Abstinence is not empowerment

The 4B movement exploded into the public consciousness online. But is women's abstinence a way of reclaiming “girl power” after losing our rights, or a distraction from it?

In the ancient Greek comedy Lysistrata, the protagonist unites the women of two warring cities by convincing them to withhold sex from men as a means of forcing them to negotiate peace. In the days since Trump’s election, we’ve witnessed American women make similar pleas on social media, urging each other to join the 4B movement. Its central tenets? No sex with men, no dating men, no marriage with men, no childrearing with men.

From a harm-reduction standpoint, this makes sense—especially in red states, where avoiding unplanned pregnancy is a matter of survival. But I’m skeptical of the vague sense of “girl power” that accompanies the 4B movement in the U.S., because abstaining from sex with men doesn’t actually grant us any greater political, societal, or economic power. As I witness social media flooded with posts from women swearing off sex, I can't help but wonder: Is not letting men stick it in you really sticking it to the man, or does it provide us with an illusion of control at a time when it’s been stripped from us?

An ancient Greek comedy by Aristophanes, Lysistrata tells the story of a woman's attempt to end the Peloponnesian War by denying all the men of the land any sex.

The 4B movement originated in South Korea, where women had a clear political aim to accomplish through abstinence: lowering the birth rate and pushing back on pro-natalist, patriarchal policies that position women’s bodies as tools for the state. In America, the movement is less organized, and its goals more muddled. Here, younger generations are already having less sex and reporting more sex-negative views—as evidenced by trends like the Boysober movement, which has been called “this year’s hottest mental health craze” by The New York Times, and similarly rebrands celibacy as self-care.

Set against a backdrop of religious conservatism—which has long enforced celibacy to keep women “pure” and in the property of men—it’s unclear what radical aim can be accomplished by swearing off sex. After all, what system are women upending by individually abstaining from sex out of wedlock—which, if you squint, is the very same course of action conservatives have been prescribing for decades?