J, welcome to power user.

Thank you so much for having metro to be here.

So the foreby movement has gotten a lot of attention online. People have been talking about a lot wake of the election in the context of trump. Can you explain, first of all, what is the fob movement? So the fob .

movement is a feminist movement that got started in south korea in two thousand and sixteen. And IT basically entails no sex, no marriage and no childbirth. I'm not going to embarrass myself by trying to pronounced the korean translation.

And this is women intentionally abstaining from those things as a form of protest.

grap. Yes, exactly.

How did this whole movement get IT start?

This whole? The movement got its start in twenty sixteen, sort of prior to me too, when a woman was murdered by an insel at gunner station. And IT was reportedly prompted by the fact that this guy hit on her and he had ignored him and IT untapped a great deal of age.

Within south korea, gender and equality is a really big issue there. There is a pretty major income gap. The patriarch structure is more firmly and train a lot of ways than IT is in the united states. This particular incident kind of on tap, is like, well, spring of anger among feminized south korea.

Why do you think people have been talking about IT now in relation to trump people?

The united states have been talking about IT for a while. IT comes up every few years. I came up after transferred selection in twenty sixteen, and I saw IT come up on social media in twenty twenty two. After robi weight was also returned, there was talk on social media of doing like eliza strong a as sex strike from this ancient greek play, lizza by aristos is this comedy that's essentially about this group of women who go on sex strike as a way to sort of bring an end to the palpable ian war? So it's kind of something that just pops up in the discourse during a moment when women feel like their rights are really endangered.

Has the b movement succeeded in expanding anywhere outside korea?

yes. And although he hasn't necessarily been called that, there has been six strikes in other countries that have been successful. There was one in columbia that result. I didn't like a bunch of rural roads being caved. There was one in the Philippines, there was one in kenya. And what's really interesting is that they tend to succeed in cultures where women's rights really are not part of the conversation, where the patriotic structures, like very, very deeply entrenched, and women have very little bodily autonomy, but not so much in countries like south korea or here, like more industrialized countries, we like more of a blip in the rater.

Yeah, you posted a twitter thread, I think actually talking about some of this, saying that we move in really could never get traction here. Can you talk to me a little little bit about what you posted and what you're arguing?

Yeah, I think there are a few different reasons for why I can get traction here. The first one is that is very IT, right? And there's no rated way to really gauge like the effectiveness of IT if it's just a couple people on twitter saying we're not going to have sex, we're not going to procreate, that's obviously not really onna get a lot of movement.

The other thing is I think that the premise of IT is fundamentally based in a very nineteen fifties view of female sexuality that we've outgrown in the united states. It's sort of this idea that sex is something for men to be enjoyed and for women at something to be like. We're linguists, ed, if they feel like get or with hello, if men, or pissing them off.

And that's not really how most women grow up thinking about sex these days. I mean, obviously, we live a very much of genetic culture, but it's a much more sex positive culture and that women know what that sex can be enjoyable for that. And then they have the tools and the resources available les, such as birth control, so they can enjoy casual sex.

The idea that women should refrain from something that is pleasurable to them is really na to a lot of feminists to hear about sex strikes. And then I think the biggest reason ultimately, why something like before and be a movement wouldn't work in the united states is because women are already kind of doing IT. The birthday is declining.

It's at a historic law. IT declined three percent between two thousand and twenty two and twenty, twenty and twenty three. The marriage rate has declined like sixty percent over the past fifty years, also had a historic low.

Famously, jersey is having less sex than they used to. Although I think those studies are a little bit flaw in a lot of ways. I think overall, what these numbers point to though is that women are waking up to the idea that having IT all is a fallacy.

The economy stocks has never been more difficult to raise a family in this climate. They've seen how their mothers and grandmothers have ve been able to handle like having careers and having families and how exhausted they were. And they don't want any part of that.

So they're already opting out, you know. And I say this as a woman who is married to a man and as children. I've spent a lot of my career reporting on this and talking to women in their twenties and thirties and forties who have just been very clear to me about this.

Like i'd saw how my mom did this. I saw how my grandma did this. I don't want any part of IT.

You know, what is the benefit to me in getting married and having a family in such a restrictive economic climate, like where there is no government Manda childcare, there is no paid leave, there is none. There really isn't. So I think the four b movement is sort of redundant in that sense, because women are already making these choices.

How much do you think women making those choices, player of all in sort of this meal, anger that we see online and the rise of this super lake, sort of showers? C masochists, oh.

ual, I think it's the primary driver for IT. I don't think they that a lot of the men's rights actives necessarily have liked the language or the introspective veness to kind of pinpoint that. But it's something that i've been noticing, and i'm sure you've been noticing the past few years on the internet, sort of this rage against single child free women, really building to a fever pitch like there's everyone's in a while.

There are all these like tiktok that go around where some woman described how much he enjoys her life being single and in her late twenty or early thirties and she's just hit with like a wall of the most violence on genetic harassment ever. And it's just like a woman living in a life. I have really seen that reaching a fever pitch over the past few years.

