1 week Ago By Heather Saul
We are now one week on from the US election and, as much as it pains me to say it, Donald Trump has won in a landslide. The immediate aftermath has brought a range of emotions for those of us who did not welcome this result, namely, shock, anger and fear. I’m not an American, but the anxiety of many who will now have to live under the Trumpy star-spangled banner for the next four years is palpable, even from the other side of the Atlantic.
And I can’t say I blame them – some of the rhetoric that came out of the election campaign was terrifying, especially around access to abortion and birth control, not to mention the policy proposals contained in the 922-page, ultra conservative, pro-natal wet dream, Project 2025 . Whether you’re American or not, a new Trump presidency is going to change a lot of things. While people are rightly looking to how the economy and global conflicts will be impacted, I also find myself wondering about the effect of this election on how people have sex, because it absolutely will change.
In fact, it’s already changing, and it might not be quite what the Republicans were hoping for. To understand what is going on, we must first understand just what is under threat. Project 2025 was written by an influential conservative think-tank, the Heritage Foundation, and sets out policy proposals to be adopted should the Republicans win the presidential election.
Trump actively sought to distance himself from Project 2025 when he was on the campaign trail – but now he’s got back into power, many fear that he will adopt the blueprint it lays out and reform what it calls the “moral and foundational challenges America faces in this moment of history”. This fear isn’t helped by the fact that more than half the authors of Project 2025 worked in Trump’s last administration or in one of his transition teams. Among other things, Project 2025 seeks to dismantle and ultimately end access to abortion in the US by severely restricting access to drugs used to end a pregnancy, such as mifepristone, withdrawing federal funding to family planning clinics, and ending abortion protections in emergency healthcare situations.
Trump himself has claimed he will not support a nationwide abortion ban, preferring to allow individual states to regulate themselves. However, he has also bragged about being the one to “kill Roe v Wade”, the ruling that said the constitution of the United States protected a right to have an abortion. And when he was president first time round, Trump supported a House bill to ban abortion nationwide after 20 weeks.
In March this year, he suggested he would be open to a national abortion ban after 15 weeks. You can’t blame women for feeling more than a little uncomfortable to hear Trump say that he will “protect” them, “whether the women like it or not”. In June, Senate Republicans blocked a bill to recognise the legal right to contraception.
That’s not a right to abortion, that’s just to birth control. With less and less access to safe abortion and moves to restrict contraception, you can see why American women would be nervous about having penetrative sex with a man. And in the wake of Trump’s re-election, they are now starting to plan.
In TikTok after TikTok, post after post, blog after blog, women are sharing vital information on how to protect themselves and their bodies should access to birth control and abortions be removed. Advice on switching methods of birth control is being shared across social media, as well as how to buy a stock of “Plan B” – or as we would call it, the “morning after pill” – to make sure they will have access to it in the years to come. There are numerous creators warning women to delete any period tracker apps they may have, along with all the data they contain, so there is no online record of when they may or may not be pregnant.
You can already see the fear growing, and in my opinion, it’s well founded. This isn’t just a war on abortion and birth control, it’s a war on what the Republicans like to call “recreational sex”. This is about control.
In 2023, The Heritage Foundation tweeted : “Conservatives have to lead the way in restoring sex to its true purpose, & ending recreational sex & senseless use of birth control pills.” And that they must return “the consequentiality to sex”. Little wonder then that the day after the election, far-right American political pundit, Nicholas Fuentes, gleefully tweeted, “Your body, my choice.
Forever,” igniting a slew of misogynistic memes and posts across social media. What has upset so many American women (and at least one English woman) is that so many people casually voted the Republicans in on the promise of cheaper gas and higher import tariffs – as if denying access to reproductive healthcare doesn’t impact everyone. As TikToker @imthejamishaymachine said: “The same men who voted for Trump are the same ones on the dating apps right now being like, ‘looking for short-term fun, nothing serious.
I’m not political or anything.’” Read Next I've accidentally gone on strike from sex, men, marriage and kids The pro-natal Republicans, like Vice President-elect JD Vance, who once said , “I certainly would like abortion to be illegal nationally”, are well aware of the depths of rage they elicit from the women whose rights they are so keen to take away. But what they haven’t factored in is the fact that those same women do not need men to provide or care for them as we did even a few generations ago.
We don’t need to get married or bear children to have a roof over our heads any more . We can earn our own money, buy our own homes, and enjoy our own careers. In fact, women can do perfectly well without men, so they need to bring more than “Me, man.
You, woman” to the table. Far from pressuring women into wedlock and childbearing, the re-election of Trump is actually turning many away from relationships with men altogether. As TikToker @AdviceFromLouisReloaded said, “to many women, men who have voted for Trump, have said to them that they do not care about their bodies”.
And as a result, they are now choosing celibacy, a form of political actions known as the 4B movement. The 4B movement originated in South Korea, a deeply patriarchal culture where some women are now refusing to marry ( bihon ), have children ( bichulsan ), date ( biyeonae) or have sex ( bisekseu ) with men. Birth rates in South Korea are now the lowest in the world.
In fact, it is now so low that the population is not replacing itself. Women in South Korea are apparently so utterly sick of men that they would rather end the human race than continue to put up with them. The American version of 4B also includes “4 Years”, as those adopting this approach intend to do so for the duration of Trump’s presidency.
As @imthejamishaymachine said, “for the next four years, you will be blueballed”. The 4B movement started life as a small, fringe collective of women, whose visibility was mostly online, but it has grown. Following the election of Trump and the threat to reproductive healthcare that has brought with it, 4B has been trending across social media.
It has exploded on TikTok and has made its way over to X, where men’s right activists and incels are treating it with a scorn that just about masks their anxiety. The day after the election, just about the same time as Fuentes was tweeting “your body, my choice”, Google searches for “4B” increased by 450 per cent. The sheer number of young women I have seen across social media swearing off any sexual contact with a man for the next four years is impressive.
“There’s no sleeping with men that is worth risking your life and your safety,” says TikTokker @ftheniceguy . This isn’t a fringe collective on TikTok any more. This is now mainstream.
Multiple articles on 4B have been published in the last week and the conversation is playing out across every social media platform as women swear off men and conservatives ridicule and rail against the entire idea. The motivation is twofold. Firstly, if access to reproductive healthcare is going to be limited, then refusing to have the kind of sex that will get you pregnant just makes sense.
As @ClareClearly said, “even if you take away contraception, women are really good at celibacy because you guys are actually a threat to us. So, we have a lot less to gain from you.” But by far the biggest motivation seems to be punishment.
You vote for Trump and women will not have sex with you. “If you thought you were involuntarily celibate before, wait until you see what women are like when they see that having one of your babies could cost them their life . .
. you definitely wont be getting any,” said influencer @lifecoachshawn . It seems like a sizable number of American women are about to activate the Lysistrata clause and deny men sexual access until their reproductive rights are protected.
Will it work? If the goal is to opt out of a patriarchal system that values women for their breeding capabilities, then yes. I can’t see instigating a sex strike will force any government to restore reproductive healthcare, but perhaps that isn’t the point here. Women’s bodies have played a central role in this election, and now they are being reclaimed in a rather extraordinary way.
The conservative rhetoric around abortion and family values is completely subverted by the realisation that, as a woman, you don’t have to play this game at all. No access to abortion? Then there will be no option for marriage either. It’s now time to find out what the consequences are.
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