McKenna, who is 24 and lives in a rural, conservative state, recently got back on dating apps after a year of finding herself. She had two first dates planned for this weekend, but after Donald Trump won the election, she canceled both.

“It’s heartbreaking to know that you only matter in this country if you’re a straight white man,” she said. “It’s just terrible that we are at this point. So I will not allow another man to touch me until I get my rights back.”

McKenna, who did not want her last name published for privacy reasons, first heard about 4B a few months ago, through a TikTok video that referenced the South Korean social movement. The basic idea: women swear off heterosexual marriage, dating, sex and childbirth in protest against institutionalized misogyny and abuse. (It’s called 4B, referring to these four specific no-nos.) The mostly online movement started around 2018 with protests against revenge porn and grew into the #MeToo-like feminist wave in South Korea.

After Trump’s victory, McKenna is thinking about 4B again – and she’s not alone.

Trump’s embrace of manosphere figures like Joe Rogan, the Nelk Boys and Adin Ross means he enjoys strong support among their evangelicals – especially young men. But for young women, the former president’s long history of misogyny means a vote for Trump is a vote against feminism, especially with reproductive rights a key issue in 2024. Ahead of the US election, experts predicted a historic gender divide, and early exit polls support this prediction: women between the ages of 18 and 29 moved overwhelmingly to the left, while Trump gained ground against his male counterparts compared to 2020.

Now that the race has been called, TikToks has racked up hundreds of thousands of views as women have offered one way to go for the jugular: 4B, specifically cutting off contact with men.

“Girls, it’s time to boycott all men! You lost your rights, and they lost the right to hit raw! 4b movement starts now!” one creator wrote on TiKTok in a video that was viewed 3.4 million times.

In another video, a woman practices on a stair climbing machine. “Building my dream body that no one will touch for the next four years,” the caption reads. The main response to her message: “In the club we all live celibate lives.”

On Wednesday, Google searches for “4B” increased 450%, with the most interest coming from Washington DC, Colorado, Vermont and Minnesota.

In South Korea, 4B began as an offshoot of national protests against the spycam epidemic, in which perpetrators filmed targets – most of whom were women – having sex or urinating in public bathrooms without their knowledge or consent.

“These videos were sold and exchanged by men on Discord, and women were unaware of how many men had participated in them, or if any of the men in their lives had done so,” said Min Joo Lee, an assistant professor of Asian studies at Occidental. Secondary school. “There was a general sense of, ‘Who can I trust? And before I regain my trust in men, I must refrain from contact with them.’”

The demonstrations evolved into large-scale actions against patriarchy; some activists cut their hair or refused to wear makeup in a rejection of beauty standards and the male gaze.

South Korea claims the lowest fertility rate in the world, for a number of reasons, including the high cost of living, prioritizing work over family life, and a decline in marriage. Some companies and government agencies have offered incentives to parents: One conglomerate is giving employees with three or more children a free car, and another construction group has spent $5 million on $75,000 cash bonuses for employees who have babies.

In Busan, the country’s second-largest city, a government-backed pilot program organized blind dating events, offering singles $600 for each match they made. Those who married their partners or bought homes earned bigger rewards, pocketing up to $85,000.

As with #MeToo in the US, men have called 4B excessive and discriminatory in nature. South Korea’s conservative President Yoon Suk Yeol supported abolishing the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, which protects against gender-based violence and discrimination, and said feminists were responsible for the country’s economic problems.

Haein Shim, a South Korean activist and current researcher at Stanford University’s Clayman Institute for Gender Research, said in an email that women who participated in 4B protests faced cyberbullying, harassment, stalking and threats of violence. “Many of us wore masks, sunglasses and hats to cover our faces, and it was common to dress differently before and after a protest to avoid being stalked.”

There were also more nuanced criticisms. “Some debated whether it was a sustainable way to participate in feminism because it was a total separation from men, and some people believe that productive conversations need to happen between people with different worldviews for society to move forward, Lee said. . Feminists raised concerns about whether 4B “ignored the desires of heterosexual women to punish men who had or had not participated in misogyny.”

Shim, the activist, says 4B goes beyond just boycotting men and encourages women to find solidarity with each other. “It’s a new lifestyle that focuses on building safe communities, both online and in person, and valuing our existence in this crazy world,” she said. “What we want is not simply to be labeled as a man’s wife or girlfriend, but to have the independence to be free from societal expectations that often limit women’s potential to be fully recognized as human beings.”

Second-wave feminist groups of the 1960s and 1970s, such as Cell 16, which advocated celibacy and male separation, and political lesbians, which distanced themselves from heterosexuality, have historically been considered extreme – or simply trendy. 4B, a more contemporary movement that lives mainly online, may seem more accessible to Generation Z women. On TikTok, 4B posts play a communal and therapeutic role, a way to take back control at a time when fundamental rights are at stake.

South Korea’s fertility battle caught the attention of vehement Trump ally Elon Musk. The Tesla CEO has at least eleven living children (one son died in infancy in 2002). He describes pronatalism, the enthusiastic promotion of reproduction, as a way to save humanity from a “population collapse.” When Taylor Swift supported Kamala Harris this summer, he apparently, creepily and unsolicited, offered to get her pregnant. He has supported South Korea’s declining fertility rate as an example for Americans who aren’t concerned about making babies.

Think of Musk as an archetypal 4B enemy. He is far from the only one. Far-right figures like Nick Fuentes, a white supremacist who has praised Hitler and once described his “ideal woman” as 16 years old, celebrated on saving this country from stupid bitches who wanted to destroy the world to perpetuate abortion,” and, “Your body, my choice. Forever.” That kind of violent rhetoric, spreading among Trump’s far-right supporters, isn’t exactly going to convince the majority of young American women that they should be dating right now.

For now, McKenna isn’t sure exactly what 4B will look like for her in the wake of the election. She wants to do more research on the community. She doesn’t swear off sex forever, or take a vow of celibacy. “Now when I go out with my girlfriends to meet people, I don’t mingle with people to look for a date, but to get change,” she said. “If guys come at me, I’m just going to push back.”