Inside the growing movement to ‘de-centre’ men: How women are going on ‘sex strike’ and shaving their heads after Trump’s election victory – inspired by the 4B Movement in Korea

As news of Donald Trump returning to the office of president for a second term looms over the USA, women around the world have reacted with fear and anger. 

Saying they’ve been ‘inspired’ by the 4B Movement originating in South Korea, American women are shaving their heads and swearing off sex with their partners in protest of last week’s election result. 

The 4B movement, also known as ‘Four Nos’ feminism, advocates against heterosexual marriage, childbirth, dating men, and heterosexual sexual relationships entirely. 

It has now gained traction in the US following Trump’s re-election to the White House, aiming to ‘punish’ men in the belief they’ve voted against women’s rights. 

Supporters of Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris are spearheading the promotion of the movement as her campaign was focused on women’s rights – specifically in terms of reproductive rights and healthcare. 

Those following the movement have taken to social media to encourage others to stop ‘putting out’ for men and to delete dating apps, even shaving their heads in order to ‘repel’ men. 

It comes amid a growing trend for women to ‘decentre men’ from their lives, with young liberal women across the world deciding to swear off men due to them being ‘liabilities’. 

Others say they’re ‘boysober’ – where they abstain from all forms of male attention for a temporary amount of time. 

The massive surge in interest in the 4B movement – particularly regarding women shaving their heads in protest – has already proven controversial, with some saying it’s ‘beyond disrespectful’ to those with alopecia or going through chemotherapy. Others have said these women, who are filming protests on their phones, are unaware of their own privilege. 

Posting on social media, one woman, from the US, left viewers stunned as she took an electric razor to her head and chopped off her locks.

‘F*** being skinny, f*** being hot, f*** being all the things that the patriarchy wants us to be, ’cause clearly they don’t give a s*** about us,’ she said. 

‘Stop dating men, stop having sex with men, stop talking to men, divorce your husbands, leave your f***ing boyfriends, leave them,’ she added.

‘I have many thoughts right now, but what I’m going to say right now is women you need to stop putting out for men,’ wrote @addisonraedefenseaccount on TikTok.

‘Like I’m not even kidding. You need to stop f****** these men they don’t give a f*** about you. Stop dating stop f****** these men. You don’t need them, go buy a f****** Rose Toy. Stop f****** man. Stop! They don’t care about you b****. Like enough.’

Another, posting under the username @rocky_horror, added: ‘Ain’t nothing worse being alive than being stuck with a man. None! We are taking coochie off the table indefinitely.

‘As a woman, my bodily autonomy matters, and this is my way to exercise sovereignty over that,’ said one TikToker, encouraging other women to ‘delete their dating apps’ in solidarity.

‘If you need someone to cuddle or give you a kiss, I bet you one of your girlfriends would do it, and you don’t even need to be gay. It’s OK to have a lot of platonic love for the next four years,’ she said.

Cathy Press, psychotherapist and author of Love Bites, a book about navigating abusive relationships, told FEMAIL that many women are realising that ‘they can be put in massive danger by agreeing to have (or not to have) sex with someone’.

‘They’re trying to take back that bit of power where they can at a time where they feel their reproductive rights and sexual liberation taken away from them,’ she said.

However, the expert and author stressed that it would take quite some doing to “decentre” men’.

‘Most societies across the globe are steeped in patriarchal systems and beliefs,’ she explained.

‘Rejecting heteronormativity and heteronormative sexual and romantic relationships has been done by LGBTQ+ people for decades, including placing more emphasis and finding safety in platonic love.

‘In terms of how women are coming to these conversations, it is all about personal autonomy over one’s body, how they choose to use it, and with whom- whether in response to a movement of threat which disempowers women from having personal agency or not.

‘At the end of the day, these women are stating that, as equal partners in a sexual experience, too many men are not taking responsibility for, nor do they care substantially about, the safety of their partner in that experience.

‘It’s an understandable reaction when women are positioned so heavily in society as sexual and reproductive objects for male pleasure.’

Cathy said that after Trump’s victory, the movement has more room to grow, or even gain just enough traction based off women’s feelings of fear following the election.

‘Just as people such as Andrew Tate have influenced the belief and behaviours of males across the globe using social media platforms, so does this women’s movement,’ she revealed.

‘Clearly the spread of the movement has been facilitated by women reaching out to one another within the global community and learning from how others are dealing with the same fears.

‘After Trump’s victory it may become more common for women to think very carefully, or even shy away from, the dating scene or places where they could be under threat from a man.

‘Certainly, by allowing perpetrators into power who believe that men have the right to treat women however they want, nothing in that dynamic will change, and may become even more widespread and entrenched as a belief system for both men and women.

‘Trump has already proven his disregard of women’s facility for choice and personal autonomy, and is therefore something that a considerable number of women fear.

