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4B or not 4B?

Why is this even a question?

Tony Atkinson
5 min readDec 12, 2024
Photo by Elin Tabitha on Unsplash

There has been a bit of kerfuffle around the ‘4B’, ‘4-nos’ or ‘Lysistrata’ movement of late. For the life of me I don’t see why!

4B began, or at least came to public notice, in South Korea in the 2010s. Faced with a toxically-misogynist culture and government, a relatively small group of women (estimated membership some 4 000 in 2019 but probably larger) had decided to intrduce four tenets into their lives:

No sex with men.

No giving birth.

No dating men.

No marriage with men.

Now given the drastic inequalities between men and women in South Korea, along with the high instance of domestic abuse and general violence against women, as well as an intensely pro-natalist government concerned with a drastic fall in the birth-rate (brought about by their own economic and social policies), I cannot fault these women. If renunciation is their preferred path to independence and safety, that’s up to them. Their life, their decision, end of.

Now in so far as I can tell, this is not a ‘movement’ as such. No call for universal adoption of the tenets. No call for political changes. No indication that this is in any way a protest. Just some women making a personal and valid life-choice.

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Tony Atkinson
Tony Atkinson

Written by Tony Atkinson

Snapper-up of unconsidered trifles, walker of paths less travelled by. Writer of fanfiction. Player of games. argonaut57@gmail.com

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