Former President Donald Trump/Photo = AP As former President Donald Trump, who had been criticized for his misogynistic remarks and history of sexual crimes, won the U.S. presidential election, frustrated American women protested the ‘fourth secret’ of feminism among Korean women. Analysis has shown that people are showing interest in the 4B movement.
On the 7th (local time), the Washington Post reported that the ‘4B movement’ is attracting attention mainly among young women in the United States, and related hashtag posts are rapidly spreading through social networking services. The explanation is that while posters are expressing disappointment with the results of this presidential election, they are introducing Korea’s 4 Rain Movement or expressing their willingness to participate.
The 4 B movement comes from non-marriage, non-childbirth, non-relationship, and non-sex. The newspaper added that ‘bi’ (非) means ‘No’ in English, and that Bi-hone means no marriage or willingly unmarried.
In addition, the 4 Rain Movement is an online feminist movement that spread in Korea through SNS and online communities in the mid-to-late 2010s. Korean feminism raised its voice in the wake of the Gangnam Station murder case of a woman in her 20s in 2016, and in 2018, the U.S. He added that the MeToo movement also spread across the country and had a significant impact.
We also paid attention to the ‘corset removal’ movement that took place in Korea. The anti-corset movement is an online movement centered on young women with the purpose of rebelling against the male-dominated patriarchal society and questioning the ‘femininity’ that is forced only on women, by cutting their hair short, wearing neutral clothes, and not wearing makeup. It spread. It means saving time and effort on ‘decoration’, filling your inner self, and focusing on self-development.
The 4B movement goes further and resists inequality, misogyny, sexism, and sexual violence by rejecting not only marriage and childbirth, but also dating and sexual intercourse with men.
However, some explained that there was criticism that these women’s movements were too extreme.
The Washington Post reported that the 4F movement and feminism are highly polarized topics in Korea, a country with the largest gender wage gap among major member countries of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the lowest total fertility rate in the world (0.72 people). At the same time, he said, “President Yoon Seok-yeol, called ‘Korea’s Trump’, encouraged the gender gap by pledging to abolish the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family during the election campaign, thanks to the support of young male voters, and was criticized by women’s groups.”
After the results of the US presidential election were announced, the 4B movement emerged as one of the hottest issues online. It turned out that 200,000 people searched for this word on Google on the 6th alone. Not only the Washington Post, but also major media such as the Guardian, NBC, and CBS are paying attention to the phenomenon of the 4 Rain Movement by publishing reports one after another.
NBC diagnosed, “Trump’s victory is seen by many women as a sign of a regression in reproductive rights (a woman’s right to make her own decisions regarding childbirth).” At the same time, he cited the analysis of Mira Choi, a doctoral student in sociology at Yale University, who said, “American women’s frustration is being converted into a new movement that refuses to participate in heterosexual relationships with men and patriarchy.”
Kim So-yeon, Hankyung.com reporter [email protected]
