Becoming An Incel For Equality

move over pussy hats, here comes the chastity belt!

Nov 09, 2024

While the media tries to figure out who to blame for why the Dems – running a very unpopular candidate after years of unpopular decisions and decades of eroding the party and trying to appeal to moderates, failing to promise anything progressive, neglecting the working class etc. – have INEXPLICABLY lost this time around, I am skipping all that and looking at the rising trend of young women declaring they will not have any relations with men as a form of political protest against the incoming Trump administration.

Trend is something to take with a grain of salt, Google search results and viral videos posted a few days after 18 year olds voted for the first time should not be taken as long term indicators. But it does indicate something.

Here’s a brief overview of where the movement stems from via Newsweek:

The movement began in South Korea in 2019, pioneered by feminists determined to dismantle traditional expectations. Known as the 4B movement—bihon (no marriage), bichulsan (no childbirth), biyeonae (no dating), and bisekseu (no sex)—it encourages women to reclaim autonomy over their bodies and reject traditional gender norms of marriage and childbearing.

The full article has more context surrounding the specific movement as it relates to South Korean politics, and the specific incidents of gender inequality and violence that launched it. There is also a good long read on the movement from a few years ago in The Cut, and a more recent update as it relates to the U.S. can be read here.

So TLDR, some American women post Trump have declared either their new allegiance to 4B, or are feeling brave enough to say they have been 4B for years an are coming forward and to urge other women to abstain from sex, dating, marriage, and childbirth.

I would like to reiterate again that I don’t know shit – but I do not think becoming an incel in America to boycott Trump is necessarily going to have the desired impacts. I think mass vasectomy would be better but, I digress. It must be said that people of any gender should have autonomy over their bodies, whether that be sexual, medical, environmental, etc. If you don’t want to have sex, that is cool. But abstinence – even if you broadcast it on social media – is an isolated act. As with many other well-intentioned but ill-thought-out attempts, this movement (as articulated by U.S. girlies on TikTok) aims to rectify systemic wrongs in the realm of the interpersonal. You denying your boyfriend pussy is indeed your right, but it is not inherently a protest anywhere outside of your home, nor is it getting you, or anyone else, universal healthcare.

It does also, unfortunately, seem to rest on a crux of desirability. One should not have to barter their sexual viability in order to have respect, autonomy, access. That’s a terrible trade, and seems almost comically at odds with the intended purpose of the Americanized 4B movement. Dare I ask why now? I know the answer. But the failure to provide medical, financial, geographical autonomy is not something specific to a political party. What have the Democrats done to enshrine abortion rights? Or protect trans rights? Or to provide healthcare for all?

Perhaps another reason the 4B videos feel so gratingly out of place at this current moment is that in the same TikTok sphere, just a scroll away, we get endless examples of “dating advice” that stems from a not dissimilar vein of radical “feminism” wherein batshit suggestions for living and being are offered as a form of reclamation against centuries of gender inequality. These often neatly entrench long standing gender roles, or creatively invent ways of jamming ourselves into new ones.

This Rebecca Jennings thread illustrates the trend nicely, and in a follow up tweet to the one pictured below she writes these type of videos “encourages trad gender roles under the guise of self-confidence and "expecting princess treatment" and at its core is extremely sexist.”

The scourge of media in which a stunning combination of narcissism and bad takes coalesce into something that can be yes girl bossed under the umbrella of self-confidence is not new to this moment, but we are probably gonna see a resurgence of it — and it’s not a mystery as to why. If the media landscape offers you a choice of Mr. Beast, Tradwife Influencers, Becoming Celibate, or Emasculating Men For Feminism as your only options (nuance doesn’t exist), it’s not hard to speculate why young women are pulled into rabbit holes that don’t even brand themselves as rabbit holes, but as community.

I am curious in this moment how TikTok is making sense of the chaos: standing up for oneself as a young woman can mean either 1) forgoing sex and dating altogether or 2) emasculating and shaming your potential partners in the service of feminism while inadvertently revealing how arbitrary gendered roles are, albeit shoving themselves into new ones.

While different veins, both social media feminisms seem like strands of the same toxin, one that has seeped through the internet ecosystem for a long, long time, and merely reinvents itself in continuously new (and more viral) forms of dissemination. As a TOXIC DISCOURSE STIRRER MYSELF, I AM THINKING OFTEN OF MY SINS, AND ALSO, the broader social moment in which this type of thinking, creating, and doing, became prominent and remains topical (which is something I have lots more to say on so, keep reading me please and thank you). Is it any wonder young women are posting harrowingly bizarre strategies to cope with the world?

Before I end, I must also reflect some of this rhetoric with what was said about Bernie back when he was still cool:

And messages I got:

It is fascinating! I don’t have a thesis on this. I am simply…wondering out loud.

I am praying for MSNBC watchers and staffers. Is Rachel Maddow okay? Is Nate Silver okay? I do feel tremendously sad, let me be clear and not entirely brain poisoned, but it is less about Trump getting back in office, and more because of all of the truly terrifying and more calculated people he pulls in with him, the Stephen Millers (satan), Steve Bannons, Elon Musks. But there is something certainly less shocking this time around, after we’ve watched Trump convincingly con and charm people in equal measure for decades now. The absence of shock does not make it any more bizarre that yet again we have a reality TV president. I do, however, think the margins of Kamala’s loss were surprising: she really beefed it. It was NOT a Brat summer. (for the record, I always hated the Brat-Meme-Ification of her campaign, you can read about that here and see my great addition to the canon below)