Culture
4B Movement: Liberal Women Close Their Legs to Protest Trump’s Win
4B Movement: Liberal Women Close Their Legs to Protest Trump’s Win
By: Phillip Lede đť•Ź | 11/07/2024
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Following Kamala’s humiliating defeat to Donald Trump and sweeping Republican victories in both the House and Senate, liberal women have rushed to social media to voice their outrage. It is their conviction that on day one of Trump’s administration, he will roll out federal restrictions against abortion and enact The Handmaid’s Tale in real life. Although this isn't borne out by Trump’s insistence on leaving the issue to the states, they have directed their ire at many of his supporters for considering abortion as merely one issue amongst many. This demographic of single-issue voters, who were baffled by Kamala Harris’ loss, have accused men of being indifferent to their rights; including the right to kill their unborn children.
On social media, throngs of left-wing women have floated abstaining from sex, drawing from the 4B movement, to protest men’s indifference to the issue of abortion. The 4B movement originated in South Korea, where feminists went on a sex strike to lobby for gender equality and against perceived discrimination.
The notion of withholding sex for political or social causes isn’t new either, harkening back to Aristophanes’ fictional Lysistrata where the women of Sparta and Athens deprived their husbands of sex to force an end to the Peloponesian war. Today’s cause is undoubtedly far less noble than the one Aristophanes envision.
In spite of it all, there is a caustic irony to the most promiscuous of all females taking an oath of chastity in order to get back at hand-wringing, stuffy Christian conservatives. In order to punish the religious right, progressive women will refrain from premarital sex and contraception, two things that have served as the bane of social conservatives’ existence for decades.
Beyond the obvious humor, young women responding to abortion rollbacks by declining to engage in sex out of wedlock offers hope for the future. It reveals that women do have a choice over their own body, as much as they may declare that that choice begins and ends at the abortion clinic.
Young women’s incentive to willingly engage in casual sex evaporates when abortion is no longer on the table. Absent accessible abortion, sex is taken as the serious matter that it is, being the means of bringing new life into the world rather than an outlet for empty pleasure. Where the institution of abortion trivializes sex as inconsequential, it opens the door for hookup culture and sexual licentiousness. Progressive women, in admitting that they can refrain from premarital sex at all, inadvertently reclaim agency over their bodies. They may even discover that it is not their Republican congressman who stands in their way, but their own vice. In a country where 96% of women who have abortion have them for elective reasons, the right to choose is not exercised at the ballot box but in the bedroom.
On social media, throngs of left-wing women have floated abstaining from sex, drawing from the 4B movement, to protest men’s indifference to the issue of abortion. The 4B movement originated in South Korea, where feminists went on a sex strike to lobby for gender equality and against perceived discrimination.
The notion of withholding sex for political or social causes isn’t new either, harkening back to Aristophanes’ fictional Lysistrata where the women of Sparta and Athens deprived their husbands of sex to force an end to the Peloponesian war. Today’s cause is undoubtedly far less noble than the one Aristophanes envision.
In spite of it all, there is a caustic irony to the most promiscuous of all females taking an oath of chastity in order to get back at hand-wringing, stuffy Christian conservatives. In order to punish the religious right, progressive women will refrain from premarital sex and contraception, two things that have served as the bane of social conservatives’ existence for decades.
Beyond the obvious humor, young women responding to abortion rollbacks by declining to engage in sex out of wedlock offers hope for the future. It reveals that women do have a choice over their own body, as much as they may declare that that choice begins and ends at the abortion clinic.
Young women’s incentive to willingly engage in casual sex evaporates when abortion is no longer on the table. Absent accessible abortion, sex is taken as the serious matter that it is, being the means of bringing new life into the world rather than an outlet for empty pleasure. Where the institution of abortion trivializes sex as inconsequential, it opens the door for hookup culture and sexual licentiousness. Progressive women, in admitting that they can refrain from premarital sex at all, inadvertently reclaim agency over their bodies. They may even discover that it is not their Republican congressman who stands in their way, but their own vice. In a country where 96% of women who have abortion have them for elective reasons, the right to choose is not exercised at the ballot box but in the bedroom.