Is there some underlying assertion here that woman enjoy sex less than dudes? Or that sex is some kind of favor to men on the part of women without mutual enjoyment? Not having sex with someone is pretty easy if that other person is a shitty person. Otherwise I think both genders enjoy genuine intimacy and physical contact by someone they enjoy being around.
(very obviously, but people keep covering this like it’s a real thing so…)
You get 100% or even like, 60% of women in on this, yeah. Things will change real quick. I’d hope for the better.
If you get like 5-10% of liberal women doing this, which is by far the most that I’d believe, what’s going to happen is the corresponding 5-10% of men get sexually frustrated. Then they’ll go online and get caught up in all the incel->alt-right pipelines that already exist today, and men will swing further right.
If we want a movement like this to work it needs to 1. Not punish people who are already on our side and 2. Provide a better pipeline than the alt-right already has for channeling sexual frustration into action.
So cool, interesting idea, I wish it was workable but remember that a majority of women who voted voted for Trump. Even if men didn’t exist he would have won.
Oh, and no knock on anyone doing this for their own safety. That’s entirely reasonable. I just don’t expect and you shouldn’t expect it to have a positive political impact.
The problem is that for many women, sex always runs the risk of pregnancy, and they are actively making it extremely dangerous for us to be pregnant. I can’t get a hysterectomy because insurance won’t cover it, but I’m not ready to give up on kids yet either. Sure my husband can get a vasectomy but the risk is still there.
I support the 4b movement in theory but when I tried to join I was told I couldn’t, because I’m married to a man. Nevermind that he’s also a feminist and willing to go without sex for 4 years because he is so scared of losing me to a pregnancy related complication. I was told I can be an ally, and when I took issue with being benched in the fight for my own rights (by people who are not in charge of the movement or the interpretation of its goals,) two different people jumped down my throat.
I bowed out before the argument could escalate, but I can see now how even with the best intentions this movement may further divide women, and the men and non-binary folks who support them. Ideally the 4b’s would be like a protest “menu” of actions you can take to drive the point home. Yes, even to the good men who don’t deserve to be “punished.” Because it’s not a punishment. It’s us saying okay, either you don’t respect us or you’re just not willing to fight for us unless things are uncomfortable for you, so let’s make them uncomfortable for you. No more free labor, physical or emotional. No more customer service voice. No more explaining things that you can figure out on your own. No cooking or cleaning unless it’s for us. Oh you usually change all the diapers? How nice. Now you can do that, and bathtime, make breakfast and dinner, pack lunches, plan birthday parties, buy all the Christmas gifts, host and cook Thanksgiving dinner, do the dishes, keep the house organized and pleasant to live in… you get the drill.
If you’re already the one who does these things in your relationship, good for you! But most adult men don’t, not because they’re bad people but because they weren’t socialized to be people pleasing servants and/or sex objects like most women have been.
I’m in support of just a general women’s strike, but that’s going to look different for everyone.
The problem is that for many women, sex always runs the risk of pregnancy, and they are actively making it extremely dangerous for us to be pregnant.
so then don’t have sex because it’s not economically or financially tenable. Not because “men are the scum of the earth”
There’s nothing wrong with a principled opinion, there’s everything wrong with a pointed attack founded on shaky grounds.
The left really fucking sucks at rhetoric, that’s one thing i’ve noticed.
No. You don’t get to blame women for men getting sexually frustrated. Stop doing that. It was never OK and will never be OK.
What?
Actions have effects and reactions. I think the same sort of thing would happen if that 10% of women just didn’t exist instead of becoming intentionally partnerless for 4b.
I’m not saying it’s women’s fault. I’m not saying that this is the good or right thing to do on the part of men. I’m saying that this movement is flawed because it would punish the wrong people and because it would push those people’s politics in the wrong direction.
Just don’t date conservative men. First date, ask them their politics. It’s literally that simple.
You should really have a suite of questions to weed out partners you don’t want. This is what the first few dates are really for. Ask them their politics, if they voted, and who they voted for, their stance on abortion etc.
