The 4B Movement: How Hookup Culture Is Changing

After the sexual revolution led to more women having casual sex, the pendulum seems to be swinging the other direction for some. Many Gen Z-ers are adopting the South Korean 4B movement, which focuses on rejecting societal pressures of marriage, motherhood, and heterosexuality. A major incitement of this trending movement is the state of abortion laws, but cultural attitudes around sex have been a crucial build up to this movement. Let’s unpack how hook up culture is being seen and what has led up to the US’s adoption of the 4B movement.

What is the 4B movement?

The 4B movement originated fairly recently. It was initially started by South Korean women, alongside #MeToo’s emerging prominence in 2017, in protest against gender violence and misogyny in South Korea. 

The Korean word for “no” is bi, which is a homophone for the “B” in the 4B movement. It has four tenets: bihon (no marriage), bichulsan (no childbirth), biyeonae (no dating), and bisekseu (no sex).

While it is all over the internet right now, the movement in South Korea is fairly small— some (unverified) estimates surmise a range of 500-4000 women involved.

Sex positivity in the U.S.: what changed?

In the 1960s, sex positivity was popularized in the U.S. during the sexual revolution, a feminist movement that pushed back against traditional views on sexuality and the law’s role in consensual sexual relationships. Sex positivity was a way to resist the sexist narrative that women shouldn’t have sex for pleasure. 

Today, the general cultural attitude toward sex has shifted to normalizing premarital sex and hookup culture. However, the message of, “sex is empowering for women,” has lost its punch, as many women are becoming disillusioned with hookup culture. Instead of its original intention of defending women’s freedom to have sex, sex positivity has morphed into a tool of reestablishing men’s sexual entitlement. It ended up giving men what they wanted: sex without emotional investment, which in turn, has bred a generation of, “fuckboys,” and repurposed misogyny. 

A big contributor to the crack in sex positivity’s dominance is the transactional nature and prevalence of dating apps. Dating apps are breeding grounds for harassment, and after a certain amount of, “u up?,” texts and orgasm-less hookups, the negatives seem to outweigh the positives for many. In fact, more than 90% of Gen Z has expressed frustration with these apps.

So when Bumble came out with an ad campaign with phrases such as, “thou shalt not give up on dating and become a nun,” a lot of women were not happy. Bumble’s anti-celibacy messaging was interpreted as the opposite of empowerment; after all, sexual liberation is about women having the right to choose. This ultimately highlighted the transactional element of dating apps: women weren’t the users, they were the product. 

Before the 4B movement, Gen Z was already going #boysober, a TikTok movement that was about taking time away from dating and sex in order to heal and practice self care. Ironically, going boysober has become a version of sex positivity for Gen Z. It’s all about reclaiming the power to choose, and opting out from unfulfilling hookups and dating encounters.

What is empowerment?

Sexuality has been a mode of subjugation for women, and people have different ideas of what resistance looks like. For some, it means, “having sex like men.” Other women find power in pursuing meaningful partnerships. Others prefer not to have sex. All of these things can be empowering— it just comes down to your wants and needs.

The main thrust of sexual liberation is that women should be free to make their own decisions around sex, whether that’s having it or not. Empowerment is making the choice that brings you pleasure and makes you comfortable–and not shaming women who have a different relationship with their sexuality.