The election of Donald Trump as the next US president has sparked a surge in social media posts and internet search interest in South Korea’s fringe feminist “4B” movement, which calls for women to refrain from dating, have sex with men, have children and get married. men.

On TikTok, dozens of American women disappointed by Tuesday’s election results posted videos stating their intention to participate in their own version of the 4B trend. Over 200,000 people searched for “Movement 4B” on Google on Wednesday, making it one of the top trending topics on the online search engine.

The 4B trend, which started in South Korea 2018 behind the #MeToo movementhas become a way for some women to protest misogyny, gender discrimination and violence against women, according to Meera Choi, Ph.D. candidate in the sociology department at Yale University studying heterosexual refusal among South Korean women.

“Women started thinking about how the government, the state and men were failing them,” Choi said, and then they started “not rewarding men by not participating in heterosexual relationships.”

The renewed interest in 4B comes on the heels of an election in which gender played a major role. Some believed that questions about the future women’s reproductive rights would draw voters to Vice President Kamala Harris and hand Trump a crushing defeat — instead, women ended up gravitating to him. Harris it won women by 8 percentage pointswhile President Joe Biden won that cohort by 15 percentage points in 2020according to the NBC News exit poll.

Still, for many women, Trump’s win was an indication that their reproductive rights are waning.

Trump changed his position on a banning abortion at the national levelpreviously supporting legislative efforts to institute one and also saying the issue should be decided by the states.

While Harris he had a strong female support baseTrump finally connected more with voters on his promise to fix the economy and be different from the current administration, helping him take over nationally.

Data from an NBC News exit poll Thursday afternoon showed that among women, who made up 53 percent of the electorate, 53 percent voted for Harris and 45 percent for Trump. Among female voters, 91 percent of black women voted for Harris versus 7 percent who voted for Trump, and 57 percent of college-educated white women voted for Harris versus 41 percent who voted for Trump. Among white women who did not graduate from college, only 35 percent voted for Harris, compared to 63 percent who voted for Trump.

Among men, 42% voted for Harris and 55% for Trump. Among male voters, 37 percent of white men voted for Harris versus 60 percent who voted for Trump, and 47 percent of college-educated white men voted for Harris versus 50 percent who voted for Trump. Among white men without a college degree, only 29% voted for Harris compared to 69% for Trump.

American women who remain disillusioned with the government and Trump’s win “are now channeling that anger and channeling that hopelessness into this new activism in their private sphere, where they boycott men and boycott heterosexual relationships and (refuse) to participate in the patriarchy as a way to cope,” Choi said.

South Korea is in the midst of what some scholars have called “gender war,” in which concerns about inequality they caused a deep gender divide that became an essential part of the country’s national politics. In 2022, President Yoon Suk Yeol blamed feminism for the country’s low birth rate, saying he would increase penalties for false accusations of sex crimes and denied the existence of “structural gender discrimination”.

This in turn sparked a movement among feminists in the country to raise the alarm on their rights, including an embrace of the 4B movement. While Choi described 4B as relatively niche, she said she found that many women resonated with the idea of ​​using their reproductive choice and bodily autonomy to respond to anti-feminist sentiments and policies in the South Korean government .

The 4B movement has gained more interest and popularity on the international scene in recent years, especially as young women around the world learn about it on social media, according to Choi.

Aleisa Mora, 30 years old, posted a TikTok about the 4B movement in March after reading the English translation of “Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982” by Cho Nam-Joo, which is largely credited as the book that started the 4B movement.

Mora’s original video, which he reposted after the US election, has garnered more than 5.9 million views and sparked backlash from some men. She said her posts reached far-right corners of the internet, where men wished her ill. However, she said the comments only underscore her belief in why the 4B movement is needed in the United States.

“We tried to reason,” she said. “We’ve tried to be very careful, very humble, to talk to people about how to treat each other properly, but it’s not working.”

“Now that we don’t need a man for anything, and men continue to actively take away our rights, we’re like, ‘OK, we’re just not going to deal with you,'” Mora added.

Marykate Cecilia, who made a TikTok about the 4B movement after the US election, said she believes South Korean women’s efforts to boycott men are working in their favor.

“It’s working because the government is worried about the declining population size,” said Cecilia, 22, referring to South Korea’s low fertility rate, which has fallen to 0.78 in 2022 from 0.81 in previous. according to data from the World Bank Group. There is no data to indicate that the 4B movement is a factor in the decline.

“Maybe nothing has changed right away, but now it’s actually a problem that they have to solve,” Cecilia said.

But 4B is a flawed movement, Choi said, because it can often exclude women who don’t fit its particular definition of feminism, including transgender women, married women and women who have children.

Cultural differences between the US and South Korea, such as how diverse and monoracial the societies are, respectively, could also impact how a 4B movement would look among Americans.

For women like Cecilia, the fact that 4B continues to build momentum is still enough of a motivating factor to keep posting about and participating in the trend.

“If enough women decide this is possible, it would be great to see a change happen,” she said. “And to see that women are important.”