"The election of Donald Trump has sparked a surge of interest in the United States in South Korea’s 4B movement, a radical feminist crusade that preaches the four B’s: bi-hon (no marriage), bi-yeonae (no dating), bi-sekseu (no sex) and bi-chulsan (no childbirth),” the Los Angeles Times reports.
“Since Nov. 5, there have been more than 500,000 Google searches for ‘4b movement,’ while on TikTok, Instagram and X, support for the cause has been trending among young women voters who are vowing to swear off men.”
It makes sense to me to not date men who won’t stand up for your rights, but that’s not my read of 4B.
How do you know you’re with one of those men, really? What happens when they change their tune?
A lot of men will say whatever they need to so they can get laid. Or think they really believe it until the relationship is threatened.
It’s not that women can’t do all that too but that women now have less ways to extricate themselves from such relationships.
Why risk it?
I feel like a person would know, or at least could know. But I guess you have a point. I have a much different perspective on dating at fifty than would have at twenty.
I’m fifty as well, and I can be fairly certain my wife would not have risked dating me in the current political climate.
We were both a bit older and she had never had a very serious relationship prior to meeting me.
Who knows how the math would’ve played out? My life was a wreck and she took a gamble on me.
I’ve made sure that gamble paid off.
But nowadays the odds have changed.
I can identify with a lot of that. She was a recent divorcee, though, and I was supposedly the one with my shit together.
But I will say that there was a point in my late tens or early twenties where maybe I was going to go a different path. I could’ve turned bitter had I had to deal with loneliness at the time.
I was doing a lot of work on myself and it was messy, trying to figure out who I was. So I guess maybe I feel a certain amount of sympathy for young men in that situation. But also I’m really beyond such things at this point. It just struck me as something that gets attention but sufferers from fundamental flaws (like either they are going to find the one and have sex anyway, or they just aren’t all that interested in sex with men to begin with and this is just a way to sort of turn their lack of interest into leverage).
But I’m just not twenty any more. Times are different. Kinda glad I don’t have to navigate it.
I absolutely feel sympathy for young men. They didn’t ask for any of this either. And they might have to do some work on themselves to get to a healthier place.
I certainly struggled with relationships, to the point of not understanding signs of clear interest.
It’s hard to notice this stuff when your head is down with despair.
Why risk it? Because human companionship can be an extremely rewarding thing.
People can find all sorts of reasons to shut themselves off and create walls to protect themselves from “what if”. I hope they are happy with their decision, but in my experience, that road is a one way ticket to loneliness, ineffectiveness, and resentful feelings.
There is a word for people who make this sort of negative stereotyping of a whole sex.