A Sex Strike isn't Going to Work

American women joining the South Korean 4B movement is cultural appropriation. Their struggle isn't your costume.

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4B is a fringe South Korean feminist movement advocating the rejection of marriage, childbirth, dating and sex.

The “B” in 4B comes from the word “bi” in Korean, which means “no.”

Thus, 4B refers to the four “nos”:

• no sex with men (Korean: 비섹스; RR: bisekseu),

• no giving birth (비출산; bichulsan),

• no dating men (비연애; biyeonae)

• no marriage with men (비혼; bihon)

Supposedly, some number of women in South Korea have been adhering to 4B for a while. This is meant to register their objection to the sexism and misogyny of their culture and of their men.

Some women in America have adopted the pledge, in response to the perceived threat a Trump administration poses to their “rights”. The 4B movement is being widely covered in the usual legacy media outlets, despite it being acknowledged as “fringe” by The Guardian, The Washington Post, and NBC, among other outlets.

Why is the legacy media so hyped about promoting a fringe movement from a country with cratering birthrates? Because many of the people who staff these organizations are sad and want to spread their misery. So they promote anything that helps to take sword and fire to romantic bonds, which are a core source of happiness for most people.

Off-topic—at this point, the demographic trends of South Korea are so dire that North Koreans will never even have to invade. Kim Jung Un can just wait for the South Koreans to finish themselves off. Then North Koreans can just step over the DMZ line and declare victory. In South Korea, the average annual earnings are $31,489, and the birth rate is 0.78 children per woman. In contrast, North Korea has significantly lower average earnings, at just $1,288 per year, but a higher birth rate of 1.79 children per woman.

One amusing thing to note here is that these women are saying things like “delete your dating apps”, “exercise”, and “focus on self-improvement,” all in the service of becoming self-sufficient and not having to rely on men. The motive itself (abandoning men and relationships) isn’t conservative. But the recommended actions are. Stop having sex with strangers. Take responsibility for your health and fitness. Get in shape. Get stronger. Earn more money. Improve yourself and your life through individual effort. As Mary Harrington recently noted, 4B is inherently conservative, because it relies on a deliberate disciplining of desire. And one of the core aims of the political left is the elimination of all constraint; the unchaining of individual desire. “If it feels good, do it.”

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In 411 B.C., the ancient Greek playwright Aristophanes wrote a play called Lysistrata. This story depicts women withholding sex in order to influence male behavior.

In the play, Lysistrata persuades the women of Athens to withhold sex from their husbands and lovers until the men agree to stop fighting in the Peloponnesian War against the Spartans. The women lock themselves in the Acropolis to induce frustration in the sex-starved men (on stage, comically adorned with oversized leather phalluses).

This is a fictional comedy. Because of the absurdity of the premise.

Also worth noting is that in Act 3 of the play, some of the women become so horny that they are willing to break the strike. Aristophanes uses this moment for comedic effect, portraying the women's struggle to maintain their commitment to the cause despite their own sexual frustrations. For example, characters like Myrrhine are tempted by their husbands' advances. And there are amusing scenes where the women try to sneak away from the Acropolis, making excuses to abandon the sex strike. Athenian women want their husbands to stop fighting in a war, so they withhold sex. Do they know what will happen to them if the Spartans win?

Now the plan, apparently, is to re-enact Lysistrata but make it lame.

As the evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller has pointed out, promoting a sex strike after the democratic election of a presidential candidate in a constitutional republic may be a somewhat different situation than women protecting their Athenian husbands and sons from being slaughtered by the Spartans.

There is a key issue with a collective sex strike. It’s a collective-action problem. Straight out of game theory 101.

Collective action requires shared knowledge (“we all know we have all agreed to do this thing”). It requires high levels of explicit coordination (“I’m going to do this thing and so is everyone else who has agreed to do it”). It requires punishment of defectors (“If I don’t do the thing, you can punish me; and if you don’t do it, the rest of us can punish you”).

A sex strike is a collective-action problem. A problem of cooperation. A collective is powerful when everyone acts in unison. But individuals within the collective face a temptation to stand aside and let others pay the cost of the strike (foregoing sex, romance, children, family, fulfillment), while enjoying the benefits that any success might bring (in this case, pulling right-leaning men toward the political left).

Are women who are running the sex strike really willing to slut shame women who date and marry men? Are women who date and marry men (who are by nature going to be more conservative than women who strictly adhere to 4B) going to give a fuck what a bunch of crazy harpies think?

The balance of these incentives often results in a counter-intuitive outcome for large-scale collective-action problems. You know that power increases with numbers. But as more individuals participate in the sex strike, the likelihood of it succeeding decreases. This is because in large numbers, each person’s contribution to the revolt will make only a small difference to the odds of success. With such odds, it’s better to allow others to join the sex strike. And hope to benefit from the left-wing revolution that such a strike would bring. Perhaps this is one motive among others for why legacy media journalists are so eager to publicize the 4B movement. It’s a way of creating the illusion of a larger movement than actually exists. It’s “everywhere” (online) but essentially nowhere in real life.

Given that the 4B movement originated in Korea, and it’s now being co-opted by Americans, is that not cultural appropriation? Apparently if it’s consistent with your ideological dogma, it’s fine to borrow from other cultures.

Reminds me of how people in elite universities want to “decolonize the curriculum.” Meaning—among other aims—to eliminate white males from the syllabi.

Except Karl Marx. A white male.

But he gets a pass. A permanent parking spot.