Maria woke up the morning after o Donald Trump won the presidency. She grabbed a razor and started shaving her head, recording the process and posting it on TikTok.

“I resign from America”she said as she tried to shave her hair until she gave up, grabbed a pair of scissors and started cutting it into pieces. “F@… to be everything the patriarchy wants us to be, because apparently they don’t give a damn about us,” she continued in the three-and-a-half-minute video, which has already racked up millions of views. “If you’re a man, I won’t talk to you. I will promote the 4B movement from now on.”

But what did he mean by the “4B movement”? Trump’s election sparked a wave of social media posts. The 4B movement was born in South Korea and advocates that women should renounce men altogether. Maria – @girl_dumphim on TikTok – explained in her video: “Women, stop dating men. Stop having sex with men. Stop talking to men. Divorce your husbands, leave your friends! They don’t give a damn about you.”

Since election night, Google searches for “4B movement” in the United States have skyrocketed by 4,000%! The five states of greatest interest – Washington, Colorado, Vermont, Minnesota and Maine – are all Democratic strongholds, suggesting that progressive women, disillusioned by Kamala Harris’ loss, are driving…the boat. TikToker Maria, for example, lives in New York, according to her video.

For Harris and many of her supporters, women’s rights took center stage in this election. Still, women ended up leaning toward Trump, despite his misogynistic rhetoric and the fact that he was responsible for the Supreme Court’s June 2022 decision to overturn the federal right to abortion.

For many progressive women, Trump’s victory, along with the failure of abortion-rights referendums in Florida, Nebraska and South Dakota, is a threat to their liberties. While Trump has expressed his support for states legislating abortion rights, they fear a federal ban on abortions, or at least a nationwide law limiting them to 15 weeks, as he has proposed in the past. Their concern is compounded by the fact that the new president is a man who has been convicted of sexual assault and accused of rape.

In response, many are turning to the 4B movement. TikToker @rabbitsandtea posted: “I’m doing my duty as an American woman by breaking up with my Republican boyfriend and officially joining the 4B movement”. Her post quickly went viral, garnering over a million views.

@rabbitsandtea Cat lady era activated #4b #4bmovement ♬ USAAAAAAAAAAAAA – Lawn

The 4B movement

The 4B movement, inspired by global feminist movements such as #MeToo, launched in South Korea in 2019 amid protests against the country’s deep-seated gender inequalities and misogynistic culture. The movement gained momentum during the 2021 presidential election, when conservative candidate Yoon Suk-Yeol campaigned to abolish the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, arguing that sexism does not exist in the country.

South Korea also has one of the largest wage gaps and the lowest birthrate in the world, with women of reproductive age having fewer than one child on average, according to 2023 figures. “4B” refers to four key rejections: heterosexual marriage (bihon in Korean), having children (bichulsan), dating men (biyeonae) and having sex with them (bisekseu).

In the United States, discussions about the 4B movement were not limited to TikTok, with users also supporting it on other platforms such as X, Instagram, Reddit or Facebook. “Ladies, we need to start thinking about the 4B movement like the women in South Korea and give America a serious and steep decline in the birth rate: no marriage, no birth, no dating men, no sex with men. We can’t let these men have the last laugh, we have to fight back.”reports a post on X.

Although the 4B movement has gained international appeal and popularity in recent years, particularly as young women around the world discovered it through social media, it remains relatively small outside of South Korea. Experts estimate that, in the United States, the movement is largely a reaction to Trump’s election.