The South Korean feminism project will be dead in the water. Like it or not, we need men, and they need us. Maybe we just need to reform #MeToo.
The South Korean feminist 4B movement began several years ago in response to revenge porn and spy cam events targeting women by, guess who, misogynist men. South Korea has a lot of them, it seems. The movement galvanized further when an incel, irritated that women ignored him, killed a stranger in a public restroom.
In the wake of the Red Tide washout in the U.S., progressive feminists are considering adopting 4B, so-named because in Korean, they name the four things feminists must renounce: No dating, no sex, no marriage, no babies. They’re sick of Korean men’s shit and they’re not going to take it anymore. It’s particularly irritating to Korea’s not-exactly-feminist president who blames the movement for the country’s declining birth rate (the lowest in the world), and that may be true. But his response has been stiffer penalties for women filing false sexual assault claims, rather than addressing the violence, male sexual predation, large wage gap between males and females, and the near-non-existence of women in high-level positions.
Korean attitudes towards women appear still stuck in the ‘60s. Many blame women, their revealing clothing, and their sexuality for the sex crimes committed against them, a lot of it digital. It’s no wonder they’re forswearing men.
Do Americans really need 4B?
Of course American ‘progressive’ feminists, the very ones who practically chauffeured so many young men to Trump rallies, think they’re going to ‘show those Trump guys’ a thing or two—or not.
4B is a pointless protest for #MeToo Americans. Especially when Gen Zs are having less sex than even Millennials. Both generations are marrying less, dating less and ergo aren’t popping out kiddos.
An American 4B movement will be dead in the water for another reason, too.
The women who drove 4B Google searches 450% higher in the days after the Democratic trouncing are part of why Republicans won both the White House and all of Congress. Trump, love him or hate him, exemplified the masculinity so many of his voters feel, with some justification, has been under attack by man-hating feminists, and that Trump responded to the modern man’s very real crisis with sympathy, rather than rebukes. Meanwhile, Kamala Harris played to her educated blue feminist base, little realizing that progressive liberalism (as opposed to traditional liberalism) constitutes less than 10% of American political thought.
Well, she won the progressive chickies anyway. Yay, Kamala.
The wanna4Bes forget something else: A helluva lot of women voted for Trumpistan.
What the 4B gang simply haven’t realized yet is how small a minority they themselves are, identified as part of the detritus many Americans felt the country needed to eject. For better or for worse. The Red Tide was unquestionably, but not solely, a mandate against progressive ‘woke’ ideology.
4B is a movement for the young, not the already-married and -bred. Marriage and commitment may even make a comeback under Trump II. For the rest of us, there’s the rotting carcass of #MeToo which jumped the shark years ago.
A refreshed feminism is clearly in order for the U.S. It offers a good opportunity for liberalism—real liberalism, not woke déclassés—to inaugurate a lighter ‘blue wave’ for North American feminism.
Grownups who honestly believe in women’s agency, power, and free will can sweep aside the babygirls who don’t, and embrace those who do along with those men who haven’t yet decamped to the other side, to move feminism to a new level—one more embrasive, less combative, and willing to cross the lines and open dialogue again.
It’s simply unnatural to contemplate otherwise.
As Magdalene J. Taylor asked on her Many Such Cases Substack, Why Is It So Hard To Admit We Need Each Other?
She observes that ‘men and women no longer seem to like each other’ and identifies the intimacy crisis succinctly. “Every post about hating the opposite gender is fundamentally saying the same thing: they’re all so desperately trying to prove just how badly they don’t need anyone else.” She notes how irrational it is and against our natural state.
Let’s remember, the core purpose of life on Earth, whether we like it or not, whether we agree with how it evolved, is to perpetuate life. We are social animals who evolved toward group cooperation as a survival tactic. It’s worked brilliantly; we are now the planet’s apex species.
Only humans, inarguably the brightest of them all, have managed to screw it up so badly.
Any movement predicated on not connecting with the opposite sex (or same sex, even if baby-making requires a third party), that demands we renounce the literal meaning of life is doomed to fail. Just ask a Shaker.
American women are not in the same place as Koreans. The progressive left’s, at this writing, still-unwillingness to examine the misogyny on its own side for the Trump travesty, and the lousy candidate anointed by Democratic pols, without a primaries mandate, makes it clear they still Just. Don’t. Get it. It’s only been a few weeks, so maybe in a few months, or after the inauguration, ‘progressives’ will be more amenable to less extremist feminists who will find themselves self-marginalized if they don’t join us adult-ers in reaching across the divide. We liberal-but-not-crazy-feminists can hope to coax a few men away from the manosphere, and these angry young progressive women locked in their own ‘femosphere’. We traditional liberal women can embrace a more mature feminism over their self-infantilizing mental and emotional prison based on regarding men as our equals, not enemies.
