4B Movement: Latest Radical Feminist Caper Illustrates the Clash of Worldviews

By Steven Yates

November 26, 2024

What is the 4B movement?

It’s often said that we live in a lonely society. While the digitization of everything and everyone is doubtless a factor, radical feminism preceded the Internet and social media. Equity feminism stressed equal pay for women for equal work and equal experience, something all of us who consider ourselves fair minded supported. Radical feminism turns against families and against men as a group. I’ve sometimes spoken of its a-woman-needs-a-man-like-a-fish-needs-a-bicycle thinking. Some trace this phrase to Gloria Steinum. It was actually the brain abortion of an Australian feminist named Irina Dunn, back in 1970.

Nothing has been more obvious of late than the widening political-economic divide between women and men. Women have moved leftward as their economic fortunes have improved, while men have moved to the right as they’ve lost ground. This has become pronounced in Gen Z (born from 1997–2012). Election 2024 reversed a trend of several decades: younger people tilting left.

Speaking generally, single career women came out in force for Harris, while single men voted overwhelmingly for Trump.

This has not been lost on radical feminists, who blame Trump for the Supreme Court that reversed Roe v Wade. They also cite the (very dubious) sexual assault conviction in the E. Jean Carroll case, and the infamous (quoted out of context) Access Hollywood tape as proof of Trump’s “misogyny.”

Sarcastic dismissals of “incels” obviously doesn’t help relations between the sexes. Incel is short for involuntarily celibate. Sometimes it’s a misnomer. There are single men who have given up on dating, relationships, romance, marriage. (Disclaimer: yours truly is happily married … although he left his home culture before this happened.)

Trump won. Radical feminists are quietly livid.

Thus the appearance of 4B. What is it?

The movement began in South Korea in the mid-2010s as the “four no’s,” expressed in Korean, in which bi means, roughly, no: bisekseu (no sex), biyeonae (no dating), bihon (no marriage), and bichulsan (no childbirth).

It began as a response to the supposed misogynist and discriminatory business culture that had developed in that country. Advocates singled out acts of violence against women such as the brutal 2016 murder of a woman in a public bathroom in the Gangnam neighborhood of Seoul by a man who told police “I did it because women have always ignored me.”

An outcry ensued. Then backlash appeared. Women claimed they feared male violence. Men claimed they were indiscriminately treated like criminals. Hostility between the sexes in South Korea has yet to abate.

Now, with Trump’s victory, 4B has spread to the U.S.

It’s a sexual separatist movement, rejecting heterosexual relationships as a means of resisting “the patriarchy.” No dating men or forming relationships with them, no sex with men, no marriage, no children.

In fairness, the problem is worsened by a movement among at least some in the pro-Trump manosphere openly telling women, “Your body, my choice!”

Neither 4B nor this accomplishes anything. What it does is endanger the future we’ll all have to live in. Let’s get some perspective based on this longer view.

The civilizational need for children.

A civilization will not only fail to thrive without children, eventually it won’t survive. Parents must have — on average — around 2.1 children to maintain population.

In South Korea, this figure has dropped to a startling 0.7 children per two adults.

Birthrates have been dropping in the West for decades, and are below replacement rate.

Advocates of immigration (legal or not) have had a field day with this, asking how we’re going to maintain economic growth without immigrants when native populations aren’t having kids. They say: do the math.

The declining family as a legacy of materialism.

Among the legacies of the triumph of the materialist worldview (which underwrites the abortion death culture, and much more) is the decline of the family as a stable unit.

This decline is manifested in the meteoric rise of populations of singles who plan to stay single, whether to emphasize career or just from distrust of the opposite sex.

Hence the loneliness epidemic I mentioned at the outset as years pass and these people grow older alone.

A substantial fraction of single men claim to have no close friends.

What’s the cure? Or, at least, the mitigation, as obviously there’s no overnight fix for this.

Where we can start is with a rediscovery of the Biblical family, a product of the Christian worldview Western intellectual elites threw overboard over a hundred years ago, with a lot of ensuing ripple effects most of which can’t be blamed on radical feminists.

The Biblical Family.

We have an abundance of primary sources for a functional Biblical family. The foundation is Genesis 1:27 (New King James)

“So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him, male and female He created them.”

This is consistent with what we can observe directly of modern empirical biology and human anatomy: under normal conditions there are two and only two sexes.

This provides an ethos for the intrinsic value of the human person, as that which is created in God’s image by its nature has intrinsic value — independently of all other qualities: ethnicity, sex, nationality, class status, etc.

Then, in Genesis 2:24:

“…. [A] man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.”

Scripture offers abundant guidelines on marriage. From the Apostle Paul, in I Corinthians 7:1:

“ … It is good for a man not to touch a woman. Nevertheless, because of sexual immorality, let each man have his own wife, and let each woman have her own husband. Let the husband render to his wife the affection due her, and likewise also the wife to her husband. The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. And likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does….

This is manifestly not a recipe for unbridled patriarchy but of deep and loving partnership. It isn’t a guarantee that one will marry, because marriage wasn’t and isn’t for everyone (Paul himself never married or had children).

