273 articles
Sexism
Sexism is prejudice or discrimination based on sex or gender, spanning individual, institutional, and structural levels; coined in 1960s US feminism, it is measured poorly and, per UN 2026 data, no SDG 5 indicator is on track for 2030.
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.
Shulamith Firestone
Shulamith Firestone (1945–2012), Canadian-born radical feminist, founded Chicago Radical Women, New York Radical Women, Redstockings, and New York Radical Feminists, and wrote The Dialectic of Sex (1970) and Airless Spaces (1998).
Silvia Federici
Silvia Federici (born 1942, Parma) is an Italian feminist scholar and Wages for Housework co-founder, professor emerita at Hofstra University, author of Caliban and the Witch (2004), which links witch-hunts to capitalist primitive accumulation.
Sissy
Sissy is a derogatory American term for a man or boy perceived as weak or effeminate. It originated from the word sister in the late 1800s.
Slut
Slut is an offensive English word for a woman thought to have many sexual partners, first attested c. 1400 meaning an untidy woman; central to slut-shaming, the sexual double standard, and SlutWalk reclamation.
Slut-shaming
Slut-shaming, also called slut bashing, is the stigmatization of women and girls for actual or perceived sexual behavior or appearance. Key facts: sexual double standard, 50% of girls affected, SlutWalk protest movement.
SlutWalk
SlutWalk: transnational feminist protest movement founded in Toronto in 2011 after a police officer's victim-blaming remark at York University; marches against slut-shaming and rape culture, spread to over 50 countries.
Social construction of gender
Social construction of gender: the theory that gender roles and hierarchies are produced through socialization, interaction, and institutions rather than being natural or inevitable; contrasted with gender essentialism, central to feminist sociology since West and Zimmerman's doing gender.
Social justice warrior
Social justice warrior (SJW) is a pejorative for promoters of progressive views; positive in the early 1990s, pejorative from about 2009–2011, mainstreamed by 2014 GamerGate, later displaced by "woke".
Socialist feminism
Socialist feminism, a 1970s feminist current combining Marxist and radical feminism, explains women's oppression through capitalism and patriarchy together, via concepts like capitalist patriarchy, dual systems theory, and social reproduction theory.
Sojourner Truth
Sojourner Truth (Isabella Van Wagenen, c. 1797-1883), New York-born abolitionist and women's rights orator; won the 1828 case recovering her son Peter; the famous 'Ain't I a Woman?' refrain comes from Gage's 1863 version, not the 1851 transcript.
Soy boy
Soy boy (soyboy, soy-boy) is an alt-right internet insult for men seen as effeminate or liberal, based on the disproven claim that soy's phytoestrogens lower male testosterone; it emerged on 4chan in 2017 alongside milk-chugging imagery.
Standpoint theory
Standpoint theory is a family of epistemological positions that emerged in the 1970s. It claims that marginalized perspectives are epistemically advantaged and that research should begin with their lives.
Sue Pritzker
Sue (Susan S.) Pritzker, born Susan Stowell in 1948, is an American philanthropist, wife of Nicholas Pritzker, and co-president of the Libra Foundation, a social justice funder founded in 2002 with about $428 million in assets.
Susan B. Anthony
Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906), American Quaker-born reformer and organizer for woman suffrage; NWSA co-founder, 1872 voting-arrest defendant, coeditor of History of Woman Suffrage; the Nineteenth Amendment was long called the Anthony Amendment.
Susan Carland
Susan Carland (Susan Janet Carland), Australian sociologist of religion at Monash University, author of Fighting Hislam (2016), converted to Islam at 19, studies Muslim women, feminism, and Islamophobia, and is married to Waleed Aly.
Tarana Burke
Tarana Burke (born 1973, Bronx, New York) is the American civil rights activist who founded the 'me too' movement in 2006 in Selma, Alabama; her phrase became the viral #MeToo hashtag in October 2017 after Alyssa Milano's tweet.
TERF (acronym)
TERF, trans-exclusionary radical feminist, is an acronym coined in 2008 by blogger Viv Smythe as a neutral label, now widely considered offensive, for feminists who exclude trans women; also a telomere protein and military terrain flight.
The Cut (publication)
The Cut (thecut.com) is New York magazine's women-focused digital vertical, founded 2008 as a fashion blog and expanded in 2012; sections style, self, culture, power; under Vox Media, then Lupa Systems from 2026.
The Female Eunuch
The Female Eunuch, Germaine Greer's 1970 feminist polemic (MacGibbon & Kee; McGraw-Hill 1971), argues patriarchal femininity renders women eunuchs; instant bestseller, second-wave classic, banned in Rhodesia, sequel The Whole Woman 1999.
The Feminine Mystique
The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan's 1963 Norton book naming 'the problem that has no name,' critiqued postwar American housewifery and is widely credited with igniting second-wave US feminism, amid lasting criticisms of its white middle-class focus.
The personal is political
Feminist slogan and 1970 Carol Hanisch essay holding that private experiences such as housework, sexuality, and child care are political; rooted in consciousness-raising, contested across feminist waves.
The Red Pill
The Red Pill is a 2016 American documentary directed by Cassie Jaye, exploring the men's rights movement through interviews with Warren Farrell and Paul Elam.
Third gender
Third gender: a social or legal category for people classified beyond the male/female binary. Covers hijras, two-spirit roles, Herdt's Third Sex Third Gender scholarship, critiques, and legal third-gender markers such as India's NALSA ruling and Nepal's O passports.
Third-wave feminism
Third-wave feminism is the feminist movement that began in the United States in the early 1990s, reacting to second-wave feminism, post-feminist backlash, the Anita Hill hearings, and Riot Grrrl, with intersectionality as its core concept.
Timeline of women's education
Timeline of women's education: from 1835 coeducational US colleges and 1848 Seneca Falls, through Title IX (1972) and the 1995 Beijing Declaration, to 2009 global school parity, women's tertiary majority, and the Afghan ban since 2021.
Title IX
Title IX (Patsy T. Mink Equal Opportunity in Education Act), 1972 US federal law barring sex discrimination in federally funded education; famous for athletics, sexual assault proceedings, and 2026 Supreme Court transgender sports rulings.
Tomboy
Tomboy: a girl who behaves in conventionally masculine ways. Studied via the Tomboy Project (N=60, ages 4-9), masculinity-predicted adult traits, puberty decline, and partial overlap with lesbian identity.
Topfreedom
Topfreedom is the movement for women's right to go bare-chested in public where men may, also called topfree equality or Free the Nipple. Key facts: New York legalized it in 1992, Ontario in 1996, GoTopless founded 2007.