Natalia, who’s simply utilizing her first title to guard her identification, tells GLAMOUR her dedication to celibacy is deeply private and political, formed by a longstanding worry of “unwanted pregnancies, sexual diseases, and of being used or hurt by men” – a worry she feels each younger lady shares to a point. Describing celibacy as one thing that “chose her”, she sees it as an act of self-preservation in a world the place intercourse is handled as a “meaningless commodity reducing people to another body on a list”.
Experiences with males who “offered little but sex, without genuine interest in her well-being or emotional needs” solely confirmed her alternative. She provides, “With the election and the nauseating win of that man, Trump, I think celibacy is the way to go.”
Cait agrees that informal intercourse is not protected in America because of each restrictive abortion insurance policies and a rising local weather of hostility towards girls. With solely a short while left earlier than Trump takes workplace, many ladies would battle to seek out choices if newly pregnant, particularly given the looming menace of additional abortion bans. On the similar time, she notes, the surge in hate crimes and misogynistic chants like “your body, my choice” add to the dangers, which she doesn’t see as “empty threats” however as actual risks.
Barely every week in, the West 4B motion has confronted mass criticism on-line. Outstanding liberal voices stated this motion is “steeped in rape culture”, arguing that it promotes the concept girls don’t need intercourse and that it is as a substitute one thing merely executed to them by males. Others have argued that the protest is counterproductive since Republicans, typically talking, are pro-celibacy – at the very least if their historic investments in abstinence programmes are something to go by. “Way to give the bad guys exactly what they want; why don’t you protest another way?” stated one viral put up opposing the motion.
That concept of the 4B motion being unintentionally Republican is propped up by the lots of Republicans responding to the West 4B motion with viral X posts and TikTok movies stating, “Perfect, go celibate – that means fewer abortions!”.
However Cait disagrees with this utterly, telling GLAMOUR that limiting abortion entry “was never about abortion and always about controlling women,” since Republicans notoriously block initiatives that will stop undesirable pregnancies like intercourse schooling programmes and contraception entry. “They wish to shrink girls’s choices to maintain them out of upper schooling and well-paying careers, and in the end depending on males,” she says.
She adds that while celibacy might seem like control, it actually challenges men’s desire for sex and commitment because “ men do want sex, but on their terms,” and 4B challenges that. Essentially, celibacy is the device used to spread the message – not the message itself, which is what Natalia describes as “a new age of power”.
The real criticisms of the movement worth tackling for Cait, Natalia and Aaliyah alike are the associations with transphobia. The original 4B movement in Korea has come under fire for its leaders being transphobic in the past, and many have warned there are already signs of similar behaviour in its Western re-enactment. In fact, one prominent collective in the movement, West 4B Movement, proudly states “#TERF” in their X bio. Many women participating have also said it’s for “biological women only” based on the transphobic notion that trans women are, in fact, men and, therefore, can’t take part in de-centring them.
“The transphobia (more specifically transmisogyny) and white feminists that the movement welcomes, as a non-binary Black person, has made me quite uncomfortable to say the least,” they share. “It’s hard to build community and sisterhood (which is a core principle in the movement) with white, cisgender women that don’t have any basic values or principles.”
