To (4)B or Not to (4)B: That is not the question

Or at least it's not that simple

I polled my Facebook community on this question recently, and the results are interesting:

Granted, we’re a group of liberal women, so the percentages are skewed. But guess what else is a group of liberal women? Single women in general, and the younger they are, the more liberal.

Discussions of “going 4B” are reaching a fever pitch in online communities, and new articles tracking the phenomenon (in South Korea and increasingly in America) are popping up daily.

The movement is already so well-established in South Korea that it’s affecting the national birth rate, and it’s rapidly catching on in America—this was happening prior to November 5th, but it’s ramped up exponentially since the election.

Each word of this sentence links to a different article about what is currently happening in the dating sphere. All are in mainstream news publications, and all arrive at essentially the same thesis:

American women are fed up with American men.

We’re fed up with everything from mildly weaponized incompetence around the house to shocking rates of sexual assault and gendered violence. We turned off by the manosphere, intolerant of displays of toxic masculinity, and downright bored of being screamed at by Incels. Women are opting out—a lot of young women are opting out before they’ve opted in; they’re simply choosing a different path for themselves.

Here’s a meme that I’m seeing everywhere this week:

I see this in my students every day, and I’m watching more and more women of all ages decide to de-center men right into another universe.

I actually don’t think 4B is the answer, though ideologically I respect it, and I’m encouraged that South Korean women have united in it enough to impact their national economy. I believe it’s too extreme to fully implement in a country as large and diverse as the U.S., and I fear it could work against women in too many ways—many women still want to be partnered with men, still want to have children and form traditional family structures. I don’t know that I feel comfortable suggesting they need to relinquish those dreams. There are also concerns that the most hardcore instantiations of 4B are homophobic and transphobic, which complicates its positioning as a truly “feminist” movement.

However, I also agree with the 92% of poll respondents above who say we have to do something, we have to do something organized (including a full 24% who actually do want to implement a fully-realized American 4B movement).

Burned Haystack is one approach to doing that, and it’s a formalized, rule-governed approach that’s appealing to many women because of its clarity, but it’s not the only way to shift the culture or to make a broad impact on gender norms and dynamics within the dating sphere.

I think the key “shift” we need to make is not to one prescribed method or movement but to a different mindset (and this is already happening all over the place). The shift in mindset needs to be this:

The number one goal can no longer be partnership or marriage. The number one goal needs to be personal happiness, fulfillment, financial security, and safety. IF that includes a partner, then fine, but we need to stop viewing partnership as the mechanism to achieve those things; we need to flip that script—individual life satisfaction must be Goal Number One. Partnership and marriage may or may not be one component of individual life satisfaction, but there can’t be a causal relationship there, as in “I’ll be happy when I find my person.”

The way to shift yourself to a happiness-orientation that is not wholly dependent upon intimate partnership is to de-center men. To de-center does not mean to marginalize or even to de-prioritize; it means to stop making men more important than women.

A necessary factor of that de-centering is for women to decide that we will ONLY engage with men who increase the overall equation of happiness and life satisfaction. We need to learn to intentionally avoid toxic and abusive men, for sure, but it doesn’t need to go as far as toxicity or abuse to negatively impact your overall life satisfaction. If you end up with a partner who is draining your energy, making you crazy, not showing up for you, or just falling down on his share of responsibilities, you are by definition making your own life worse instead of better.

The ticket out of that is to be so selective in dating that you don’t even risk it. That’s what we use Burned Haystack for, and there are a lot of other voices out there ready to help.

Because here’s the thing: the same Internet that shields anonymous Incels and hate groups is hosting an entire army of digital angels who are ready to support and teach you, FOR FREE, how to make better choices for yourself. I’m going to link you to a few right now, but this is by no means a comprehensive list:

1. Jillian Turecki

2. Erika Ettin (@alittlenudge)

3. Jamila Bradly (@brightblack honey)

4. Lauren Josephine (@lookingforsomethingserious)

5. Zawn Villines

6. Word_Case_Scenario (this is the IG account of Burned Haystack)

Paying attention to these six accounts will welcome you into a different ethos of dating. You’ll quickly see that it’s not you, it was never you, all women are up against the same things, and WE DON’T HAVE TO KEEP TOLERATING IT. You can look for love AND maintain your dignity and safety; you can be happy REGARDLESS of whether you find love; you can be so discerning that almost every date you go on is at least decent and respectful even if it’s not a love match. This means you’ll go out on fewer dates, but this is a good thing; we’ve all been on enough bad ones.

I hope this has been helpful, and more than anything, I hope making these mental shifts and purposefully entering feminist discourses around dating and relationships will bring you peace, strength, and clarity (all of which are more important and life-sustaining that simply “getting a man”).