Mr Muhammad Faiq Adi Pratomo1, Ms Zahra Maharani Latrobdiba2
1Universitas Diponegoro, Semarang, Indonesia, 2Universitas Muhammadiyah Semarang, Semarang, Indonesia
Biography:
Faiq is a lecturer of international relations in the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, Universitas Diponegoro, specializing in cyber-terrorism, cyber-radicalism and masculinity studies.
Abstract:
The 4B Movement (4非), a digital feminist movement that was popularized in 2019 in South Korea, has 4 mottos which are expressions of the movement’s ideology: bihon (do not marry), bichulsan (do not have children), biyeonae (do not date), and bisekseu (do not have sexual relations with the opposite sex). This article examines the 4B Movement and feminist online forums in South Korea such as Megalia and Womad as opposing state-sponsored hegemonic masculinity. First, this article establishes that pro-natality constitutes the premier aspect of hegemonic masculinity in South Korea, supported by both the South Korean government’s fertility and anti-abortion policies and various anti-feminist online communities exemplified by ILBE, and manifested in various misogynistic mass actions both online and offline. This article argues that the anti-natality promoted by the 4B Movement constitutes a direct opposition to the ideology of pro-natalistic hegemonic masculinity. Finally, this article argues that the movement’s anti-natalism is an attempt to create a new life-path for women wholly separate from hegemonic masculinity, where the condition of being unmarried and not having children is not a temporary condition, but a new, feminist form of being, in the tradition of feminist separatism such as the Furies Collective and Oikabeth.