so a lot of people are talking about the 4b movement. a lot of western women, specifically younger ones, who seem to have largely heard about it through social media via other western, non-korean people, or by articles that cover it with a tinge of orientalist exoticism. if i may, some thoughts: ๐งต
by definition, the 4b movement specifically refers to:
- ๋น์น์ค (bi sek seu): no sex with men
- ๋น์ถ์ฐ (bi chul san): no having babies
- ๋น์ฐ์ (bi yeon ae): no dating men
- ๋นํผ (bi hon): no marrying men in light of how things have turned out in the us, the "four nos" make sense for women.
the 4b movement is a radical, splinter, extremist movement in south korea that focuses entirely around trying to fight the patriarchy in this way, because in this formulation, it is the institution of marriage that helps enforce and maintain the extremely rigid patriarchal norms in korean culture
when i say the 4b movement is a radical, splinter movement, i am not exaggerating: its origin, its numbers, even its very existence is very much on the bleeding edge. to be a feminist in korea is to already stake out a rather extreme position. this is because gendered patriarchy is baked in so deep
for centuries, the neoconfucian philosophy that drove the country and culture baked in a very rigid hierarchy: the family over the individual, superiors over subordinates, elders over juniors, parents over children, men over women. even if the political apparatus fell apart in the 20th century...
...it's embedded into the very fabric of culture. it is expected that women prioritize their husbands' families over their own, from holidays to elder care. it is expected that women sacrifice for their children, sacrificing their careers. women have obviously not enjoyed this, but also?
women have not had the opportunity to do anything about it until the very modern era. i want to remind you that south korea as we see it now is a product of about 70 years of development from a shattered country broken by colonialism, imperialism, and war with the lowest GDP per capita to G20.
that is in 70 years. a single fucking lifetime. this means that social movements have also been, correspondingly, compressed. americans within our own generations feel future shock between the xennials and zennials now imagine a korean from 1980 vs. a korean in 1989.
if you were born in 1980, your first memories are a dictatorship. your next memories are brutal repression and violent pro-democratic protests. if you were born in 1989, your first memories are the first democratic elections, the next, a terrible financial crisis.
the vibrant feminist movement as we see it really only gained a voice in the last twenty-five to thirty years in korea, and it is facing off against literal millennia of oppression baked into the culture, into the very fabric of the language. it's why its very tenor is different.
it is also a part of a constellation of other feminist actions, none of which gained the same attention, because in my estimation, none of them were as exotic. few, if any, talk about the korean #MeToo, similar to the west's. the same can be said about ํ์ฝ (tal ko) "escape the corset" movement.
the former, i understand. why focus on another country's sexual predators in power when we have so many of our own? the latter? well, have you seen some of the miraculous things koreans have in terms of skincare? all the serums and moisturizers and toners and sunscreen and... ๐คทโโ๏ธ
returning to the 4b movement, the one that has captured the west's imagination: it is important to be aware of the origins and where it sprouted from. it is important to know the context from which it grew. korea, like the us, has a poisoned information sphere. what we saw in this year's election?
it is an echo of korea's in 2022. it is a manifestation of trends that stretch back to when gamergate was a thing. one of the worst online sites in korea is ilbe, a vile, toxic right-wing message board inhabited primarily by angry men. women, in turn, joined angry, reactive message boards:
megalia and womad. neither are as large as they were in their prime during the late '10s, but i would like to mention that one of the biggest reasons for their split and ultimate decline was a fundamental distrust and often outright hate for queerness. yes. radical korean feminism has a problem...
...with terfery. and as a trans woman myself, given the context, i get it. i don't like it, but i get it. anyway: in both of those message boards you had multiple tactics, including "mirroring", which is to just return misogyny with misandry, and women going their own way (4b)
(i am realizing i should have written an outline because this is very meandering) none of these really are able to match the larger problem of extremely poor gender equality in korea. they do not provide answers to the staggering pay gap, one of the worst in the oecd, or cultural expectations link
it does not provide answers against things like molka, or the nth room or the burning sun scandal or nth room 2: worse deepfakes
it is also not even related to the collapse of the birth rate, breathless protestations of westerners excited about an army of angry korean amazons avoiding the world of men. i go into this in a comment i made on another site
if we're being honest, there are less than 100,000 korean women who claim (almost all anonymously) to be a part of the 4b movement. and that 100k figure is still being extraordinarily generous, given that currently one of the worse slurs one throws at a korean woman is "femi" for "feminist"
there are almost 10 million korean women between 15 and 50. if 4b were really something this revolutionary, that popular, you'd see more. the numbers don't add up. because so many more of those women are signing up for matchmaking services rather than (rightly, honestly) going their own way.
