All articles starting with S
44,216 articles
Sexual Healing
"Sexual Healing" is a 1982 Marvin Gaye single from Midnight Love, written with Odell Brown and David Ritz, recorded in Ostend, Belgium, and among the first hits to use the Roland TR-808 drum machine; it spent ten weeks at number one on the R&B chart and won two Grammys.
Sexual health
Sexual health, also termed sexual well-being, is WHO's positive state of physical, emotional, mental and social well-being in relation to sexuality, requiring safety, pleasure, and sexual rights, not merely absence of disease; distinct from the CSIRO journal Sexual Health.
Sexual identity
Sexual identity, also called sexual identification, is a person's self-labeling in sexual terms, such as lesbian, gay, or queer, one of three components of sexual orientation alongside attraction and behavior.
Sexual intercourse
Sexual intercourse (coitus) is penile-vaginal or penile-anal penetration, the route to human fertilization. Distinguished by ~100 kcal/6 METs physical demand, STI and pregnancy risks, condom and contraceptive prevention, and the history of sexology from Kinsey to Masters and Johnson.
Sexual masochism disorder
Sexual masochism disorder (DSM-5-TR; ICD-11 removed masochism) is a paraphilic disorder: recurrent arousal from suffering for 6-plus months with distress, impairment, or nonconsent, distinct from consensual BDSM and treatable with CBT plus antiandrogens.
Sexual misconduct
Sexual misconduct is a non-legal umbrella term for unwelcome or non-consensual sexual behavior, spanning harassment, abuse, and assault, used in workplace, medical, academic, military, and UN policies; neither Black's nor Ballentine's law dictionaries define it.
Sexual objectification
Sexual objectification: treating a person as a body or body parts, central to feminist theory (Nussbaum's seven features; MacKinnon, Dworkin) and objectification theory (Fredrickson & Roberts 1997), covering self-objectification, body surveillance, mental health outcomes, and philosophical debate.
Sexual Offences Act 1967
Sexual Offences Act 1967 (1967 c. 60), the UK statute decriminalising private, consensual homosexual acts between men over 21 in England and Wales only, following the Wolfenden Report;Scotland and Northern Ireland followed in 1980-82.
Sexual orientation
Sexual orientation: enduring patterns of sexual and emotional attraction, behavior, and identity (lesbian, gay, bisexual, straight). Covers its three dimensions, history, biology, measurement, and global legal treatment.
Sexual penetration
Sexual penetration, also known as penetrative sex, is the placing of a penis, finger, or object into the vagina or anus, or a sex organ into the mouth.
Sexual practices between men
Sexual practices between men, also called sex between men, are the sexual behaviors and roles males engage in with other males, studied through the MSM public health category.
Sexual predator
Sexual predator is a legal designation, mainly in US law, for convicted sex offenders judged likely to reoffend; it triggers civil commitment, registration, and restrictions, grounded in Washington's 1990 act and Kansas v. Hendricks.
Sexual reproduction
Sexual reproduction is the production of haploid cells by parents and their fusion into a diploid cell, generating genetic variation through meiosis and fertilization. Most eukaryotes reproduce this way.
Sexual revolution
The sexual revolution, also called sexual liberation, was a period of rapid change in sexual values in the 1960s and 1970s, driven by the contraceptive pill.
Sexual roleplay
Sexual roleplay (RP, ERP): consensual adult play using fictional roles, costume, story, or language during intimate or game settings. Distinguished by consent frameworks (four C's), safewords and stoplight calibration, digital and AI variants, and use in sex education.
Sexual sadism disorder
Sexual sadism disorder (ICD-11: coercive sexual sadism disorder, 6D33): a paraphilic disorder defined by 6+ months of sexual arousal from another's suffering, with non-consent or distress; distinct from consensual BDSM, rare clinically, concentrated in sexual homicide samples.
Sexual selection
Sexual selection, Darwin's second evolutionary theory from The Descent of Man (1871), is selection through competition for mates and fertilization, acting via mate choice, male-male competition, sperm competition, and cryptic female choice.
Sexual selection in spiders
Sexual selection in spiders covers courtship signals, nuptial gifts, sexual cannibalism, sperm competition (P2 0-100%), cryptic female choice, mating plugs, and extreme female-biased size dimorphism, including the Nephila female-gigantism reinterpretation.
Sexual slang
Sexual slang, also known as sex slang, is the informal vocabulary people use to speak about sexuality through metaphor and joking, arising from cultural taboos.
Sexual slavery
Sexual slavery: holding a person in slavery and forcing sexual acts or services. Also called sex slavery, enslavement for sexual exploitation; overlaps sex trafficking. Key facts: ISIL slave markets in Raqqa, ILO $173 billion sexual-exploitation profits, 6.3 million victims in 2021.
Sexual spore
Sexual spore: a spore produced after karyogamy and meiosis in fungi and plants, including ascospores, basidiospores, zygospores, and oospores; adapted for long-term survival, unlike mitotic asexual dispersal spores.
Sexual stimulation
Sexual stimulation: any physical or psychological trigger of the human sexual response, described in Masters and Johnson's four-phase cycle (excitement, plateau, orgasm, resolution) and studied through genital measures, brain imaging, and later desire-phase and circular models.
Sexual tension
Sexual tension: unresolved mutual attraction shaped by desire, uncertainty, and ambiguous cues; studied in relationship psychology and neuroscience and used as a narrative device in romance fiction and screen media.
Sexual vampire
Sexual vampire: a figure combining vampirism with erotic predation. Also called sexual vampirism (van Gulik's term for Chinese macrobiotic life-draining sex practices); spans incubus/succubus folklore, Dracula's eroticism, clinical vampirism.
Sexual violence
Sexual violence is any sexual act or attempted act using coercion, from unwanted comments to forced penetration, recognized by the WHO as a major public health and human rights problem.
Sexual violence in South Africa
Sexual violence in South Africa covers rape, sexual assault, and femicide under the 2007 Sexual Offences Act, with among the world's highest recorded rates, roughly one-third of rapes unreported, and a National Strategic Plan on GBVF (2020-2030) coordinating response.
Sexuality after spinal cord injury
Sexuality after spinal cord injury (SCI): how lesion level and completeness change arousal, erection, ejaculation, lubrication, orgasm, and fertility, plus assessment tools (IIEF, FSFI) and rehabilitation approaches.
Sexuality in ancient Rome
Sexuality in ancient Rome: Roman sexual norms, practices, and representations as reconstructed by classical scholarship, organized around an active/passive, dominance-submission framework keyed to status rather than partner gender, with a double standard for citizen women and distinct from Greek pederasty.
Sexuality in Japan
Sexuality in Japan (セクシュアリティ): the social organization and study of sex, sexual identity, and norms in Japan. Covers premodern nanshoku, Meiji family ideology and prostitution debates, 47.2% married sexless rate (2016), 3.5% LGBTA estimate, and the 2023 LGBT Understanding Promotion Law.
Sexuality in South Korea
Sexuality in South Korea: Confucian-influenced marriage and gender norms, state-managed prostitution history, sex education, and contested LGBT rights including the military ban and 2025 census recognition of same-sex couples.