Artifact 14 - After Trump’s election, women are swearing off sex with men. This has been a long time coming - Cécile Simmons

Following the election and Donald Trump’s victory, as this article details, many women felt that men in America clearly did not respect them or their bodily autonomy. This led to the quick social media adoption of the South Korean 4B movement—a movement in which women eschew relationships with men and take on voluntary celibacy. This clearly highlights the very pressing nationwide feeling at the moment that we are indeed not in some postfeminist utopia, but rather in another cycle of fighting misogyny and securing bodily autonomy rights. However, as is discussed in Gendered Lives on page 65, separatist movements like this one are primarily good at expressing and highlighting discontent and previewing a potentially improved world; they are not so good, however, at inciting real political change.

In the time since, the sudden American interest in the 4B movement and its presence on American social media have mostly died out. This doesn’t, however, make the fury and passion presented therein any less important or worthy of interest. This short spike shows us that there is real interest in a major modern feminist coalition—something that we very well may need in the next 4 years.