All you’re going to get with this is friendly fire. Conservatives generally do not prefer leftist women.
Part of 4B is to avoid pregnancy, especially in an environment that has banned abortions and restricted contraceptives (e.g. Project 2025).
Men will lie, especially if they’re trying to get your clothes off. So a single question isn’t quite enough. Maybe a discussion about politics on relevant issues, for example.
As a man this is spot on. My old roommate “presented” as a neoliberal hippy with wood-bead bracelets, but would literally talk about how he wanted slaves so he didn’t have to work. Some men are literally closeted Republicans that know if they are honest they will be sexless
Get yourselves a socialist, ladies. Neoliberals are just spineless republicans
Neoliberals are just spineless republicans
love this. going to steal it and make it my new catchphrase.
First of all, you’ll be able to get their vibe from a political conversation unless they’re very well informed and very intelligent, which conservatives generally are not.
Second, if you’re forcing them to lie then it creates cognitive dissonance in their brain. So at the very least that can create genuine progress, as problematic as that may be.
When I was in high school decades ago, debate club went to a convention and one of the debate rounds was “women shouldn’t be allowed to vote”. My very good looking friend (male) argued that they shouldnt and he was so charming and confident that he got crazy crazy laid for the rest of the event. I think it helped that we all sort of understood it was not reality but a chance to do debate flourishes, but still. What the hell is that? Its almost as if the topic itself and womens’ resistence to it made him even more attractive.
He’s a minor republican operative now-- we dont talk.
So MGOW for women.
It’s just more social media posturing. Making a spectacle out of something people have been doing out of necessity.
Look at me, I’ve turned isolation and alienation into a consumer fetish! Subscribe and learn all the amazing new techniques to commodify your labor and spend your wages. Compete to become the highest ranked lonely person!
ok so. I like the concept, it’s a good way to move.
HOWEVER there is one big problem. We can’t use this emotionally inflammatory rhetoric, because it’s what the right thrives on. You can quote me on this later, but i guarantee you if the right sees this they will call it “sexual eugenics” or something stupid.
literally all you have to do to make this a fully marketable and unbeatable position is to treat it like econ 101. Social interaction is most often based on simple contractual obligations. Those in question here, have failed, and thus, it is no longer contractually valid.
“the market for sex is simply untenable culturally, and in terms of healthcare, completely fucked. I no longer plan on having casual sex anytime soon” and suddenly it’s like 50x more reasonable and palatable than the previous statement.
and before anybody tells me “oh well it’s good for attention and marketing” yeah, if you want to spread the entirely wrong message. just look at the bear vs man debacle that happened a while ago.
although you have to be careful because the right will probably just tell you that this is the point, at least the religious part of it, in which case being inflammatory isn’t going to do shit anyway. Tough times we live in now, i guess.Americans value the speed and simplicity of a message over accuracy or nuance.
Both parties used that to their advantage to post out of context clips, something that I would consider manipulative at best.
Americans value the speed and simplicity of a message over accuracy or nuance.
idiots who do not prefer the accuracy of transmission* FTFY
something that I would consider manipulative at best.
i really wish more people would do literally anything to not get got by this low level bullshit lmao. It’s so silly that people care so much about problems, but so little about information sources, or accuracy, or even factual nature.
People who are in an excited emotional state just aren’t going to do well thinking that stuff through.
I’m not immune to it either, I just dont have tiktok or facebook at all to avoid it.
People who are in an excited emotional state just aren’t going to do well thinking that stuff through.
i suppose so, but it literally only takes one “is this actually true?” to check to see if it’s true. If people are as “skeptical” as they claim to be about mainstream media, i fail to see how they don’t understand that google exists and is useful in the 21st century. Though to be fair, it’s harder to use now.
I’m definitely not immune to it either, but i operate on a strictly factual basis, so it’s really hard for me to get caught up in propaganda.
Nobody operates on facts alone. Unless you were there when it happened, you have to trust a source to some degree.
