Additional context because I know the radfems are going to get their hands on this and love it:
- "Korea has the largest gender pay gap in the rich world, with women earning 31 percent less than men, and women still face widespread discrimination in the labor market, something the movement recognizes."
- "In 2016, a young man murdered a young woman in a Seoul public bathroom, telling police after that he killed her because women had always ignored him. Despite the perpetrator’s own statement, police refused to label the murder a hate crime. Furious, women flocked to online feminist message boards, communities, and chat forums. This wave of digital feminism attracted women from all backgrounds, including working-class women like Minji and Youngmi, making it different from traditional Korean feminism, which was largely confined to universities, NGOs that often received government support, and other elite spaces.
- In December of that year, as Korea’s fertility rate hovered at 1.2 births per woman (it has since slid to 0.78, the lowest in the world), the Korean government launched an online “National Birth Map” that showed the number of women of reproductive age in each municipality, illustrating just what it expected of its female citizens. (South Korean president Yoon Suk-yeol won the election in March 2022 with a message that blamed feminism for Korea’s low birth rate, and a promise to abolish the country’s Ministry of Gender Equality and Family. ) Women were outraged by the map, observing that the government appeared to consider them “livestock”; one Twitter user reportedly created a mock map illustrating the concentration of Korean men with sexual dysfunction. Several of these digital feminists responded with a boycott to the reproductive labor expected by the state and decided that the surest way to avoid pregnancy was to avoid men altogether.
- It was through these online communities that 4B emerged as a slogan, and ultimately a movement.
It's not just about hating men.
It's a political statement and protest for equality that specifically seeks to eliminate the way the way Korean women are used, abused, discarded within the patriarchy by their own refusal to participate in any of it or associate with anyone who benefits from it.
It's very specifically about Demanding equality from men in power by refusing to take part in the patriarchy and challenging the way it perceives women.
It's becoming a topic in the west now and so I wanted to add all this context with the addendum that this is NOT an inherently transphobic movement. It's also completely autonomous meaning there is no "leader" of it.
Each person will have their own reasons and method of participating in this movement. Anyone can join or be part of it. Yes this includes radfems and TERFs so when they eventually try to co-opt this movement as their own let's remember that they don't speak for all feminists and theyre definitely NOT the voice of oppressed Korean women who started this, and as such have No reason to put themselves in the spotlight of this movement. And we have no reason to let them.
