Not that they are joining Republicans in support of Trump. Quite the opposite: These women are protesting the election outcome by abstaining from sex or, really, from any relations with men. As often happens, leftist women feel threatened by the male-led political regime and view sex as the ultimate leveler. They undertook a “sex strike” after the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022 and have revived it after Election Day 2024, though clearly, the issue caused them some unrest before and in between either of those events. 

This time, it goes by the name “4B movement.” The trend originated in South Korea sometime during the 2010s as a radical feminist movement responding to perceived gender injustices. The large wage gap, general gender rigidity, the #MeToo movement, and policy incentives against the world’s lowest fertility rate all likely influenced South Korean women’s swearing off of dating, marrying, having children with, and sleeping with men. The United States has its own variations on all their complaints, but the last bit about the fertility rate is of particular salience.

Abortion is a big catalyst for American women. When a political figure or a piece of legislation threatens access, pro-abortion women take it as a personal affront. Whether or not they make use of the opportunity, they want the option of abortion. To take it away is a plain, insidious put-down. Of course, theirs is a misunderstanding. But it translates to the retribution we see in feminist-coded abstinence: They can still decline contribution to the birth rate while punishing men with the one act from which these women derive all of their agency — sex.

Technically, it is a radical feminist idea, although by now, it just sounds like regular feminism. The extreme reactions of a few women have become truly compelling for lots of young women. It is hard to look at the pluming trend and separate it from Harris’s fearmongering. Campaign stunts such as her “Fighting for Reproductive Freedom” bus tour convinced impressionable women that they are in a never-ending conflict. They commit themselves fully and have to move with the current.

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But American women are not South Korean women. Who knows how consistent they will prove, but I am willing to bet devotion drops off pretty quickly. For one, leftist women’s poor mental health indicates that, if anything, they are more susceptible to the shifting tides that depression and anxiety bring. Add to that the fact that their abstinence is entirely self-interested and rooted in nothing.

There is a reason why pretty much only the religious undertake the abstinence these women are proposing. It is difficult, and there is little incentive otherwise in a successful, free-market economy. Revealed preferences will flatten out their fervor in time. For now, we can encourage it.