Quite a lot of people just say fuck it, if its all varying degrees of shit, I’m not going to listen to any of it.
Thats how word of mouth type stuff ends up on fox news, because even they know a lot of right wing Americans wont trust professional news stories over their neighbors anecdotes.
We might think we use better sources, and check into things more vigorously, but our conclusions still require faith as much as any republicans beliefs.
We still haven’t even figured out how to refute religion conclusively, for example. Juries still out on whether religion is fantasy or actual reality, whether we think thats ridiculous or not.
Nobody operates on facts alone.
this is true, and i appropriately hedge my positions based on this, you can’t make a perfectly accurate statement unless you have 100% of the relevant knowledge, and you won’t so you just don’t. It’s that simple.
As for sources, it’s not hard to find reliable sources, you just need to be able to dig around a bit. Scientific research as much as republicans hate on it, still give me faith in humanity so.
Quite a lot of people just say fuck it, if its all varying degrees of shit, I’m not going to listen to any of it.
this is the problem, people either need to stop doing this, or they need to hedge no opinions at all, i have a couple posts about “people caring too much” and there are many useless arguments i’ve had over this kind of thing, if people would just, stop caring about most things, it would solve most of these problems, unfortunately people like caring about useless things.
We still haven’t even figured out how to refute religion conclusively, for example. Juries still out on whether religion is fantasy or actual reality, whether we think thats ridiculous or not.
yeah, and this is actually a really good argument for what we’re engaging in. It shows that we hedge properly, and that we will concede if we need to, given appropriate information. The problem is that nobody likes to talk like this, and nobody likes to listen to people talking like this.
More people just need to start doing this, it’s that simple.
Opinions can be worth a lot these days though, thats why people will offer them up to begin with. I agree it should be far more common to say, “I barely know anything about this, so I have no opinion”, but how do you incentivize that socially.
Noone becomes accepted/promoted/famous by admitting they dont know something, but you can do all of those things by putting out half-baked opinions.
I think I have a better example than religion. Famous actors. People often believe they are exactly the same on screen as in real life, despite them telling you they are actors. Its another thing as a society we have not decided on, but theres no reason to hedge your bet in this case I can think of.
I highly doubt many people are doing this.
Media hyped bullshit.
MAGA is a promotional tour for lesbianism and sex toys. Toxic masculinity does not attract women and never did.
53% of white women voted for Trump, and they aren’t going to join 4B. “Men” didn’t elect Trump, a slight majority of America did. When you point a finger, three are pointing back…
22% of Americans voted for Trump. 78% did not. I can tell you I voted and was offered to answer none of those questions from that site. So I’m going to say none of them represent all of the voters if you don’t actually ask all of the voters.
Just for the sake of more information: 337m Percentage over 18 ~78% That makes about 262m voters possible. 74m vote for Trump makes 28-29% of possible votes in 2024 81m votes for Biden in 2020, population was around 331m then. About 31-32% of the possibilible votes.
Point being, people need to vote. Making voting easier makes it possible to ensure you get a more complete tally of what people want in a democracy. People shouldn’t have to jump through hoops to say they won’t be in town, and will be working or w.e else to convince someone that a mail in ballot is wanted.
Should have a request a ballot button online as well. Why mail a form in to have the forms sent to you. Gets rid of some waste there too.Uhh… 335 million Americans, 260 million voting age Americans. With 63% turnout.
To men who are actively sleeping with women, or who want to, now is a great time to consider a vasectomy. It’s cheap and safe and greatly reduces the risk of undesirable outcomes.
I’ve got an even better one. Do something more interesting, go make friends. Sex is boring and just something evolution tries to force upon us. Well ofc it’ll work eventually but that’s not the point. 😂
Hey man you being asexual is cool and all but most people aren’t so can you not
Wait so the idea is do not sleep with any men? Even men who support your views and rights? This just seems like it would radicalize more incels or generate more sexism. Like the average person who did everything they could is going to go on a date and be told “I’m not have sex until the government is fixed” which would make me say “ok, well, hit me up in 4 years.”
