Kiyota.
I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page, a daily podcast presented by the New Zealand Herald. People respond to election losses in various ways, from protesting to legal action to considering moving country. But what about adopting a vow of celibacy through something called the four B movement. That's something young women in the US have promised on social media in protest of Donald Trump winning back the
White House. No dating, no sex, no childbirth, and no marriage in a world where the next US president was found liable for sexual abuse. Online vitriol against women as skyrocketing, and the term your body, My Choice is trending online. How effective could this four B movement be? University of Otago PhD candidate Rachel Billington has researched how young people interact with each other online and joins us Now on
the Front Page to discuss this growing movement. Rachel, can you explain a little bit about the origins of the four BE movement? Where did this come from and what do those four bs represent?
So the four B movement started in South Korea and it's really pushing back against kind of very misogynistic and patriarchal society. The four bees represent four Korean words. They each begin with bi, meaning no or not to do, and so the bees each represent four things that women are choosing not to do, and those are marrying men, having sex with men, having children with men, and dating men.
So it's really about pushing back against the patriarchal structure, which it really almost treats women as incubators for the next generation rather than people in their own right.
I've seen some comments online saying that the four B movement is something that the West has picked up and ran with. Basically, do we actually know how popular the movement is in South Korea?
No, And to be honest, I can't even really speak to how popular it is as well, because I'm just learning about it too. I think what's happened post Trump election re election is that it's really gained attraction because a lot of women are actually saying, oh wow, you know what people are already doing. This taking political reasons to swear off men is not a new thing. You know, this happened in the seventies with feminist movements as well.
But really this reinvigoration and noticing how in South Korea a lot of the problems that women are facing are about kind of economic struggles, housing struggles, things that they actually if we're going to have children, if you want us to have children, maybe work on helping us build a society and live happier, more flourishing lives in the first place, and then maybe we'll think about it. But if that's not happening, then we don't understand your priorities
and we don't agree with them. And I think that that's starting to resonate with people across the world as well.
I thought I was going to have a boyfriend by now. I'd never thought about marriage, but I thought I would be at least with someone. It's hard for us to let go of this dream and this fantasy that was sold to us as women. But it's like men are not going to save us in this eleventh hour, Like we are not coming to be saved. We have to stick together and help each other.
Well, we've seen this idea gain ground in the US over the last week as one way young women are responding to Donald Trump's election victory. On the campaign trail, he came under five for comments about women from everything around and reproductive rights. To Trump saying he'd protect women whether they like it or not. And then you had, of course JD. Vance came at childless cat ladies, which I know struck a chord with me, and I'm not
even American. Do you think all this has contributed to the uptick in this four B movement?
Yes, I would say absolutely. You know, I think a lot of women in the USA are really reeling after the reelection of Donald Trump, just knowing his history with sexual abuse allegation since the nineteen seventies sexual assault allegations.
This is a man that a lot of women feel he doesn't respect them, He doesn't respect women, and to see him put in this position of power with so much power of a women's lives and reproductive rights, certainly people are feeling really shocked and really afraid of what this is going to mean for them, for their rights and for the progress that has been made for women by women over the generations.
I know one male white nationalist and Holocaust deniers social media post where he spouted your body, my choice that went viral and fuelled some of this four B discussion. The fact that someone with such a platform and so many followers can feel comfortable enough going online and sharing something like that, it feels like a bit of a backward step.
Pay you know, I do think that social media companies have a lot to answer for for the way that these kinds of messages, these narratives travel, and the way that polarization, ideological polarization along gender lines, and political polarization are really exacerbated over the last fifteen years. Commentsate that online are rewarded by the algorithm because they're provocative and because they're shocking, because people engage with things that make
them feel outraged or shocked. So it's really hardly the responsibility of the way these social media algorithms are actually designed to reward provocative content. Saying something like that in this climate does speak to the way that some people are really emboldened by these misogynistic ideas. I don't know that it's a sincere reflection of what he actually believes.
I mean, he's got some very troubling beliefs. Anyway, that my reading of that post is really just about provoking people to a sense of rage and to a sense of anger at each other, which will just stoke more and more tension and increase the sense of polarization. And increase this animosity between groups.
And just another stat that has completely blown my mind. Posts calling for the repeal of the nineteenth Amendment, which gives women the right to vote, surged by six hundred and sixty three percent on x or formerly known as Twitter in one week. Is this alarming?
It is alarming. It is alarming, and I don't I do feel like we've got to be careful not to stoke a kind of moral panic about these things, because it is in a lot of ways it is just about provocateurs doing what they do, provoking tension, provoking polarization.
