Meera Choi

Research interests: Gender and sexuality, culture, political economy, family, transnational feminism, feminist and queer theory, qualitative methods, and South Korea.

Bio:  Meera Choi holds a PhD in sociology from Yale University. Her research explores gender, sexuality, social movements, and media, with a focus on the 4B Movement in South Korea. Her work has been featured in The Atlantic, NPR, and CNN.

Research summary: As a decolonial feminist sociologist, I am committed to the question: How does political consciousness emerge, and what are the possibilities and limitations of refusal as a practice for enabling transnational social change in gender dynamics, family formation, and sexuality? My dissertation-to-book project, The Rise of Heterosexual Refusal: Gender and Sexual Politics and Family Change in South Korea, takes up this question by examining how young South Korean women’s refusals of heterosexuality serve as feminist praxis, and how these refusals are shaped and constrained by the ideological and affective conditions of neoliberal capitalism and rising authoritarianism. Drawing on 130 in-depth life history interviews with young women, many affiliated with the 4B movement—a feminist activism that refuses to date, have sex, marry, and have children with men—and a range of discursive materials, I theorize refusal as a relational and collective practice of ideological struggle, forged through ambivalence, exhaustion, and critique.

This information is accurate as of the affiliate year indicated. (last updated 12.28.2025)