Scripture makes the husband the head of the household, in the sense that Christ is the head of the church. There just is no license for a man ruling his wife like a tyrant.

In I Peter 3:1-7 we get more details:

“Wives … be submissive to your own husbands, that even if some do not obey the word, they, without a word, may be won by the conduct of their wives; when they observe your chaste conduct accompanied by fear. Do not let your adornment be merely outward — arranging the hair, wearing gold, or putting on find apparel — rather let it be the hidden person of the heart, with the incorruptible beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is very precious in the sight of God. For in this manner, in former times, the holy women who trusted in God also adorned themselves, being submissive to their own husbands, as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord, whose daughters you are if you do good and are not afraid with any terror.

“Husbands, likewise, dwell with them with understanding, giving honor to the wife, as to the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life, that your prayers may not be hindered.”

Colossians 3:18-21 reiterates this and introduces children:

“Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives and do not be bitter toward them. Children, obey your parents in all things, for this is well pleasing to the Lord. Fathers, do not provoke your children, lest they become discouraged.”

The Biblical family is not a miniature fiefdom.

One of the original Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:12) is for children and young adults:

“Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.”

From Ephesians 5:22-33 and 6:1-4, the crowning discussion:

“Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is head of the wife, as also Christ is head of the church; and He is the Savior of the body. Therefore, just as the church is subject to Christ, so let wives be to their own husbands in everything.

“Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her, that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word, that He might present her to Himself a glorious church, not have spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish.

“So husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies; he who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as the Lord does the church. For we are members of His body, of His flesh and of His bones. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church. Nevertheless let each one of you in particular so love his own wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.

“Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honor your father and mother, which is the first commandment with the promise: it may be well with you and you may live long on the Earth.

“And you, fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord.”

There are myriad other passages that elaborate on the Biblical (Christian worldview centered) family, including proper education in the Christian home.

Christian worldview and restoration … or materialism and dissolution?

Secularists will not accept any of this, of course. They consider it mythological. Be that as it may, the question now is: do we continue on a course driven by the materialist worldview that dominates modernity (and has brought us postmodernity and its “post truth” outlook)?

This will mean continuing the death culture, which is hardly limited to abortion.

I use the phrase death culture to emphasize how human life has become expendable and personhood meaningless. Women killing their unborn children and then speaking of their “reproductive rights” is just the death culture’s most visible manifestation.

Are we not also seeing life’s expendability in neoliberal hyper-capitalism, sometimes mislabeled a right wing political economy?

In embracing the idea of a borderless global marketplace of mass consumption and permanent debt slavery, in which “needs” are manufactured through appeals to narcissism, fear, and greed, in which for all practical purposes corporations do as they please, neoliberal hyper-capitalism effectively throws populations to the wolves. At the very least, it has created a world of a few haves and many have-nots.

The have-nots, as increasingly restless outsiders who see no one defending their interests, have turned in increasing numbers to “populists,” perceived as political outsiders, like Trump, who spoke their language. Most are demonized as “authoritarians” in controlled media outlets which protect the neoliberal system which is easily seen as fundamentally godless (its god is the dollar.)

The real alternative is to make our way back to a Christian worldview and its first premises: God exists as Creator; He created human beings in His image. Both our capacity to grasp the world’s basic intelligibility and to act with moral agency begin here.

A morally and practically sound vision of male-female relationships based on mutual respect and honor, and of the family as society’s fundamental unit (not “the individual”), follows as a core component.

The husband may be in charge, but as I’ve noted, his authority is not absolute. For alongside any legitimate authority comes responsibility. His is enormous. It begins by realizing that those in his charge are all God’s creations and must be treated accordingly.

From the Christian family to a Christian society.

Now imagine this idea writ larger: as the basis not just for families but for communities generally, built from families. The Apostle Paul consistently drew an analogy between family structure and the structure of the church headed by Christ. He wrote to churches, as representing Christ in their cities and countries … and to the world as a whole in all its actual diversity.

It may seem like I’m fantasizing with this last, but one of the gifts Western moral philosophy gave the world is its universalism. This is the idea that moral-community status is not limited to members of my group or tribe or nation, or even my faith, but universal: applicable to all human beings, everywhere.

This opens the only door I’ve ever seen to escaping us versus them tribalism which has plagued us from the start as part of our sinful default setting. Nothing manifests us versus them more clearly than the 4B movement. Or the manosphere’s: “Your body, my choice!”

Western civilization was starting to transcend tribalism. Once, long ago, our civilization was progressive in a sense of that term loosely aligned with Christian principles and the possibility of universalist ethics and sense of justice. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Eventually this mindset ended slavery. It recognized the need to extend to women the right to vote and to own property. As it matured further it came to oppose discrimination based on race or ethnicity.

But as materialism became more and more dominant, genuine progressivism was hijacked and became what it is today: angry, Marxist-influenced “antiracism” which targets “whiteness,” angry radical feminism that targets men; sexual “liberation” that celebrates every form of debauchery. With identity politics, including radical feminism, tribalism reappeared triumphant!