But it is troubling in the way that it is normalizing very anti woman discourses and ideas about repealing women's rights, because I think a lot of the thing about you know, part of the anger and the anxiety around the reelection of Donald Trump is that the abortion issue, for example, is really about rights, women's rights, reproductive rights, autonomy, equality, humanity, and since this reelection and with the repealing of a lot of you know, Roe v. Wade for example, and
challenges to women's rights, it's not just about reproductive rights. It's about women's humanity and these kinds of discourses that start to travel online, start to normalize these questions about whether women really do deserve equality, whether they really do deserve full autonomy, whether they are equal to men. And again, it is really provocation, and it is really about stoking outrage.
But when you've got people, young men online just sitting in the space where all this information is coming into them, it really does skew or give them a skewed perception of the world potentially, and when they're developing their identities, their political identities, trying to form relationships, trying to come to understand themselves, these kinds of discourses can do a lot of harm.
I know that Figures from Amnesty International already show that in New Zealand, around one out of three women surveyed they had experienced online abuse and harassment. Do you think the heightening of abuse against women online could get worse in Altiero as well?
Yes, I think any trend that we see because of the way that social media operates, you know, we're a global community now, Little old New Zealand used to be that it would take a little while for trends happening overseas to arrive here, but that's not the case anymore.
We're no different. We're in no different situation technologically, so we certainly may well be affected by these kinds of narratives, particularly when we know that our young boys in schools and young men here, like many places across the world, are seeing content made by misogynistic influences on TikTok, on Instagram, on x wherever it is. Based on their demographics, they're seeing this content. Whether they're really choosing to or not, this content ends up in their social feeds and it
becomes normalized. They just start to absorb these ideas that are being shared to them. And it's definitely the case in New Zealand.
It was twenty twenty four, what the hell is going on here with people who sitting there in their arm chair, operating their keyboard, making comments about people that they do not know about near they do not know, and they're just file We has a bit of decency. This is outrageous behavior and New Zealand is not known for this and we are better than it, I know.
At least one American school district is sent a warning to parents this week. It said, in the days after the election, we have received reports of some students using the phrase your body my choice, often directed at female students. That was from the superintendent of Stephens Points School District in Wisconsin, and that email was then sent to CNN. Is there a fear that this online harassment against women could actually spill over to the real world.
Yes, there is that fear. There is that fear, and it could be you know, in some cases, it could be the boys and young men and maybe some other girls. Actually, girls aren't immune from their skills, and women aren't immune
from absorbing these kinds of messages too. And even if they're bringing it into school or into work, or into university or wherever, even if it's bringing it as a joke, jokes do have a way of changing the atmosphere of a place, making people feel less safe, making other people feel more emboldened to express potentially more extreme views, and it normalizes the sense that these are actually find things
to think and find things to express. So there is a need to really push back against these kinds of jokes when they come up, whether their jokes or not to begin with, they have a way of becoming more insidious the more they are set well.
I've read things about what's called the manisphere, which apparently sucks in and radicalizes young men online. I've also seen a lot of post election analysis digging into the fact that young men seem to have been influenced by podcasters and men's rights activists. Is that fair to say? What is the manisphere?
Yeah? I think it is fair to say so. The manisphere is kind of a loosely connected network of different online channels, influences across different platforms. It tends towards well, it's kind of I feel like there is room to have quite a nuanced conversation about this, because when I talked to teenage boys and my research, there was a sense that a lot of them really did find a real sense of belonging and affirmation in those kinds of spaces that they weren't getting anywhere else in their lives.
There was the sense that they helped them to develop a sense of self acceptance, a sense of self confidence. They help them overcome kind of addictions to pornography and help them encourage them to get outside and be more active and start working on their body. And for a lot of young men, these are really experienced is very positive things, and they may well be positive in that sense. However, the general philosophy that circulates or underpins these spaces is
very anti feminist and quite anti women and misogynistic. There's this idea that men are suffering because of the winds of feminism over the generations, and men have less power now than they deserve ultimately. So the manisphere, while it can really offer a sense of acceptance and safety and belonging and affirmation to a lot of boys and young men, it's really also trading in this ideology which is incredibly dangerous anti women, which serves to really further alienate men
and young boys from people in their real lives. So they become captured within this space in a way that makes it very difficult to get out.
What else have you seen or heard from young men and women about how they're interacting with each other online?
