In the aftermath of Donald Trump’s decisive victory over Kamala Harris on November 5, millions of American women—especially those of Generation Z, born between 1997 and 2012, currently aged from 12 to 27—are despondent and dismayed that Democrats’ campaign focus on abortion policy did not convince more voters to choose Harris. They are convinced that their “my body, my choice” freedom has been stolen from them by the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, and that they may now be unable to obtain abortion on-demand everywhere across the nation.
The Democrats’ crude, single-theme campaign focus on abortion completely ignored the reality that the Dobbs decision relegated abortion policy back to the fifty states—where it had historically resided—and that many states are already approving quite permissive pro-choice abortion laws. Abortion was virtually the only well-articulated theme of the Democrats’ 2024 presidential campaign—at least until the campaign rhetoric switched at some point to the “Trump-is-facist-Nazi” meme, which apparently few voters believed was either true, revelatory, or even interesting because they had heard it all during his first term in office. And to calm voters’ fears, Donald Trump averred that he would not even sign federal legislation banning abortion.
Bring on the 4B Movement
Yet now this generation of young women—mourning the loss of their abortion “freedom” (a key buzzword in Harris’s campaign)—may have discovered a mode of retribution against other segments of the American population, particularly against their own generation’s young men, many of whom voted Republican in this election. It’s as if Gen Z women were saying “Okay, you want to deprive us of our ‘freedom,’ just wait until we show you what we have up our sleeves to destroy your freedom.”
Their revenge against men takes as its model the 4B Movement in South Korea. “B” is shorthand for the word “no” in Korean, and “4” refers to its four principles. This movement is gaining traction among feminists in the US, with attention in mainstream media like CBS News and The Washington Post, after first having taken off on TikTok when Trump won a second term. The 4B Movement consists of four “no” guidelines—no sex, no dating men, no marriage with men, and no having babies. Advocates claim that it is suitable punishment for young men who voted for Trump in the recent election.
Young women who supported Harris are not only upholding the 4B guidelines, but are also shaving their heads, and suggesting that Platonic or lesbian relationships may suit them during the next four years. Some even advocate going further to collectively get hysterectomies, while others are breaking up with their Republican Trump-voting boyfriends.
Women defending the movement comment that, “Young men expect sex, but also want us to not be able to have access to abortion. They can’t have both,” and, “Young women don’t want to be intimate with men who don’t fight for women’s rights; it’s showing they don’t respect us.” How long these women will withhold their favors from young men is not clear, since at this point it appears to be an immediate reaction to the election results. Yet they claim that they will follow this policy for the next four years at least.
Others observe that, ironically, this stance could be considered a return to traditional men-women relationships, with a de-emphasis on one-night stands with numerous sex partners, and simultaneously a new emphasis on being intimate only with men who respect women.
Not the First Time
The American variant of this movement sounds like women “going on strike” against men, and it is in fact not the first time in human history that this notion has occurred to women. The ancient Greek playwright Aristophanes, born in 445 BC, wrote the satirical Greek comedy “Lysistrata,” first performed in 411 BC. The play featured women swearing off sex to protest the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta. The main character of the play—a woman named Lysistrata—organized women to withhold sex until men and women reach a peace agreement to end wars. To some extent, this play foretold feminism by giving power to women and making them the ones in charge of political decisions. The play—after much horseplay and many comedic scenes throughout its several acts complete with Greek choruses—ends with negotiations to end war and resume sexual relations, thus bringing the show to a happy ending.
Fast-forwarding to today’s world, a more dire outcome of the 2024 variant of “Lysistrata” may ultimately result from Gen Z’s sex-strike threats, though that outcome must wait some years or perhaps decades to assess possible effects on birth and fertility rates. What we know at this point is that men and women are polarized politically, socially, and economically. Recent surveys indicate that America’s gender gap reshaped the 2024 election, with a majority of young female voters, but less than half of young male voters, supporting Kamala Harris. Exit polls after the election support these earlier survey results.
Possible Outcomes of Adherence to 4B Movement
Short-term, the 4B Movement may produce indicators such as more divorces among couples in which spouses are registered in opposing political parties. Or increasing numbers of young women with shaved heads. Or that many more young women than previously are gaining weight (or not trying to lose weight), not using makeup, or attempting to be more attractive to men in dress or demeanor.
As for longer-range outcomes, if Gen Z women actually carry out their threats to exercise the four “no” commands of the 4B Movement over the next four years, and perhaps even past that point, a logical guess might be a further reduction in the US fertility and birth rates. This could have major implications for population growth, economic growth, and the future of federal intergenerational transfer programs such as Social Security and Medicare. These transfer programs are currently in jeopardy for future generations as their trust funds face anticipated insolvency within about ten years if Congress takes no measures to avert this outcome.
The US Generation Z population—both men and women—totals nearly 70 million, over one-fifth of the entire country. Frivolous claims and threats by young Gen Z women may portend major dislocations and societal effects looking ahead. Most of us would assume that the presidents who created Social Security and Medicare—Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Lyndon Baines Johnson, respectively—would not have foreseen that this potential demographic problem might doom their favored transfer programs that have long-run significance to Americans of current and future generations.
The financial success of both of these intergenerational transfer programs depends on the country’s maintaining demographic balance from one generation to the next. Unless careful thought is given in the near future to reform Social Security and Medicare, the old adage that “demographics are destiny” may come to haunt the future as Americans age from their working years to their retirement years.
