The 4B Movement: Wider Implications and Discourse

The four tenets of the “B” in 4B are as follows:

“Bihon,” meaning no heterosexual marriage, “Bichulsan,” meaning no childbirth.“Biyeonae,” meaning no dating men.“Bisekseu,” meaning no heterosexual sexual relationships.

Six years after the movement’s inception, the Korean government passed new legislation increasing sentence length and fines for spyware and voyeurism charges, along with a timely and massive mobilization of resources toward restoring an aging workforce and population. 

Global Implications and Opinion

This could merely be correlative, or completely unrelated. If, however, causal–- then it speaks to a new frontier of social protest. “A Sex Strike” sounds like the basis of something icky, misogynistic, and disconcerting that Howard Stern would say.

And yet, women in the West have found themselves compelled by the growing privacy, security, and safety concerns surrounding women and children both online and in person. The common denominator in the majority of instances of violence against women and children, some Western 4B creators note, is men. 

I interpret this perspective to mean the covenant of masculinity in its darkest form, as opposed to individually. Something that is, perhaps, a product of a world unable to coddle all its children. A world where little boys are told that “men don’t cry,” and where parents across the aisle of gender and continent alike did not grow up in circumstances that afforded them the luxury of expressing normal childhood feelings themselves. A world where both artists and lovers have always lamented a lack of empathy, justice, and security.

Whatever the root cause may be, I speak of a group archetype that can be familiarized to the American perspective by the cover-ups of rape and sexual assault by fraternities and their respective colleges and universities, the cohort of elites who sexually abused adolescents and schmoozed their ways around Epstein Island; and on the international scale, human trafficking rings that subsist off of women and children sold as cargo to be sexually abused.

Interpersonally, women who date men can never quite know for sure how their current fling speaks about women when none are in the room. 

Would he believe you if one of his best “boys” made you uncomfortable in any way, or would he justify his buddy crossing your boundaries and make an excuse? 

If you were assaulted one day and confided in him, could he interpret that as cheating, and turn on you? 

When the “honeymoon” stage has faded, and you ease into a less lively routine, is he going to pressure you to be sexual when you’re just really not in the mood? 

Have you heard how he speaks to his mom? 

Yet, there is no “Good Man” code of honor obliged to all those born into that role, either. Not everyone who becomes a parent has a present partner, or can remain present themselves, and those who do may not know how to breach conversations with their children about boundaries, respect, and consent as they come of age. 

I fear that the gaps created by avoiding these discussions will be filled in with the long-term psychological effects of porn overconsumption.

 In this conversation, we are inevitably whittled down to the normative conceptions of the masculine and feminine essences that the majority of people live under, as exclusionary and limiting as it can be to identity-conscious discussions. 

The insidiously pervasive “battle of the sexes” trope seems to be just waiting in the eaves to juxtapose the incels, — involuntary celibates, an online collection of young men and boys disheartened by their romantic and sexual prospects — with the 4B “selcels”. 

The difference between the two internet-age philosophies is staggering.

4B began as a retaliatory movement to protest crimes against women, and the incels banded together on forums like Reddit independently because they felt hopelessly forgotten and undesirable. Many incels lament the hatred and resentment that they harbor for women who, in their experience, won’t give them the time of day.

Elliot Rodgers, one of the first examples of the incel in the internet age, channeled his discontent into the 2014 slaughter of six people in Isla Vista, California, which he filmed before taking his own life. 

In all 137 pages of Rodgers' manifesto, through the countless videos posted to his Youtube account, his biggest grievance and primary cause for committing these murders was being a virgin at 22 years old. 

Social violence from disaffected, antisocial young men is nothing new. Ted Kaczynski, Jeffrey Dahmer, Thomas Matthew Crooks. We’ve all heard this song and dance before. In recent years, this archetype has taken on a particularly lurid and sexually-fixative persona. 

The role that female sexuality plays in the online marketplace, and in the formative social experiences that the involuntarily celibate have deprived themselves of, seems to translate into an incentive to commit direct acts of violence against the women that they have perceived to reject them. Instead of more vague acts of violence against the whole wretched world, such as anthrax envelopes in mailboxes, and bullets whizzing past politicians, more and more crimes are being committed against regular women and girls as revenge.

In my opinion, the most disturbing element of the Rodgers case, and many others committed by those deemed to be incels, is the psychological removal of “woman” from “person.”

Rodgers wasn’t considering the wholeness of his victims as people— on the contrary, and with respect to the victims and families— frankly, he saw all women as walking holes. Holes to which he had no access and, therefore, deserved to die.

For a young man who has trouble connecting with people, and likely interacting with any woman outside of his immediate family, how confusing it must be to come of age in a world where you can lock yourself away for fourteen hours straight to consume pornographic content on sketchy websites; websites unable to verify whether or not the videos in question contain evidence of abuse of a minor or sexual assault. (Nicholas Kristof, The Children of Pornhub, NYT 2020)

Constant exposure to women undergoing demeaning sexual treatment, and pretending that they like it for the camera, is an unrealistic pivot to the women of the real world, of varying ages, belief systems, opinions, and perspectives. 

“These women– different, but also women– must not be so far removed from the ones I spend countless hours watching do sex acts, right?” Obviously *** not! 

But children and adolescents can come to these uninformed conclusions on their own when they are online unsupervised, and don’t have the consent discussion after the “Birds and the Bees” talk.

Viewing sexually violent content at a young age surely can’t help either.

There is some resultant fundamental disconnect, with certain young men, between their own sexual needs and the harm caused by sexual violation. Every “come on, please” an uncomfortable person who does not want to have sex has to hear is a testament to this. 

The proliferation of 4B speaks for itself. Until everyone can get on the same page about the “equal partnership” element of relationships, sexual boundaries, and consent, these apprehensions toward traditional union and relationship structure may very well continue into the future.

If the economy is out of our hands, those who wish to procreate should at least come to a mutual understanding that will allow them to become healthy parents; rich in emotional intelligence, even if materially poor.