In my own research, there was much interacting with each other, and I think that's quite interesting, you know, you know, they see the worlds of other young men and young women online. I think one of the things that really struck me, particularly for the young men that they spoke to, is a lot of their understandings of women, not all of them, but a few of them. A handful of
them talked about this, and this really struck me. They don't necessarily have much to do with women in their offline lives if they go to All Boys' Skills, for example, and the exposure that they have to women online is
largely through pornography and semi pornographic content. And part of the problem with this, I mean, we can talk about there's many problems with this, but a lot of the time, because of the logics of social media, this content comes across their feeds, whether they're seeking it out or not. So part of the problem here is that they are unintentionally being exposed to pornographic semi pornographic content which they
actually would prefer not to see. So it starts to skew their perspective of women, and it starts to it actually also leads them often into these manispher spaces which are ostensibly quite anti pornography, partly because they see it as how feminism over years has led to kind of degeneration of traditional values and pornography is a symptom of that, and this pornography is a symptom of women's liberation. So for young men who've struggled with pornography addiction or they're
coming across it and they'd rather not see it. But then you know, they have the response that they're going to have, whether they like it or not, and then they might be feeling shame or feeling anger or feeling anxiety about that. Then they find a sense of a
sense of support within these manisphere spaces. So often it is the fact that they don't have real meaningful connections with people of the opposite sex that they do find themselves trapped within these spaces which paint women as the enemy. For example, studies.
Have shown that members of other online communities do frequently migrate two channels espousing more extreme views. The twenty twenty one study found that the overlap between users in the Manosphere and the old rate is substantial, and it's common for users who once commented exclusively in the Manosphere to eventually engaged.
With alt rate content.
And it makes sense, as I've said, that a person who has been radicalized to think women are the enemy and I am the victim and women should be put in their place would also be susceptible to further radicalization. Indeed, reports have shown that alt rate leaders do active recruitment in the manosphere because of this very premise.
What about young women. I mean, this four beer movement does feel a little radical in some ways as well. I mean I've seen tiktoks with women talking quite positively about serial killer Eileen Wernos, for example.
I do it's quite interesting because I do think, you know, every action is a reaction. So when we think about the rise of manisphere and the rise of misogynistic anti feminist ideology, you know, that comes in reaction to the gains of feminism and the rising status potentially of once
marginalized groups, you know, women for example. But there's the sense that for many young men, the sense of anxiety that comes along with that, just a shifting status order where they're not sure where they fit and where they do have real struggles with mental health, cost of living, unemployment, these kinds of things. But then, of course the four B movement is a reaction to that misogyny as well.
And I think a lot of girls and young women well feel liberated by this, and well feel that it is a way to dip into their own autonomy and their own equality and their own freedom, and actually that they don't necessarily need men or the approval of men to be happy. And I think that there is a way to see it becoming a bit more radical, particularly in the reaction that is going to come back against it.
And that's what I'm quite concerned about, is the reaction to the four BE Movement from those manisphere misogynistic spaces. But I do do you think it's also important to acknowledge that the real difference between these two kind of opposing groups, the four BE Movement versus these misogynistic movements, is that the four BE movement is really about championing equality, autonomy, and right, whereas these misogynistic movements are not about that
at all. They're more about control. So they're not really comparable in that sense. They're very different goals.
How can we prepare our young men and women for the future and how to navigate this kind of online environment because these newer generations have grown up in quite a unique set of circumstances, right, they've grown up online, They've had access to information but also misinformation disinformation more than any other generation before them. How do we actually sit down and give them the tools to try and navigate it.
I really think the only way through is communication. We need to have really frank conversations with our young people about what's going on in the worlds that they are a part of. Listen to them as well. It is really important give them, give them the opportunity to talk about what it is that they're saying and what it is that they are coming to believe or understand about
the world. I think often, and what I've found in my own research is given the opportunity to talk through our ideas, we start to hear the nuance of our ideas, or we start to hear the ways that we maybe don't necessarily agree with those perspectives. But often it's only in the talking that we get to hear that. So
communicating listening to young people is really really important. Also, I think educating young people being very open about how these algorithmic technologies work, so that they start to realize that if they're in these spaces, it's not necessarily because of their own free will show them, teach them how these algorithms work, Teach them about what the platforms are getting out of their engagement, so that they have more of a sense of whether they actually want to be
engaged or not. And one thing that I have found which is really heartening is actually a lot of young people are turning off social media. They get to a point and they realize that they're not as in charge of their own lives as they ought to be or they thought they were, and they're starting to switch off. So my real hope is that more and more young people will start to switch off.
Thanks for joining us, Rachel.
Thank you, Chelsea. Lovely to be here.
That's it for this episode of the Front Page. You can read more about today's stories and extensive news coverage at enzadherld dot co dot nz. The Front Page is produced by Ethan Sells and Richard Martin, who is also a sound engineer. I'm Chelsea Daniels. Subscribe to The Front Page on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts, and tune in on Monday for another look behind the headlines.