The idea isn’t for women who are already in relationships with partners who support women’s rights. The idea is more, for single women, to refuse to start any relationship at all right now. Which honestly, in an era where basic women’s healthcare is under attack, maybe starting a relationship right now isn’t the best idea. Will your women’s rights-supporting boyfriend agree to become abstinent when the birth control you’re using is taken off the market due to conservatives? Or will they want to move to the pull-out method or just accept the risk of being pregnant?
If you’re a single woman, honestly, right now, maybe staying single through these next four years isn’t a bad idea. It has nothing to do with the actions or beliefs of a potential partner, and everything with the fact that being a woman in any straight sexual relationship when conservatives are ascendant simply has a lot of unavoidable risks with it. The religious crazies in power believe that the only veto a woman deserves over being pregnant is the choice to have sex or not. And they seek to take away any way for women to prevent getting pregnant besides not having sex. These Christian nationalists, who were just elected, believe that the only choice women have should be pregnancy risk or abstinence.
You need to have a reality check here. The United States federal government, and the majority of state governments, will be telling every woman of reproductive age, “be abstinent or risk pregnancy. Any other tool to prevent pregnancy is morally wrong.”
The government is literally trying to coerce women not to have sex before marriage. The government is literally trying to coerce women not to have sex before they’re ready to become a mothers. The people soon to be in charge of the government literally believe that the only just use of sex is pregnancy. And they rule accordingly.
In what universe would you expect this to not result in a complete collapse of pre-marital sexual opportunities for straight men? It’s not about punishing men. It’s not that you do or do not have the right views or beliefs, or that you are a good or bad person. It’s simply that for women, in this world that is being created, having sex before marriage simply isn’t safe.
Sexual liberation was possible only due to the availability of effective contraception, birth control, and abortion. If you turn the contraceptive landscape back a century, sexual norms will have to return there as well. You are NOT going to have a world where there’s no access to contraceptives where women are still perfectly happy being in sexual relationships before marriage.
Men, I hope you’re ready to put a ring on it. Otherwise, you ain’t gettin’ any. Sorry, you wanted this world; you voted for it.
Sorry, you wanted this world; you voted for it.
You seem to be unaware or are forgetting that the majority of white women wanted it too. The exit poll stats show the majority of people across the board in about every demographic “wanted this world”; it was a massive defeat for the vestiges of the American political left.
The Trump campaign successfully set up their media machine to equate every environmental protection, women’s autonomy, labor protection, and re-enfranchisement policy proposal of the working class to a talking point of a screeching radical feminist harpy cartoon character that’s bent on “destroying the patriarchy, churches, and America.”
The DNC handwaved the concerns of the working class away again to fellate the billionaire and corporate donors, the “moderate” republicans, and the social justice warriors simultaneously, thinking that would work somehow.
The blame lies on the us if we let the DNC establishment keep their jobs in the next round of primaries.
I mean, it isnt like it is the job of women to sleep with men in order to prevent them from becoming incels, that would be essentially like victim blaming at a population level. Im also not really sure that it would do much: most women arent going to do this, so the impact on average men’s dating prospects is much smaller than the total lack of dating for any women that actually go through with it, but nobody is seriously suggesting that doing so will turn them into something akin to incels.
I dont expect this would really help much, beyond the obvious personal benefit that not becoming pregnant in a state that is hostile to women’s reproductive health would have, but incels were going to hate and complain about women regardless of the sexual habits of those women, so I dont see it really making things worse in that regard either.
I can’t believe someone, here on Lemmy, is actually defending women punishing all men because some are trash. It would be like if white women said they weren’t going to date black men because some black men are rapist. They are free to do what they want, but it’s racist as fuck. Just like this is misandrist as fuck.
It’s not punishment; it’s risk control. You don’t get to have post-sexual liberation values with pre-sexual liberation healthcare.
