Squid Game 3 through my 4B lens

Squid Game 3 through my 4B lens

As Squid Game 3 captures global attention, it’s worth asking: what are we really watching? A game? A spectacle? Or a familiar system that mirrors a painful reality, especially for women?

South Korea’s 4B movement dares to reject the very foundations of this system: dating, marriage, childbirth and sex with men. Through this lens, Squid Game isn’t just a thriller, it’s a brutal metaphor for a patriarchal world that uses women’s labor, bodies and pain as collateral.

Jun-hee enters the death games while visibly pregnant. Her character forces a confrontation with how society sees pregnant women: as symbols, martyrs and tools, rarely as autonomous human beings.

Others project sympathy or disgust onto her, but few see her as a full person.

In patriarchal society, pregnancy isn’t about the woman, it’s about the potential child, the “future” of the nation and how her body serves the system.

Jun-hee is trapped not just by the game, but by what society expects her to do: sacrifice, endure, nurture, survive. All without complaint.

Motherhood becomes another form of control.

The fact that Jun-hee must risk her life in a literal death game is the clearest indictment of a system that doesn’t value mothers, only motherhood.

Media often turns pregnant women into symbols: purity, hope, sacrifice.

4B feminism demands that women be seen not as vessels, but as full beings. Anything less is dehumanization, even if it’s wrapped in sympathy.

Jun-hee’s character might break viewers’ hearts but for 4B feminists, her presence is a reminder of why they say no to childbirth, because even inside the most extreme horrors, women are expected to carry the future on their backs, quietly, bravely and at their own expense.

The 4B movement says that women’s bodies are not your battleground. We will not carry children or be manipulated to join in a death game for survival. The system praises women who die for others, but never builds a world where they could live for themselves.

The women contestants in season 3 are clearly used by male alliances, manipulated for emotional labor or written off as liabilities. This replicates real world patterns where: women’s emotional intelligence is weaponized, their physical ability is underestimated, their presence is tolerated only when it serves males.
This is exactly why dating and partnership with men is seen as a losing game. You’re not an equal, you’re a resource.

Let’s not play in men’s games any longer. Its time to put ourselves first. ♀