Remember the 4B movement? Last fall, the concept exploded in the U.S. right alongside the election of Donald Trump. Some called it a “sex strike.” The idea was that women were going to say “no” to men. No dating, no marriage, no sex, no babies.
There were viral TikToks. It was all over the headlines. It sparked debates, backlash, mockery, and threats. And then it disappeared.
A year later, we’re looking back at what happened to the 4B movement—or, maybe, more accurately, the 4B meme. We consider the current state of celibacy, decentering men, and women’s romantic refusal, and note a growing backlash against women’s… pretty reasonable complaints about men.
We also talk about other models of sexual resistance—from lesbian separatism to ideas around radical eroticism. What can we learn from the rapid rise and fall of 4B? What was going on after the election and where are we now?
These are very dire times for feminist commentary.
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Show highlights…
02:03 The origins of 4B in South Korea. Lots of issues!
04:24 A look at one of the earliest viral 4B videos in the U.S.
05:15 4B took off alongside the looming threat of a second Trump presidency…
08:10 … and on the heels of the “decentering men,” going “boy sober,” and divorce memoir phenomena.
10:00 Amanda was kind of feeling the decentering men thing at the time.
11:33 Tracy had a (nuanced!) critique of the online discourse.
13:22 How should we think about these individual—as opposed to collective—survival strategies under patriarchy?
17:10 4B was at least doing something about heteropessimism, right?
19:35 Amanda on taking a “pause” from sex in a hetero marriage.
22:19 4B exploded in response to the election, but also in response to “your body, my choice” rhetoric.
24:48 There was A LOT GOING ON with these 4B videos—a lot of these women were just expressing their feelings of hopelessness.
29:28 Are women not allowed to have feelings?
30:35 How we were feeling at the time. (Not great!)
32:47 None of us were OK. Some of us were saying some pretty wild stuff on the internet.
36:05 We reflect on sexual refusal in our 20s: Tracy (falsely) threatened to stop sleeping with a “bad boy” in order to get him to change his behavior, and Amanda used other methods to try to change men.
41:53 Fast-forward to how we’re feeling now. (Much better, despite it all!) Tracy talks about “quietly resistant” sex. Amanda is reading Dean Spade and thinking about how we resist hetero-monogamy.
46:26 Tracy is thinking about the “erotic we” between lovers, friends, activists, and neighbors. (This pod counts as an erotic we!)
48:52 We dive into the smartest critiques of 4B and tell you to read Sophie Lewis’s Abolish the Family.
52:54 Amanda sometimes has a hard time thinking of men as comrades!
56:43 Why are we still critiquing women’s complaints instead of white male supremacy?
01:00:36 Maybe we’re slowly moving toward the kinds of conversations—and utopian visioning—that we need.
1:02:33 Amanda gives a micro history of feminist separatism.
1:05:23 Tracy has a book recommendation to aid your utopian dreaming—and your “experiments in loving and relating.”
1:10:43 We’re happy to be here having these conversations with you. We need each other. (But also: pay us so we can keep doing this work!)
