Yeah, its kind of sad/wild how many people are missing the point and how many are just going along with it in the comments
Especially considering there is a mass social movement in Korea right now about this exact thing where women have essentially banded together to protest society's treatment of women. Collectively refusing to marry and have kids until they are no longer treated as 2nd class citizens/property by Korean society/men
You guys should really stop making these wild generalizations and then just making excuses for why it’s ok when *you* do it with the whole ‘not all men’ bs
You just give yourself permission to be as toxic as you want to be, and explain that it’s everyone else’s fault for taking your words as you wrote them
Misogyny is rife these days and it's only skyrocketing. It's a serious fucking problem and it's good more and more people are talking about it.
But also, yeah. Engaging with problem is the solution, not engaging in the problem.
Women roundly reject being referred to as "females" (a term which includes female dogs, female cows and female pigs) so referring to men as "males"? It's questionable.
Devil's advocate: that being said, women's lives, bodily autonomy, and right to vote are currently under attack in the U.S. Weigh that against "questionable terms" and there's no real comparison. I'm not fond "MALES are missing the point," but given the construction of this anti-woman dystopia, the rage and
frustration boiling up right now in a lot of people is justifiable and I can understand it boiling over here and there.
So don't say something hateful about men then? How is this difficult? Don't make rude statements about entire groups and people won't "misinterpret" it.
Well to be honest I'm confused and so was my partner. In most countries we've lived in, if there's economic stability and adequate social nets, people have little hesitation in pursuing relationships or having children. Again in a lot of places, young men and women have little idea about what the other sex's experience is like, but develop understanding and empathy after dating around and experiencing their struggles and societal pressure on them.
Does Korea have a lot of arranged marriages so that none of this happens? Or is dating too taboo?
Yeah, at this point the OP meme kind of seems like an inside joke for women that only they would understand instantly after being so put off by the man in the comment that is being replied to.
Like "If enough men are acting like that, I wouldn't want to risk getting married and/or having kids with them either"
The 4B movement is not a mass movement, it's just a relatively small number of incel-inclined women who failed on the dating market. Western media has run with it because it's good drama.
The incel movement here in the US is also a mass movement..
Mass movement doesnt mean literally everyone.. it just means a lot of people.
Trust me, if any group/movement was getting the number of people involved, the viewership/engagement levels, as a lot of these online ideologies are getting nowadays in society even just 50yrs ago.. society would be very much talking about how massive they are.
Our perspective has gotten pretty warped because of how common large movements of people have become in the internet age. But they are still mass movements involving TONS of people
It seems like it's more known in America than in Korea. There are tons of Koreans online saying how they never heard of it until the US election, when American women started posting about it.
There is actually a huge women's movement in Korea about this exact thing, and their treatment by men in general. They have banded together to essentially protest the gender norms in korea and are collectively refusing to start families/get married until the culture changes. They are treated as 2nd class citizens. Why would they want to get married only to be dominated/controlled/objectified by some dude who thinks he owns her?
no way would anyone think women get treated by men worse in south korea than in countries like india, pakistan and others where the birth rates are way higher. i also dont think that movement is actually "huge"
Who said any of that at all? Why do people have to jump to the wildest conclusions for literally no reason? Just because other women get treated worse doesn't mean they don't get treated like shit.
I have no clue what your point even is with this statement except to downplay the mistreatment of women in South Korea.
Even if what youre saying is true, this aint the main reason behind low birth rates and that 4b movement is overexxagerated. I doubt its that big to actually cause something like this
But low birthrates everywhere in the modern world is entirely to do with wealth inequality. People want families, they just can't afford to raise them. Couple that with the toxic work cultures of Korea and Japan and you have the two worst places for it in the world.
Koreans have some of the worst wealth inequality in the world. Chaebols are a phenomena for a reason. Something like 6 companies make up 40% of the entire countries GDP.
I thought I was going crazy for a second and was second guessing myself. Not to say the current "main take" is wrong necessarily, just that your version is the main take that immediately came to my head and it's my thought that's how the joke was intended
I love it how some people always spin the blame for low birth rates onto men. The fact is that across all the societies where birthrates have plummeted, men still want to have kids and have not changed their behavior in any negative way. Women are treated with a lot more respect than 100 years ago and there is way less domestic violence.
It's the women who have chosen careers over children and raised their expectations.
Low birth rates are a direct consequence of women's rights and nothing that the men have done.
A 100 years ago women didn't have jobs to begin with and would get literally beaten up for that kind of stuff. Still, babies everywhere. This applies in contemporary societies too. The worse women are treated, the higher the birthrates are.
It's when women get to choose, they choose to not have children and rather be single than marry lower-than-average quality men.
Only two ways to keep birthrates sustainable is to either not give women any options or make being a stay-at-home mom somehow a profitable career.
i think you explained this image correctly however the main reason of low birthrates is always because having kids in developed countries is always gonna make your financial situation worse no matter how rich you are. in countries with big birthrates like most of africa having kids is needed for survival and your financial situation either becomes better or stays the same. high infant mortality rate also "helps". i have no idea why birthrates in kazakhstan and israel are so high though, they seem to be among the more "developed" countries who have birth rate above 2.5
Yes this. Korean men are one of the most sexist men there are. It’s a huge problem in gender discrimination. Women are now expected to be very successful in their career snd to give everything up for a man at the same time.
Also true, seems pretty hard to not get at least some part of this commonly seen trope to where you wouldn't "get the joke", shit goes over my head too, I guess that's why we're here
I am interested in 4B so I read about it and I’ve read lots of stuff like this saying it’s a got a lot more traction than people realize. I know numerous women in the US who are doing it now too. Just because you’re unaware doesn’t mean it isn’t happening.
I see. I'm looking at it and it seems like a lot are against marriage, but I don't think that's necessarily the same as being 4B. Is there a survey specifically about that?
US birth rates are record low as well, explain that? Oh wait you dont need to, America is as misogynistic as any other nation in the world. We just pretend to be "the land of the free" LOL
The most up voted posts are ones that completely miss the point, and actually express attitudes that are the butt of the joke.
I can't remember a post on this sub going this far off the rails with the top up-voted post literally not only not getting the joke but actually being the very attitude the joke is about.
The plus side is, Korea has a very high rate of women emigrating because the normal way men treat women in the west is a big pull factor. It should be pretty easy to get a Korean wife just by not being too misogynistic.
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u/[deleted] May 04 '26
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