And I think as we're sort of unpacking the results of this election in the role that ms. Gene in the man you're played in IT. I think we're going to be talking .

about that a lot more. What do you think that rise of that missing gene is going to ultimately, I like had sexual gender relations in this country. I mean, nothing good.

You know, like I think to a large degree, men and women already feel like they're at war with each other. I think that's only going to get worse with this administration. The trumpet administration is insistent on encroaching experiment's rights and because a major contributory factor of his Victory has been tapping into the influence of these manufacture pod casters who regularly spouts massage isc garbage. I mean, I think if you're like more than a little bit online, then you sort of don't see how this came from nowhere like you sort of see how this was a slow build toward men, particularly White man, kind of standing up and taking a stance against what they feel has been then being deprived of their do. And you know, women opting out of marriage and motherhood is a very big part of that.

Will be right back with more E J. Dixon after the break. This episode is brought to you by A W S. With the power of A W S, generate A I teams can get relevant fast answers to pressing questions and use data to drive real results, power your business and generate real impact with the most experienced cloud.

What do you think of all of the news articles that have cropped up in recent weeks on the form e movement and IT resonating with women in the U. S. In the week of the election?

I think that a lot of the coverage is pretty uncritical, but I think that can be said for her, a lot of media coverage about things that are take route on the internet. I have started seeing, like in the past few days, reporting that sort of been like, well, you know what? IT didn't really catch on in south syria, you know and actually I saw an article and where they talked to south syria and feminist and they were like wire people in the us. Talking about that like that was nothing that that was over like years ago.

So even if we don't see something like the four b movement, do you think that there will be any sort of like concerted online resistance movement to the rise of some of this missing gene that's become so perfected ve online?

I suspect there will be, but I suspect it's going to be unfortunately a lot more potent, a lot less potent then me too, was and you can tell just in the week finding the election. I mean, I do think that, that people on the left are really, to a large extent, still taking the time to process like why this happened and sort of doing a post modem.

But I haven't seen anything even close to the amount of outrage and protest and resistance that happened after twenty and sixteen. I and I think that really boats very pottery for us, especially st has no guard rails this time around. And IT could very well be a lot worse.

So I don't know why I kind of think that people are burned are like to burn out and too exhausted and depleted to reate organize. And there is also like a lot of leftist infighting that is also sort of contributing to IT. And think your pointing well also.

it's a different platform landscape. I feel like twitter generally, especially in the early days of the last trump presidency, played such a key role for activists even with blockage, matter moving or all of these movements, right, like they really emerged on twitter, and I would say, sort of solidified on twitter in ways. And now twitter has been completely coffered.

obviously. Ly, by elan mask, I mean, he owns IT. And for trump messaging in a way that I don't think I can be used as the same hub for activism and IT seems like there is no real space online, like no singular space online to replicate that sort of digital organizing.

Agree one hundred percent. yeah. I think that's a great point. And I would even go so far as to say that the entire social media ecosystem has been radicalized to a pretty significant degree by the right. Even if you look on a sensibly leftist or leftist skewing platforms like tiktok, IT basically prioritized the content that you are most likely to engage with and the content that you are most likely to find interesting. So I just sort of perpetuates this echo chAmber that is happening on the left and on the right regardless of what your political affiliation is.

I guess to me, tiktok, I always kind of push back on that a little bit because they think they do at future. And the replies feature, like there is a lot of dialogue that happens on tiktok that, for instance, ince, you would never get on somewhere like instagram, r or youtube and tiktok feels much more twitter like in that way where it's like, sure, do people go down, you know, follow all the people are engaged with all the people that they want. Yes, like, but we all know what it's like to be on the wrong side of tiktok writer, like when your content leaves its little bubble. And IT does happen a lot, especially with posts that have to do with politics because you immediately have people from the other side teaching or do adding them.

I've actually know is that that happens much less than I used to, really much much less yeah.

I think there's actually last post al discussion on tiktok generally, but also both political parties have sort of worked together to push these platforms to sensor political speech. This is why meta now downrange all speech from journalists and activists. Tiktok is very similar.

Two words, I think, suppressed a lot of political content. Like one thing that I think people in power, whether their democratic republicans, seem to be able to agree on is that they want less online activism and less speech. And we've seen that throughout the trump and biden presidencies alike.

And I do think it's concerning when we look at our social media landscape, these apps that were originally sort of usher in with things like the arb spring are right. People talking about like their liberators nature. Now you you can even say the word feminist. I'm right on threads without getting down one.

right? Yeah, I think you're right. I do thank you right? I think it's going to slow burn and is also another contributing factor that we're going going to sort of have to reckon with when we're doing like a post morning.

Well, you thank you so much for having on with and chatting this week.

Thank you so much for having me.

That's for this week's episode. You can watch full episodes of power user on my youtube channel at tailor s. Power user is produced by travel's large angle Carter. Our video editor is sam assets. Our executive producer is that mac car user is part of the vox media podcast network.

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