Distressed by Donald Trump’s recent electoral victory, some leftist American women are vowing to punish the entire male gender.
“We can’t let these men have the last laugh,” one wrote in a post on X that garnered 470,000 likes. “We need to bite back.”
“Men don’t look out for us,” another complained to USA Today, so “we don’t look out for them.”
Their plan: to withhold all sex, dating, marriage, and babies until the males of the species see the error of their ways and elect a new—preferably female—president. Which, of course, is likely to take, well, let’s just call it a bit-of-a-while.
What they’re reacting to is the electoral defeat of a woman, namely Kamala Harris, by a man, the aforementioned Donald Trump. More specifically, they say, the object of their protest is a Republican agenda they see as pro-male, anti-female, and anti-abortion.
“If they want to take over your bod[y],” another X-user declared, “don’t let them have it.”
This fresh revolution of refusal was inspired, its radical practitioners say, by an ultra-feminist movement called 4B started in South Korea five years ago in opposition to what some women there considered the longstanding gender disparities of their country. “4B” refers to four Korean words, all starting with “b”: bihon, or heterosexual marriage, bichulsan, meaning childbirth, biyeonae, the word for dating, and bisekseu, translated as sex. The movement’s marching orders: refuse to provide all or any of the above.
This despite the obvious fact that voting in the US presidential election hardly followed neatly hewn gender lines, with many men supporting Harris and women voting for Trump.
Ah, but adherence to reality has never been a hallmark of fringe feminists, among whom the rejection of all things male is hardly a new idea. In fact, it forms the basis of a Western cultural phenomenon that’s been gaining traction for years. It’s also one of major forces driving increasing numbers of American men like me—and Westerners in general—into the arms of Filipinas across distant seas.
Here’s how I described it in a memoir more than a decade ago. “The women of the Philippines,” I wrote following an early visit to this luscious island nation, “had a powerful appeal. They were beautiful, to be sure. But that wasn’t all; there was also a sweetness and sincerity that I hadn’t felt from an American woman in quite some time.”
Upon reflection, I realized the attraction went even deeper. Dating American women, I wrote, entailed “a kind of distance, a way of keeping everything at arm’s length. Even when these women were willing to make commitments, it seemed, there were major gaps. It was more of a vague sense than anything concrete but absolutely present nonetheless; the feeling that I needed them more than they needed me, a subtle perception, in fact, that they didn’t really need me at all.”
In contrast, I concluded, most Filipinas—though obviously strong women capable of independent thought and action — harbored traditional family values recognizing the importance of having men in their lives to whom they could be loving, loyal, committed, and kind. Which is why I ended up marrying one who, incidentally, shares my conservative views.
And which also highlights the major flaw in the 4B plan resurrected by these ultra-feminists: that the men they punish will most likely have voted for Kamala.
Unlike the partners of more conservative women whose reactions are proving to be radically different. “Me waiting for my husband to get home from the fire department to ask if we can have another baby,” reads the caption of a TikTok clip posted the day after the election by an Illinois mom seen twerking to Usher’s hit song Hey Daddy (Daddy’s Home). “Thank you, Trump.”
I think I’d rather come home to that.
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David Haldane is an award-winning American journalist, author, and radio broadcaster with homes in Joshua Tree, California, and Northern Mindanao, Philippines. His latest book, A Tooth in My Popsicle, is available on Amazon. This column appears weekly in The Manila Times.