We live in a culture where premarital sex, at least outside of conservative religious communities, is tolerated and even encouraged. Yet this is a recent thing. Up until the mid-twentieth century, it was extremely shameful for a woman to have sex before marriage. It would be as shameful and socially fraught as, IDK, a kid coming out as trans to their parents today.
You, I am assuming, were born sometime well after the 1960s. You were born in the post women’s liberation world. So it is easy to forget that the world you are used to living in is actually a historical anomaly. The idea of it being normal and acceptable for women to have sex before marriage? That is a historical oddity in Western culture.
This social structure is only possible BECAUSE of contraceptives and abortion. And radical conservatives just came in to power that are doing everything they can to restrict these things. These radical conservatives believe sex before marriage is wrong, and they seek to restrict any access to abortion or contraception.
If these things are restricted, what choice do women have but to return to pre-women’s liberation sexual norms? Are you going to start a relationship with a woman and just happily agree to be abstinent, or have zero PIV sex, while conservatives retain power? Or, are you going to pressure her into trying something riskier, like the pull-out method? Are both of you capable of holding to your agreement not to be intimate, even when both really want it, even when you’re both drunk?
The simple truth is that in this environment, the government is trying to take away every option available to women to prevent or terminate pregnancy. The government is thus making sex itself incredibly risky for women. If you ask the government, they will tell you, “pregnancy or abstinence, the choice is yours.”
What choice do women have but to choose abstinence?
Sorry guys. You wanted Victorian access to abortion and contraception? You wanted Victorian views on masculinity and femininity? Well, with that comes Victorian female frigidity and sexual propriety. In the future you want, casual sex before marriage isn’t a thing. Better hope you roll the dice on the sexual compatibility with your spouse, as you certainly aren’t getting any before marriage. And even then, only when you’re actively trying to have kids.
Sex is for reproduction, not pleasure. If you have a problem with that, you’re a sexual deviant. This is the world men voted for; this is the world they’ll get. You want it? Better put a ring on it.
This is the world men voted for
No, I didn’t vote for it. That’s the whole point. Most men who voted did. That’s on them, not me. Any punishment directed at me because I’m a male and other males did bad things is blatant misandry: blaming me for my sex.
Sure, if women are not having sex because they are afraid of getting pregnant and they don’t have access to abortion, that makes sense. But this is putting words in the protester’s mouths in an attempt to justify the blatant misandry. They aren’t doing this because they are afraid of getting pregnant, they are doing it because some men did something bad (although, it was certainly not just men) and, because they are misandrists, they are punishing all men.
A woman refusing to have sex with you is a punishment? It seems that your mindset is based on the concept that you are owed sex at a baseline and a refusal to have sex with you is a violation. It’s that kind of mindset that keeps many men from being actual allies to women’s liberation. Coercion and rape are not the same thing, but they share a neighborhood in the realm of indecent and cruel things that humans do to each other, and walking around with the idea that one is owed sex in any capacity increases the likelihood that one would resort to coercion or worse when rejected or denied.
While I absolutely agree that no one owes anyone sex, and if women want to protest like this it’s entirely their right.
However, I think you’re using this fact to miss the point. Even the woman quoted in the article is saying that men wants sex, but don’t respect them, so she won’t have sex with men. The 4b all have to do with not doing something they might have otherwise done with men.
It’s clearly meant to be a punishment, a retaliation for the loss of their rights.
It’s not about me saying women owe sex to men, I never said this or implied this. It’s me pointing out what these protests are about.
I am currently married, but in my previous experiences, the majority of male partners I have had both claimed to be feminist allies and used heavy coercion (and in one case outright rape) to get what they wanted. My husband won a lot of points with me by accepting a “no” without further argument thereby respecting my choices and my consent. I try to trust other humans at baseline, but in my experience, young men are frequently horny and not overly concerned with the long term consequences of getting what they want in the short term. I have not been given strong evidence that young American men can really be trusted to protect women from unintended pregnancies if those women don’t have access to contraception or abortion.
4B movement
Women self-identifying their value as sexual in nature
