Some angry women on TikTok are shaving their heads to protest the election, and it’s unclear how President-elect Donald Trump will ever recover.
Just kidding. Trump will never hear about these viral stunts, and even if he did, he would probably only laugh at the women pulling them. However, millions of impressionable young women are seeing this content, and not just the most extreme, outrageous videos. An entire TikTok movement is now giving young women terrible life advice in the name of “feminism.”
It’s called the 4B movement, and it originated in South Korea when many young women, facing true gender barriers, intense social coercion toward marriage, and widespread male partner violence, swore off dating men, getting married, having sex, and having children altogether. It picked up steam in some pockets of TikTok before the election, but, as reported by the New York Times, U.S. interest in the 4B movement has truly exploded since Trump’s surprising landslide victory.
“Searches for ‘4B Movement’ in the United States spiked the day after the election, according to Google Trends,” the New York Times reported Friday. “Dozens of videos on the topic have popped up on TikTok in the last 48 hours, with users sharing why they are for or against the movement’s gaining steam in the United States.”
Many of these videos, which routinely receive millions of views, are openly antagonistic toward men and unabashed in their advocacy that, partly due to the election results and theorized restrictions on abortion, young women should abandon dating, marriage, and parenthood. There’s just one problem: This is, generally speaking, terrible advice.
There may be some people for whom a single life is preferable, and they should be free to make whatever life choices they want. However, that is not most people. Most human beings are intrinsically drawn toward partnering and having a family. In fact, the 4B movement specifically targets young women who do want to date and do want children, as it’s trying to convince them that they nonetheless shouldn’t because of politics.
This is absurd.
Maybe these women don’t want to date men who are pro-life or who voted for Trump. Though that’s a bit close-minded, it’s not inherently unreasonable to want a partner who shares your value system. However, why abandon and write off the 44% of men who voted for Vice President Kamala Harris?
Feminist influencers are actively encouraging young women to deny themselves some of the experiences that give life meaning to make a political statement that, frankly, will largely affect people who are already on their side.
At least people who are on their side right now.
The other added incoherence of the 4B movement is that rather than reward and uplift the men who are sufficiently pro-woman in the left-wing feminist perspective, it collectively punishes them for the actions of other men. That’s not going to win more converts to the feminist cause. It’s going to further push men to the right and toward the online antifeminist uprising!
That’s why even a liberal, feminist opinion writer for the New York Times has condemned the movement, dismissing it as a “losing strategy for American women.”
Yet it’s actually far worse than that.
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By encouraging young women to abandon the pursuit of partnership and family, the 4B movement is actively leading its adherents toward unhappiness, exacerbating the gender divide, and discriminating against and further radicalizing young men — all while doing nothing to advance actual feminist causes or goals. Other than that, it’s great.
Brad Polumbo is an independent journalist and host of the Brad vs Everyone podcast.
This article was originally published at www.washingtonexaminer.com