‘However, remember: by rejecting heterosexual sex or relationships with men, this doesn’t necessarily mean that a woman is safe, because a man may decide to harm her anyway. That’s the horrific reality, and how the 4B Movement came into being in the first place.’

She concluded that – whether seen as positive or negative depending on each individual – it is a clear sign of the fear women around the world feel.

‘While it is often minimised as a topic of conversation, it is extreme and frightening for women to have their reproductive rights and legal safety taken from them,’ Cathy said.

‘And this is happening simultaneously with sexual predators, abusers, and offenders of sexual violence in relationships being held to account less and less.

‘Sadly, we consistently hear of cases where women refuse advances from men and are punished for doing so, sometimes fatally.

‘The response to these systematic and grassroots threats to women’s safety is fear. Particularly as one of the most powerful people in the world now has the power to continue threatening them legally, and furthermore because his campaign was backed by popular male figures of misogyny like Andrew Tate and Elon Musk.

‘They were always part of Trump’s campaigns in the past, but have been made overtly clear in this election.

‘At the end of the day, it’s not overtly a positive or negative reaction, but it is a reaction we should have empathy for.’

Women are now hoping to ‘punish’ men for choosing Donald Trump instead of current Vice President Kamala Harris in the US election last week, in the fears the vote will lead to more hardline policies on issues such as abortion and women’s rights.

However, according to the Associated Press, 53 percent of white women supported Trump with Harris taking in 46 percent of votes. 

The former president, who has now been re-elected for a second term, has long been known to make derogatory comments about women. 

The twice-impeached president was convicted on 34 counts of falsifying business records and left the office in 2021 on the heels of claims that he ignited an attack on the US Capitol. 

President elect Trump has celebrated the Supreme Court’s June 2022 decision to overturn Roe v Wade throughout his 2024 reelection campaign – a ruling that ended a nationwide right to abortion. 

The idea of separating from men entirely is not a new concept. Second wave feminist groups in the 1960s and 1970s advocated celibacy and denouncing men, such as Cell 16. 

While this was seen as extreme, now it’s become a much more commonplace belief and may even seem trendy to members of Gen Z. 

Since the election last week, google searches for the 4B movement have spiked by a whopping 450 per cent. 

The 4B Movement in South Korea first began after a woman was murdered in near Seoul subway station when she rejected a man’s advances. He confessed to killing her but police refused to brand it a hate crime, leading to fury on social media. 

4B itself is believed to have begun in 2019, around the time President Yoon Suk Yeol was elected. 

The conservative president has said publicly that feminists are to blame for the country’s financial difficulties and low birth rate, and ran for office with the aim of abolishing the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family.

It is called the 4B movement because ‘B’ is a form of shorthand for the word ‘no’ in Korean. 

The 4Bs themselves are the pledges behind the movement: Bihon, the refusal of heterosexual marriage; Bichulsan, the refusal of childbirth, Biyeonae, abstaining from dating men; Bisekseu, the rejection of heterosexual sexual relationships. 

It first emerged against a backdrop of anger over South Korea’s spycam porn epidemic, whose victims are mostly women, and cases of sexual misconduct uncovered in the global #MeToo movement. 

This has helped supporters of the 4B movement feel confident that gender inequality is an ever-growing problem in the US.

‘American women, looks like it’s time to get influenced by Korea’s 4B movement,’ one woman wrote on X/Twitter.

However, it has already sparked much backlash online, with people saying those shaving their heads in protest are being ‘disrespectful’ to those with alopecia or going through chemotherapy treatment for cancer. 

Lara Napier, who is from the UK, said on TikTok: ‘This so-called 4B movement going on in the States at the moment is actually beyond disrespectful to women. 

‘I’ll say this – you are allowed to not be happy with the results of the American election. If you want to go online and say f*** Trump and all of that, fine. 

‘But going online, shaving your head so that way men will have “nothing to do with you”… is so beyond respectful and rude to women who have alopecia and are going through chemo treatment at the moment. 

‘I can’t even begin put into words. Do any of the women who are doing this realise how privileged they are in life? 

‘Claiming you have no rights or you’re losing your rights while you set up your iPhone, costing at least a grand, in a tripod, making yourself get the perfect lighting and filming yourself shaving or cutting off all your hair and posting it on your social media to “prove a point”. 

‘The actual movement going on in South Korea, frankly, this makes a mockery of it.’ 

Another, @hannahdraftspams, said: ‘Shaving your head as part of the 4B movement is so performative in a sense. The 4B movement was never about looking ‘unattractive or showing resistance. Bald doesn’t equal lacking in femininity.’

The 4B movement is building on an already popular trend that encourages women to ‘decentre’ their lives away from men entirely – a subject that has racked up more than 30 million posts on TikTok. 

