South Korea – “4B” movement: form of self-protection

»The 4B movement is the gender-reversed version of the incel movement, as both ›blackpilled‹ -Movements are. That means they are based on a hopeless one ›black truth‹“ argues one person on the Reddit internet platform. She is referring to the growing trend among South Korean women to completely refuse to have relationships with men. “4B” stands for the four aspects of the movement, all of which begin with “B”: “Bihon” means the rejection of heterosexual marriage, “Bichulsan” the refusal of motherhood, “Biyeaonae” the refusal of dating and “Bisekseu” the refusal of heterosexual sex. This attitude is an expression of frustration, the person on Reddit continued, and not a progressive struggle based on feminist solidarity. That’s why you have to criticize them.

The post received a lot of support on Reddit. But is the attitude expressed therein justified? Are the South Korean women who refuse men really like men who represent a regressive biological world view because they are supposedly or actually sexually rejected by women and are therefore “involuntarily celibate”? In incel Internet jargon, “blackpilled” refers to the fatalistic belief that the choice of partner is based solely on certain visual criteria, with women always having the upper hand.

Anyone who wants to see the “4B” movement as the complement of incels is ignoring reality. In this world, women are still oppressed by men. Unpaid reproductive work, the “glass ceiling” that makes professional or academic advancement difficult, sexual and domestic violence, gender-specific chauvinism and insults, brutal body politics and the risk of misogynistic attacks if one accuses or even actively fights these conditions are among them. Fortunately, feminist struggles in large parts of the world have at least raised awareness of the systematic violence against and exploitation of women. They were often able to mitigate them. But these achievements were always accompanied by setbacks.

Such a backlash can be observed particularly clearly in South Korea. Despite increasing cultural disruptions and progress, South Korean society remains deeply patriarchal. On average, women there receive over 30 percent less wages than men – making South Korea the country with the largest gender pay gap in the so-called First World. At the same time, there is enormous pressure on women to constantly look attractive. Many invest a large portion of their meager wages on fashionable clothing, makeup and plastic surgery to conform to South Korean society’s rigid beauty standards. The goal that these body norms are intended to achieve is often marriage and motherhood. However, the women criticize that the potential partners have little to offer: reproductive work and child-rearing are completely female affairs in South Korea.

According to a 2015 survey by the Korean Criminological Institute, 71.7 percent of South Korean women feel controlled by their partner, 35.5 percent discussed psychological and 22.5 percent physical violence in their relationships. As if that wasn’t enough, so-called “sperm terrorism” has been around for some time now: men ejaculate on women’s clothes or food in order to humiliate them. Secretly photographing and filming women and publishing the often sensitive material on the Internet, where men then give vent to their rape fantasies, are also common practice. In South Korea, perpetrators usually receive a maximum of fines for this, as police officers lack awareness of gender-specific violence.

However, in August 2018, after a woman secretly took the photo of a nude model at her university, she was sentenced to ten months in prison. The anger over this double standard and the everyday occurrence of male violence, to which women in South Korea are largely unprotected, erupted in nationwide demonstrations and the founding of new, feminist movements. Participants in the protests cut their hair in front of the camera to oppose the beauty industry and prevailing ideas about beauty. This gave rise to the “Escape the Corset” movement, whose success has now led to a quarter of all South Korean women no longer wearing make-up. This is understandable: Although there is nothing wrong with make-up per se, the ideological communication of unattainable aesthetic standards reinforces women’s insecurities and takes money out of their pockets.

Supporters of the “Escape the Corset” movement quickly came together to form the “4B” movement through activist exchanges on social media. Similar to political lesbianism, the aim is to keep contact with men as low as possible. This sometimes leads to tensions within the community: Are friendships with men okay? What about gay men? And what about trans women who are sometimes excluded from “4B” forums?

For some women organized in the “4B” movement, the demand that they no longer want to have anything to do with men is certainly too radical. However, other activists argue that this is a necessary form of self-protection: as long as men despise women and inflict violence on them, the only rational thing to do is to avoid this violence completely. For the “4B” women, the heterosexual relationship is not a guarantee of security, happiness or fulfillment, but rather a source of violence. Unlike previous feminist discourses in South Korea, the “4B” discussion does not only take place in the environment of universities and NGOs, but also brings together women from all economic backgrounds. This leads to a closely networked solidarity: members of the movement support each other economically – which seems necessary in a society with such great gender-specific financial inequality -, give each other tips when looking for accommodation and help each other to defend themselves against abusive men. Feminists in particular are often the targeted victims of misogynistic attacks, both on the Internet and on the street.

The fact that members of the “4B” movement cut men out of their lives is due to a specific social threat – it is self-protection. The comparison with incels is therefore very flawed: the hatred that these men have for women is the result of an offended sense of entitlement and misogyny. The supposedly unfair lack of sex that they complain about is blamed on women in order to legitimize their own, often violent, misogyny.

The fact that women deny men their attention, their bodies and their time in order to protest against their regime is not new: Even in ancient times, Lysistrata, at least in Aristophanes’ comedy of the same name, called for a sex strike to end a war . But does that do anything? In South Korea, feminist criticism of patriarchal punishment has not yet led to a rethinking of the male population, but on the contrary to a massive anti-feminist backlash. Men complain on the Internet about “mean feminists” and “superficial women” who are only after money in relationships, or attest that feminists are to blame for the decline in the birth rate. According to a 2019 study by South Korean journalist Cheon Gwan-yul published in the book “Men in 20s,” 58.6 percent of South Korean men in their 20s hold “extreme anti-feminist attitudes.” Almost all men surveyed said that social discrimination against men was greater than that against women. This attitude is also evident at the highest political level: the former chairman of the conservative People Power Party Lee Jun-seok made anti-feminism an integral part of his election campaign. One of his goals was to abolish the Ministry of Women and Equal Rights. Although Lee was not able to prevail, it does not look as if the situation for women will improve in the next few years.