i think what i really want to underscore is that if you're going to borrow something from another country's feminist movement, it makes a lot more sense to understand the fullness of what they're doing there and apply the lessons. it makes no sense to go for an exoticized, orientalist interpretation
look into books like hawon JUNG's flowers of fire
engage with media like nobel laureate HAN kang's "the vegetarian [์ฑ์์ฃผ์์]" or CHO nam-ju's "kim ji-young born 1982 [82๋ ์ ๊น์ง์]" or kyung-sook SHIN's "please take care of mom [์๋ง๋ฅผ ๋ถํํด]"
their fight there is so similar to what we have here. the particulars are different, but the goals are the same. but 4b? this is just a mirror of mgtow. i am not saying we need to save men. that's on them. that's work they have to do. but the tenets of 4b will not save us either.
and, to be quite frank? do the work. volunteer at abortion care clinics. donate to funds. fight for sex ed by going to school board meetings and voting in those elections. support your local women's health clinics. make sure you can direct those in need to auntie networks. quote post 1
we take care of ourselves. we do not need men, but nor do we need to shun men to enact that radical care.
there are so many other things i want to say about feminism and womanhood in korea from my perspective as a member of the diaspora, but i have to work and if there are any specific questions i will try to come back here and either answer them or point you in the right direction
note: quote thread 2
another note i wrote on mefi about the cultural shifts korea went through, and it touches on the gender gap between men and women when it comes to voting.
oh. fucking hell. this thread should put out to pasture anyone's support for the appropriative, terfy, swerfy, gross "american 4b" movement [quoted thread from wagatwe wanjuki, pointing out that the 4bamerica instagram account is terfy, swerfy, and uses ai]
if you're wondering why it's called "4b": quote thread 3
unscientific but noting the reaction i've seen in the korean circles i'm adjacent to: quote thread 4
(posts that follow are links to other posts by other koreans re: 4b, emphasizing the aggressive and problematic nature of the movement, including queerphobia, transphobia, and anti-woman bullying. not included in this because permission to include in the text version has not been confirmed yet.)
white women suggesting they appropriate the 4b movement as a mikado-fied lysistrata as if it will change minds my sisters in diana, 53% of y'all voted for trump also we know a good set of arms/butts will make most of y'all crumble faster than the blue wall
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a side thread: ํ์ฝ and 4b both came around in the back half of the 2010s--around 2017/2018. there is a reason why, as a korean american trans woman, these movements were so inspirational and powerful to me, especially because i started transitioning in 2018.
ํ์ฝ still guides my thinking around how i present myself and my femininity.
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i do want to say that "misandry" as it were really isn't a thing, but the mirroring is one of the big underpinnings of womad/megalia's tactics berkeley political review
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the "b" in english is a reference to the "ใ " consonant in korean, which also makes the "b" sound. it is also sounds the same as the "๋น" consonant-letter as well, which helps. by itself, "๋น" doesn't mean "no", exactly, since you don't use it as a word in and of itself. it's more like a negator?
it also has chinese origins (kinda like how we sometimes have greek/latin roots, except korean and chinese are not related languages). another way of translating the "4 nos" is like, "4 nots":
- not having sex (with men)
- not giving birth
- not dating (men)
- not married (with men)
i put the men in parentheses because they're not actually mentioned in the phrases--it's just understood that it's referring to men (part and parcel of the queer erasure in the 4b movement)
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the funny thing is i'm seeing a lot of koreans bemused at this, and others alarmed because the 4b movement doesn't have the best reputation in korea. other feminists see them as being self-interested, and they've started bullying campaigns against women who don't agree with them
for instance, most recently, feminist writer and nobel laureate HAN kang, because she'd been married and had a kid this is in addition to their swerfy and terfy leanings
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