One of the most popular influencers helping to spearhead the movement is Charlie Taylor, based in Brooklyn in New York, who runs a podcast called Charlie’s Toolbox. 

Charlie, who is in her 30s, is a social media influencer, content creator and podcaster, running a popular Instagram account with more than 20,000 followers. 

She began her quest to ‘decentre men’ from her life after realising the ‘detrimental impact of male dominance’ on the women around her at the age of 14. 

Her podcast includes episodes such as ‘stop abandoning yourself to be in a relationship’ and ‘how to stop yearning for men and find happiness’. 

Meanwhile her ‘decentering men starter pack’ advises wearing ‘platform shoes to show dominance’, sunglasses to ‘ignore men’, a bag with hardware in case you need to swing and headphones ‘to drown out men talking’. 

Episode 28 of her podcast ‘How to Decenter Men’ teaches you to be the ‘main character in your life’ and centre yourself instead. 

Charlie, a researcher, admits she has dated men in the past and had ‘extremely fun moments with men’ but realised she wasn’t prioritising herself. 

In an article about decentering men, she added: ‘You do not feel like a full human being unless an adult male wants to f**k you or hang out with you. This is how much patriarchy has the world f**ked up.’

Many on social media have joined in with the trend, with @zigs_mom saying: ‘I literally cannot stress this enough, and I don’t know if this is like a canon event for women when they like turn 25, and our frontal lobe develops properly, but the best thing I did in my entire life, in my entire 29 years of being on this godforsaken planet, is decentre men from my life. 

‘Okay, I’m going to say it again. The best thing far and away I’ve ever done in my life right is decentre men from it.’

And others took to her comment section to write: ‘Commenting to stay on decentre men tiktok’; 

‘I am so excited to hear women younger than me reach this conclusion earlier than I did. It’s the best thing ever for your head and your heart and basically your whole life. Wish I got there sooner’;

‘It’s like you start living life in technicolor!’;

‘Yasssss on my level! Life-changing!!! ✨ Go on gal I love this energy.’

Meanwhile @your_fun_aunty on TikTok shared her top tips from decentring men from your life, saying the first way to go about it is to ‘stop seeing women as threats or competition’. 

‘Competition for what, a man? No thank you,’ she told her followers.  

Earlier this year, many women decided to join in the ‘boy sober’ movement, abstaining from the world of sex and dating.  

Comedian Hope Woodward, 27, who grew up in Tennessee, coined the phrase after she realised her toxic traits meant she was the ‘villain of her own love story,’ according to the New York Times.

She decided to ditch sex and relationships of any kind for 365 days in a bid to find emotional clarity, and called her plan going boysober.

With nearly half of a million followers across her social media platforms, including TikTok and Instagram, her plan caught on. Now, thousands of people across the globe are following suit – and have reported feeling better than ever.

Hope later took to TikTok to explain the rules for going boysober. She explained: ‘These are the 2024 boysober rules.

‘No dating apps, no dates, no exes, no situationships, and let me just say, my whole life I’ve been saying “oh I’m single”, no I’ve never been single, I’ve always had a situationship.

‘You’re not single if someone is taking up your brain space’, Hope said. She added: ‘No xo xo xo… and you know exactly what that means… no hugs and kisses etcetera.’ 

Now, ‘boysober’ has gone a step further, with 4B and decentering men movements seeing young women refusing to date, get married, have sex with men or have children at all. 

But the movement is perhaps no surprise – as vile misogynistic comments to women have already been made in the wake of the US election.  

Gen Z women are becoming victims of vicious cyber attacks with disgusting trolls telling them ‘your body, my choice’. 

US women have reported men are writing ‘your body, my choice’, as well as threats of rape and assault on their social media posts.

It follows a tweet made by far-right podcaster Nick Fuentes who wrote: ‘Your body, my choice. Forever.’

Camila Guadarrama, from Atlanta, Georgia, revealed she had to delete one of her videos because men were messaging her saying they can’t wait until she ‘gets raped’ and ‘your body, my choice.’

Advocate for women’s healing and liberation, Hannah Cor, took to TikTok to say: ‘Your body. Our choice’ and ‘We own your body now’ comments are starting to pour in.

Men no longer have or be quiet in their hatred for women. They can hate us out loud and lose nothing.’

The slogan ‘my body, my choice’ was originally popularised by feminists defending reproductive choices as rights in the Sixties.

Following Trump’s election win, women in the US have also begun sporting blue bracelets to demonstrate their support for one another. 

The trend went viral on TikTok after one woman asked others how they were going to ‘signal which side’ they are on.

The woman said: ‘Fellow white women. How are we signaling to each other which side we are on now?’

One Democratic woman revealed that she didn’t want others thinking she voted for Trump.

’52 percent of women that look like me voted for him. I’m ashamed and hate that others might assume I am a part of them,’ she said.

Other women flooded social media and praised the latest movement for helping them subtly showcase their political party.