The Trump Train? It’s on us, too, not just their obviously-flawed voters whose candidacy requirements are as bottom-feeding as the Dems’. The piss-poor choices both parties offered this year appalled many, enough that some voted for neither. Or not at all.
It truly does go against our nature to go solo, as tempting as that may be. Even men, who more famously pretend they’re self-reliant and individualist, still rely on women far more than they admit. They tend to jump into another marriage sooner when the previous one fails; wives function primarily for emotional support. And of course you can’t make babies without a woman.
The Dalai Lama, and countless psychologists, observe that every sentient being seeks pleasure and avoids pain. While the marriage first, babies later model may make a comeback—and it’s not such a terrible idea—conservatives need to understand not everyone is wired to be that way, and that’s fine too. They disliked the authoritarian dictates of the woke-left forced on themselves, now they’ll have to consider their own mandates and whether it’s fair to force them on others.
Shouldn’t it be mind-bogglingly obvious by now that the solution to the never-ending sexual battleground isn’t more division, but less? That nothing will be resolved as long as men and women hate each other? That when two groups hate each other long enough, they inevitably wind up at war—literal war?
Will the GOP declare a war on sex?
On the other hand, if Republicans make good their Project 2025 fantasies to restrict or eliminate birth control, it may be worthwhile to revive the 4B chastity practice. Not that that’s gonna happen. America wants jobs, not blue balls.
What would really cut close to the boner, though, is a No Blowjobs protest. I wrote about a Lysistrata-style strike, tongue-in-cheek, after the Roe loss, but if women lose access to birth control too, men must be forced to share the pain. This time, it’s personal.
“NO MORE BLOWJOBS!” A New Feminist Protest
Trump has no future in Washington after his second term is over, but the Republicans around him do, and wouldn’t it be grandly ironic if 2028 turned into a Blue Wave with reformed Democrats promising to make sex less risky and enjoyable again?
Adopt, or reform?
What if American feminists simply reformed or rebooted #MeToo? Purge it of the crazy woke nonsense, stop labeling everything even vaguely male as ‘toxic’, de-emphasize anonymous accounts of sexual assault, since ‘truth’-tellers’ may be lying to share the attention of the victimized sisterhood, recognize that women have a responsibility to themselves to improve their own lives, be ambitious, and not blame ‘patriarchy’ for their own shortcomings? What if feminists stopped talking about ‘microaggressions’ and encouraged young women to grow up and learn resilience and assertiveness, that if they want something, they should earn it, not ask nicely?
Another way we can fight the crazier political wank fantasies of Trumpism is for women to agree to have each other’s backs. Relations between the sexes is likely to get worse before it gets better and the danger comes from those newly-Trumpified male voters who rallied around, yes, a known sexual predator. At least some of whom will likely feel emboldened to take out their hostilities—and sexual frustrations—on women more.
I wrote about that a few years ago too. What If Human Women Challenged Male Aggression Like Bonobos?
If you’re not up for the TL;DR version, here’s the synopsis. All primate species evolved a male dominance model except for one: Our cousins the bonobos, whose social model is more female-dominated. Despite physically larger and stronger males, bonobos are famously pretty peaceful. Yet when a male gets out of hand and behaves too aggressively, the females immediately band together and subdue him (there’s a video of it in the article).
The primary reason for why this promotes more egalitarian social dynamics (which involves a helluva lot more sex than you will ever have!) is female bonding and friendship, including outside their own groups.
Women have the power to drive a more co-equal social evolution, but we have to first acknowledge we have that power, and then unite to use it. We have, as I’ve always maintained, the power to end male aggression, if only we choose it, and the bonobos prove it can be accomplished.
Women are fighting back even one-on-one.
These attackers were alone when they fought back. What if women banded together and fought back against assaults in public? Whether verbal, sexual, or physical?
Women won’t be alone. Many men still sympathize with the women’s rights movement and empathize with the challenges women still face. If feminists were less antagonistic to all males, rather than the truly problematic ones, we will have more male support too—and we absolutely need it.
What we don’t need is another feminist movement, borrowed from a culture observably behind our own on women’s rights. Trumpocalypse II is an opportunity for #MeToo to level up and emphasize personal development and power, helping younger, self-infantilized feminists still stuck in victimhood mentality to take charge of their lives. Take back their power.
Grow some labia! And defend your sisters!
Maybe we will need to borrow from 4B if the GOP really does limit, restrict, or ban birth control, but those are very big ifs. I don’t believe the numerous American women who voted red this month want a birth control ban. They want a return to protections for women against the predatory men of the left’s transactivist movement. Kamala Harris made a huge mistake emphasizing abortion rights which she was never going to be able to do much about.
We don’t need our own 4B; we need to fix #MeToo. We need men, and they need us. That’s how life evolved and it’s not going to change.
We need to re-accept nature, and reality.
Because believe me, sex was a lot more fun back when I was your age.
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