Written by Miracle Okah
“I will not give birth to a life that will discriminate against my gender. My own flesh and blood must not become a blade turned against me.”
“If the world born from my body oppresses me, I will not let that world exist.”
These words, spoken by Korean women within the 4B movement, caught me by surprise the first time I read them. They felt raw in their audacity, uncompromising in their honesty.
The 4B movement, which emerged in South Korea, is built on four refusals: no dating men, no sex with men, no marriage to men, and no childbirth. It is a radical rejection of systems that have long extracted women’s labour, bodies, and future without offering safety or dignity in return. For women who practise this, it is all about refusing to reproduce a world that has consistently harmed them.
I am envious of the clarity of that stance.
I know that not every woman can or wants to practise 4B in its strictest form. Still, I believe many women are already practising their own versions of it, consciously or not. They are doing it by decentring men in the most uncompromising ways possible.
You might have come across videos online talking about decentring men, and no, it is not a buzzword or an internet joke. It is also not a personality trait or a trend that will pass with time. It is a response to being born into a society where women are groomed, from childhood, to seek male approval. And even when we resist it, we are still shaped by it. We are taught to be pleasing and accommodating, to wait until we are picked by men, as if they are doing us a favour. We are taught that men are the reference point.
And it shows around us: almost everything is built with men at the centre. Religion is one of the biggest upholders of patriarchy; it positions women as helpers, vessels with little to no autonomy. Medicine has historically used male bodies as the default for research, clinical trials and symptom presentation, leaving women undiagnosed, misdiagnosed and dismissed. Cars were designed around male bodies, which is why women are statistically more likely to be injured and killed in car crashes. Technology, employment structures, and even public safety standards were not built with women in mind.
Marriage, as an institution, has never paid women. It has relied on their unpaid labour, emotional regulation, caregiving, and reproductive work while framing it as an achievement or moral milestone. If we were taught to see marriage clearly, stripped of romance and social pressure, many women would struggle to justify it because the arrangement rarely benefits them.
In my own life, decentring men has been gradual. It started with me centring myself — I no longer seek male validation as proof of worth. I have come to terms with the fact that marriage is not for everyone and certainly not a yardstick for success. I am no longer interested in marrying out of pressure or comparison.
I have decentred religion and pastors who perpetuate misogyny while calling it doctrine. That kind of belief system has killed women in the past and continues to endanger them. I have deconstructed structures that were never designed to serve me.
I have decentred fertility; I no longer see it as a duty or a need. It is a want, at most. If more women believed this, fewer would put their bodies through dangerous processes, fewer would exploit poorer women through surrogacy arrangements, and fewer would risk their lives to meet a social expectation. I have also decentred childbirth itself. I reject the idea that my highest value lies in reproduction or that giving birth is proof of fulfilment.
Decentring men, for me, also means choosing my own happiness even when it makes men uncomfortable. It means returning shame to a society that placed it on women in the first place. I no longer laugh off sexism. I no longer say “that’s just how men are.” I no longer treat sex as something men extract pleasure from while women endure — I take as much as I want from it. I do not want to centre systems that treat gender-based violence as normal. I do not want to organise my life around institutions that require my suffering to function.
Elizabeth, a creative I spoke to, put it more bluntly:
“As a bisexual woman, I’ve decentred men so much that I only date women. Once you start paying attention to how men are treated compared to how women are, you will get angry. In fact, at some point in my life, I stopped saying I decentred men and started saying I centred myself. I put myself at the centre of everything, and my life has been peaceful since. I don’t accept unsolicited advice from men. I don’t believe in ‘good men’ exceptions, because even the good ones are misogynistic and still benefit from it. I think if more women did this, their lives would be much better.”
Just like Elizabeth, decentring men is not only about relationships; it is about refusing things like beauty standards designed for the male gaze. It is about making life decisions without filtering them through the male approval and refusing to shrink yourself to avoid “threatening” men. It is about refusing to accommodate their insecurities.
You decentre men by reducing the unpaid emotional labour you give to them and refusing to cater to their egos at your own expense. You stop measuring your success through male validation — whether in beauty, desirability, marriageability, or obedience — because these are not the yardstick.
Decentring men also means striving for financial independence, stopping the expectation that men will provide for you, and investing in female friendships and support networks. It means questioning everything, especially religion or institutions that act as gatekeepers of male power, and avoiding engagement that defaults to male perspectives. It is about refusing to overexplain yourself to men and resisting the urge to defend them when they commit harm. Finally, it is about taking back the shame society has long projected onto women for asserting autonomy.
Precious, a writing coach, told me that decentring men in her life looks like pursuing her career without apology:
“I put marriage at the back of my mind. Online couples don’t intrigue me anymore. They are still men at the end of the day. I want money, stability, and peace. I still want companionship, but I don’t seek it desperately the way I used to.”
There are consequences to this collective change, and we are seeing them already. South Korea now has one of the lowest birth rates in the world, falling to 0.72 births per woman in 2023, according to official statistics. Demographic research suggests that fertility rates this low, if sustained, could lead to long-term population decline. Women have been explicit about why they are opting out: long working hours, unequal domestic labour, workplace discrimination, the risks of marriage, and the normalisation of gender-based violence make motherhood feel less like a choice and more like a liability.
At the same time, conversations about male loneliness have grown louder. Research shows that men’s social networks have been shrinking for decades, with more men reporting having no close friendships and relying heavily on romantic partners for emotional support. Men are struggling to build emotional intimacy with each other because the patriarchy trained them to outsource care to women. Although this did not start with women decentring men, it has become more visible as women step back from emotional caretaking. What is often described as a loneliness crisis is also the exposure of a system where women carried the burden of connection, care, and stability.
Thanks to this shift, women are gaining greater autonomy, believing they can pursue what once seemed impossible. They are coming online to share their experiences, inspiring more women to join the conversation. With these changes, women are creating more time for friendships and careers. Some men, too, are beginning to confront the system, perhaps out of fear or in solidarity.
This might have never happened if women were treated as equals rather than resources, if we were valued beyond our ability to reproduce, and if the system did not depend on women’s labour and bodies. Perhaps if men had learnt care, responsibility, respect, and emotional intimacy on their own without relying on us to teach or perform it for them, we would not fight so hard to decentre them and the system at large.
I still struggle with some internalised thoughts, because unlearning does not happen all at once, especially after years of conditioning. But one thing I am certain of is this: my choice is not performative. Choosing myself has been the most honest decision I have made.
You may ask, what comes next? Well, what comes next is a world where women are no longer supporting characters in someone else’s story but the protagonists of their own. Whether the systems around us evolve to meet us there or crumble in our absence is no longer our burden to carry. The choice and responsibility belong to us now.