One person said: ‘Commenting to stay on blue friendship bracelet TikTok.’

Someone else wrote: ‘Totally doing this!’

The original 4B movement has seen a growing number of women are turning their backs on the traditional expectations of South Korea’s male-dominated society, where working wives spend four times longer on domestic chores than their husbands. 

Marriage rates are also plummeting in South Korea where wives are often expected to work, raise children, and care for ageing in-laws with little state or community help. 

The country has the lowest birth rate in the world and the population is predicted to fall from 55 to 39 million by 2067. 

Gender inequality remains a prominent issue, with women on average paid 84 percent of what a man is while working full-time, year-round, according to the US Department of Labor.

In 2018, a report revealed that in the past nine years at least 824 women had been killed due to intimate partner violence (IPV). A 2016 survey by the Ministry if Gender Equality and Family found the incidence of IPV was 41.5 per cent – while the global average is 30 per cent. 

A decade ago almost 47 percent of single and never-married Korean women said they thought marriage was necessary.

In 2018, that fell to 22.4 percent, while the number of couples getting hitched slumped to 257,600 – down from 434,900 in 1996.

By 2019, the 4B movement was thought to have around 4,000 members. In 2020, an article in Feminist Current estimated it had 50,000 members – and tens of thousands more are believed to have joined since. 

It is currently unclear how widespread the movement is – although sex strikes as a form of protest have taken place around the world in countries including Colombia, Kenya, Liberia, Italy, the Philippines, South Sudan, and Togo.

Scholars have, however, credited the rise in the 4B movement with the growing education gap between men and women in South Korea – similar to the gender education gap in the US where women make up 59.5 per cent of all college students.

Today, nearly three-fourths of Korean women pursue higher education, compared with less than two-thirds of men.

These strong cultural attitudes bear similarity to trends in the US, where men are coming to terms with the shifting gender roles.

And while feeling the pressure of the diminishing educational advantages, many men across America are drawn to vote for conservative candidates such as Donald Trump who are determined to return to traditional values, which some believe prioritize men’s interests over female anatomy.

Members of the 4B movement view marriage as an existential threat to women, with supporters effectively boycotting a system they believe perpetuates gender inequity.

The movement has grown into an online community where thousands of women engage anonymously in discussions about life without men, offering an opportunity to vent frustrations about living in a conservative and patriarchal society.

However, some social media users have expressed their concerns that support for the movement in the US could result in a rapid decline in birth rates, reports Elle magazine.

The 4B movement in Korea was also inspired by hit film ‘Kim Ji-young, Born 1982’, which was released in October 2019 and based on the bestselling novel of the same name by Cho Nam-Joo.

Based on a controversial feminist novel, it centres on a married South Korean woman who has quit her job and struggles to raise her child with limited support.

Women viewers rated the film an average 9.5 out of 10 stars on the South’s top search engine. Men gave it 2.8.

Another feminist movement in South Korea – Escape The Corset – has risen up against the nation’s strict beauty standards, seeing some women smashing up their make-up collections in viral videos. 

Women have cropped their hair short and go bare-faced to shun the country’s booming beauty industry. 

Yoon Ji-hye, a 24-year-old YouTuber, feels South Korean women are often expected to be ‘passive, childlike and bubbly’, as well as attractive, to be desirable.

‘I used to spend hours mastering make-up techniques watching YouTube videos, and spent about $200 on beauty products every month,’ Yoon recalled previously.

Her ex ‘preferred’ her with long hair and did not support her feminist inclinations, she says.

She then became a 4B member, saying she does not miss dating or sex, explaining: ‘There are other options and ways to please yourself’.

Yoon is convinced most Korean men in their 20s and 30s have watched spycam videos or revenge porn – footage released by male ex-partners – one reason she no longer wants to engage with any of them.

During his 2016 campaign, Trump pledged to appoint Supreme Court justices who could help overturn Roe v. Wade. 

In 2022, America’s top court overturned the 1973 Roe v Wade ruling which had granted women the right to an abortion up until the point of foetal viability, which is about 24 weeks.

More than a dozen states have enacted abortion limits since Roe was overturned, and while abortion remains legal in many states, some Democrats worry that the Trump and JD Vance administration could see a federal ban on the table.

Last year, Trump took credit for the elimination of Roe v. Wade, embracing his role in selecting the Supreme Court justices who were instrumental in ending the half-century precedent that protected abortion rights nationwide.

‘After 50 years of failure, with nobody coming even close, I was able to kill Roe v. Wade, much to the ‘shock’ of everyone,’ Trump said on social media.  

During the final stages of his campaign, Trump said he thought states should determine their own abortion policies.

However he signalled support for a nationwide ban on abortions after 15 weeks’ gestation and as president, he supported a House bill that would have banned abortion nationwide after 20 weeks.