National Review
4B Chess: Progressive Women Now Interested in Abstinence
By Kayla Bartsch
November 18, 2024 12:10 PM
In the lead-up to the 2024 election, so much ink was spilled over the gender gap, it seemed like every woman in America was projected to vote for Kamala Harris. (Turns out, not every woman wants a female president more than they want a healthy economy.)
While there was a clear gender gap in the exit polls, it was nothing nuclear. Fifty-four percent of female voters cast their ballots for Kamala and 44 percent for Trump — a decent margin, but nothing record-setting. (In 1996, 55 percent of women voters picked Bill Clinton, while only 38 percent voted for Bob Dole.) On the flip side, 54 percent of male voters went for Trump, while 44 percent voted for Kamala.
Despite the clear evidence of political differences within the identity group of “women,” there remains an insatiable flank of progressive women who insist that this is The End for American females. This fringe truly believes that 44 percent of American women were duped into voting for a misogynist regime — one that will send them all back to the kitchen in prairie-dress chains, or something.
These women are committed to fighting the Trumpian patriarchy. After the election, Google searches for “shaving,” “head shaving,” and “my body, my choice” skyrocketed. So did searches for “4B movement.”
What is the 4B movement, you ask? The social trend originated in South Korea in 2016, when a man murdered a young woman — a total stranger – in a public restroom because, as he said, “Women ignored me.” In a country where gender relations were already tense — South Korea has the lowest fertility rate in the world, at just 0.78 children born per woman — the publicized murder sparked the powder keg.
The name “4B” derives from the Korean abbreviation of its four tenets:
Bisekseu — no sex
Bichulsan — no giving birth
Biyeonae — no dating
Bihon — no marriage
In short, the “four no’s” (“bi” means “no” in Korean) are not just an adamant rejection of the traditional role of women in society, but a rejection of all men-kind. This model of “radical feminism” does not tolerate a both/and approach — where women can both be wives and mothers and also operate in the world with equal dignity to men. The 4B movement seeks to avoid, and thereby annihilate, men altogether.
In Milton’s Paradise Lost, the poet’s famous epic about the biblical account of creation, the world is not complete until God forms woman. Taking a rib from Adam, God makes Eve — “Heaven’s last best gift.”
In 4B’s Paradise Lost, Adam’s very creation was a mistake. And Eve didn’t commit a sin by eating of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil — no, she was seeking liberation from the bounds forced upon her by, you guessed it, men.
From TikTok to The View, liberal women have advocated for this “sex strike” model of political action.
A professor of women and gender studies at Arizona State University, Breanne Fahs, told the Washington Post that the 4B movement is “everywhere.” The female scholar of females said that, after the election, “Young women do not trust that their reproductive rights are secure, so they are turning to new ways to assert their agency and reclaim a sense of control over their bodies.”
So true, Professor Fahs! Women totally have the right to say no to guys who, uh, only want one thing — only, you’re behind the times, professor. The religious Right has been saying this for decades. Hookup culture? Bad. Casually sleeping around? Gets old real fast.
Fahs then made another argument we Catholics have been making for years: “Young men expect sex, but they also want us to not be able to have access to abortion. They can’t have both.” Amen! Tell the young men to grow up and invest their energies elsewhere! Hey, maybe even pursue marriage and fatherhood? A world in which women refuse sex outside of marriage is a world in which the demand for abortion plummets.
Fahs continued, “Young women don’t want to be intimate with men who don’t fight for women’s rights; it’s showing they don’t respect us,” she added. (Who’s going to tell her that just because a guy voted for Kamala, it doesn’t mean that he respects women?) She should watch the 2017 “Girl at a Bar” skit from SNL, where several skeevy men, in succession, approach a lone woman at a bar. The woman (played by Cecily Strong) is clad in a “future is female” T-shirt, prompting each guy to virtue signal their “feminism” to rack up points.
The first guy rags on Donald Trump for harassing women and unveils his own “future is female” T-shirt. Next, a man-bun appears and proclaims that he brought a bus-load of attendees to the Women’s March in D.C. The third guy brags that he worked for Hillary, while the last guy — clad in a pink, cat-eared hat and progressive pins — asks, “Do you, by any chance, follow Kamala Harris on twitter?”
The punchline? After a brief stint showcasing their “feminist” views, each of the men requests gross sexual favors from Strong’s character — and then reacts with rage when she denies them in horror. (When I was in college, many a straight man would don a “Yale Feminist” cap to similar ends.)
I’m not sure if “abortion ‘rights’ advocate” should be the quality by which women determine whether or not a man will make a suitable partner. (Let us not forget that the majority of women who receive abortions are pressured to do so by the man in the equation.) Ladies, don’t set your bar so low!
While I admire the chutzpah of these women who are swearing off men (or who are, at least, saying as such), I’m not sure that they’ve thought through long-term strategy on this one. Generally speaking, refusing to procreate is not the best method to ensure the sustained lineage of one’s beliefs and traditions. (Lord knows the Traditional Latin Mass Catholics are doubling down on the numbers game.)
I can say that social conservatives are not bemoaning the newfound enlightenment of these women.
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