Modernity became postmodernity. Our hold on the idea that the universe is intelligible had begun to slip. Even our best conceptions about it, based on empirical observation, were seen as permeated with biases of various sorts: class bias, racial bias, “gender” bias.

According to radical feminists gender is not a biological category but a “social construct.” It is therefore “fluid” and can be changed at will.

The replacement of sex with “gender fluidity,” contrary to everything biological science (once based on the Christian principle of an ordered and intelligible world) has given us biological men allowed to participate in women’s sports and “gender affirming care” for those “transitioning.”

The woke left is fundamentally at war with biological reality. Fight reality, and you’ll lose. These trends threaten to maim children and adolescents for life.

Need I argue further how destructive this all is?

My book What Should Philosophy Do? Reject materialism. A call for Revival.

So where do we go from here?

I wrote a book that sought to answer this question if anyone bothers to read it; it’s cited below.

First, cultivate philosophical thought that identifies, articulates, and evaluates worldviews. Second: realize that materialism is a worldview and not the result of any scientific finding or set of findings; science developed independently of it, in what was still a Christian ethos.

Third: recognize that materialism in whatever form casts us morally adrift … we’re “free” to make up any “morality” we like, including one that exalts Self.

In practice, it will be the wealthy and powerful who impose their “selves” on everyone. A cadre of well-bankrolled pseudo-intellectuals has already emerged to rationalize this by claiming that things were never any different, that the world was always about money and power (and sexual acts).

Lastly: see this as destructive. As we’ve seen, the family as a unit is in decline in every advanced culture. Not just because of anything radical feminists have said and done. The family was in trouble before they came along. Neoliberal political economy, no less steeped in materialism than Marxism, prioritizes and sanctifies the economic decisions of homo economicus in that global marketplace. Homo economicus is a kind of walking economic calculating device, invariably self-interested, his values subjective, with no higher authority no matter his decision. Let the market decide!

Can markets tell us what is true and what is false, or what is moral versus what is immoral?

We’ve noted the rising specter of haves versus have nots (against which an intelligent left might rightly protest), a political class some of whom pretend they have a clue what to do about this, while others simply don’t care — they’re bought and paid for.

As I’ve stated previously, this system is designed to keep most of us broke, in debt, and cash-strapped; to keep most of us dependent, whether on government or on an employer who can fire us on whim; to keep us ignorant about our situation (obviously you’re not going to learn any of this in any government school).

Its structures and invented processes divide us against ourselves. Radical feminism may be one factor, but when social media corporations discovered they could reap windfalls feeding their users divisive and inflammatory content, they did just that.

This system also renders us with a sense of helplessness, anxiety-ridden, depressed, with many of us helping Big Pharma get richer; or angered (think of road rage and mass shootings); or just in despair (if you’ve checked the suicide stats recently, including young people, teenagers, and even children!).

The solution: Revival.

This will include recognizing that we’ll never stop the death culture by trying to legislate it away, through a Supreme Court decision, or even with a presidential executive order.

In the absence of truly fundamental change, felt in people’s hearts as well as in their heads and in their lives, all these cosmetic efforts will do is drive the death culture underground and make its effects on vulnerable people that much worse!

If political economy is downstream from culture, culture is downstream from worldview.

So restore a Christian worldview, one person at a time if necessary (many churches, let us realize, are just as corrupt; and some movements labeling themselves Christian are anything but).

Place God the Creator in the center, understand the spatiotemporal universe as His creation, ourselves as His creations, in His image, and hence with intrinsic value; Jesus Christ as His Son who took on flesh to save us from our sinful nature.

These are the first premises. We can still work to improve ourselves, our families, and become examples in our communities. Read Scripture to find what God tells us. If you are so inclined, work out the consequences — familial, educational, societal, healthwise, businesswise — using the logical reasoning the brains He gave us make possible.

See what happens.

E-Mail Steven Yates: freeyourmindinsc@yahoo.com

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Steven Yates is a (recovering) ex-academic with a PhD in Philosophy. He taught for more than 15 years total at several universities in the Southeastern U.S. He authored three books, more than 20 articles, numerous book reviews, and review essays in academic journals and anthologies. Refused tenure and unable to obtain full-time academic employment (and with an increasing number of very fundamental philosophical essays refused publication in journals), he turned to alternative platforms and heretical notions, including about academia itself.

In 2012 he moved to Chile. He married a Chilean national in 2014. Among his discoveries in South America: the problems of the U.S. are problems everywhere, because human nature is the same everywhere. The problems are problems of Western civilization as a whole.

As to whether he’ll stay in Chile … stay tuned!

He has a Patreon.com page. Donate and become a Patron if you benefit from his work and believe it merits being sustained financially.

Steven Yates’s book Four Cardinal Errors: Reasons for the Decline of the American Republic (2011) can be ordered here.

His philosophical work What Should Philosophy Do? A Theory (2021) can be obtained here or here.

His paranormal horror novel The Shadow Over Sarnath (2023) can be gotten here.

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