282 articles
Daniel Defert
Daniel Defert (1937-2023), French sociologist and partner of Michel Foucault, founded AIDES in 1984 after Foucault's AIDS death, led the first French anti-AIDS association until 1991, and co-edited Foucault's Dits et écrits.
David Thorstad
David Thorstad (1941–2021), American gay liberation activist, co-author of The Early Homosexual Rights Movement (1864–1935), SWP critic, Gay Activists Alliance president, and NAMBLA founding member; distinct from the contemporary philosopher of the same name.
Deadnaming
Deadnaming is calling a transgender person by their birth name instead of their chosen name, intentionally or accidentally. Covers effects, identity documents, media style guides (AP, Reuters, Trans Journalists Association), and US and UK legal treatment.
Death of Nex Benedict
Nex Benedict (Dagny Benedict), 16, a nonbinary Choctaw sophomore, died February 8, 2024, one day after a restroom fight at Owasso High School, Oklahoma. Ruled a suicide; federal OCR found Title IX violations; family lawsuit pending.
Defense of Marriage Act
Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), 1996 U.S. federal law, P.L. 104-199, defining marriage for federal purposes as one man and one woman; Section 3 struck down by United States v. Windsor (2013) and repealed by the Respect for Marriage Act (2022).
Demisexuality
Demisexuality, also called being demisexual, is a sexual orientation on the asexual spectrum in which sexual attraction arises only after a strong emotional bond forms, distinct from celibacy and from asexuality and graysexuality.
Demographics of sexual orientation
Demographics of sexual orientation: statistical measurement of attraction, behavior, and identity in populations. Covers the three-component consensus, NHIS/ONS prevalence figures, national survey designs, and global concealment estimates.
Diane Rodríguez
Diane Rodríguez, an Ecuadorian trans activist, led campaigns for legal gender recognition and founded the Asociación Silueta X in 2008. She was the first trans woman to sit in the National Assembly.
Drag Queen Story Hour
Drag Queen Story Hour, now Drag Story Hour, is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit founded by Michelle Tea in San Francisco in 2015 in which drag performers read picture books to children at libraries and schools, known for children's literacy programming and the surrounding protests and legislation.
Dyke (slang)
Dyke is slang for a lesbian, especially one perceived as masculine; originally a slur (bulldyker attested 1906, dyke 1931), reclaimed since the 1970s as a proud self-designation and in Dyke March events.
Earring Magic Ken
Earring Magic Ken is a 1993 Mattel Ken doll with a lavender mesh top, pleather vest, hoop earring, and chrome-ring necklace. Dan Savage's 'Ken Comes Out' column made it a gay icon; discontinued after six months, reportedly Mattel's best-selling Ken.
Elizabeth Eden
Elizabeth (Liz) Eden, born Ernest Aron (1946-1987), American transgender woman whose partner John Wojtowicz's 1972 Brooklyn bank robbery inspired Dog Day Afternoon; she told her own story in a 1977 CLUB memoir.
Equality Act (United States)
Equality Act (United States): proposed federal law amending the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Fair Housing Act, and related statutes to bar discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity; first introduced 1974, passed the House 2019 and 2021, never enacted.
Equality Act 2010
Equality Act 2010 (c. 15), UK statute consolidating anti-discrimination law around nine protected characteristics; Royal Assent 8 April 2010, main commencement 1 October 2010, enforced by the EHRC, interpreted in For Women Scotland (2025).
Fag hag
Fag hag (also fruit fly, queen bee) is US gay male slang, recorded from 1972, for a straight woman who socially associates with gay men; traditionally derogatory, stereotyped in media, and partly reclaimed by figures like Margaret Cho.
Faggot
Faggot is an English word: chiefly a highly offensive slur for a gay man, first attested in US slang in 1914, and also an older word for a bundle of sticks, a British offal dish, and a 1590s contemptuous term for a woman.
Federal Marriage Amendment
The Federal Marriage Amendment was a proposed U.S. constitutional amendment, H.J. Res. 56 introduced by Marilyn Musgrave in 2003, defining marriage as only a man-woman union; debated in Congress in 2004, it never passed, and Obergefell v. Hodges later made it moot.
Femboy
Femboy: slang for a usually cisgender young man with a conventionally feminine manner of self-expression; also 男の娘 (otoko no ko). 1990s slur reclaimed online, meme breakout late 2019, dictionary-listed circa 2012.
Femme
Femme: an LGBTQ+ identity term for feminine gender expression, from French femme (Latin femina). Originated in 1940s US lesbian bar culture as the counterpart of butch; now used by lesbians, gay men, and transfeminine people.
Fetishization of LGBTQ people
Fetishization of LGBTQ people: treating sexual or gender identity as a sexual fantasy. Also called queer sexual objectification. Documented in media, dating apps, and history, mostly by cishet men, with negative mental-health impacts.
First same-sex marriage in Spain
First same-sex marriage in Spain: Emilio Menéndez and Carlos Baturín wed 11 July 2005 in Tres Cantos under Ley 13/2005, in force 3 July; Spain was the third country, upheld by STC 198/2012.
Florida Parental Rights in Education Act
The Florida Parental Rights in Education Act, HB 1557 (2022), nicknamed 'Don't Say Gay', restricts classroom instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity, originally K-3, expanded to grade 8 in 2023, with parental notification and lawsuit enforcement; settled litigation left it in effect.
Frank Kameny
Frank Kameny (Franklin Edward Kameny, 1925–2011), American astronomer and gay rights pioneer. Fired in 1957 from the Army Map Service during the Lavender Scare, he brought the first sexual-orientation civil rights claim to the Supreme Court (Kameny v. Brucker, denied 1961), co-founded the Mattachine Society of Washington, led the first White House gay rights picket in 1965, coined "Gay is Good," and helped win the 1973 APA delisting of homosexuality and the 1975 end of the federal employment ban.
Fred Phelps
Fred Waldron Phelps (1929–2014), American pastor and disbarred lawyer, founded Topeka's Westboro Baptist Church, led anti-gay "God Hates Fags" funeral picketing, filed some 400 suits, and won Snyder v. Phelps (2011, 8–1).
Friend of Dorothy
Friend of Dorothy (FOD) was mid-twentieth-century coded slang for a gay man, usually traced to Judy Garland's Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. It let strangers identify each other deniably; the US Navy famously searched for a nonexistent Dorothy in the 1980s.
Frot
Frot is slang for non-penetrative genital-to-genital rubbing, mainly between men; a shortened form of frottage (French frotter, "to rub"). Distinct from frotteurism, the clinical term for nonconsensual rubbing.
Gabriel Ocasio-Cortez
Gabriel Ocasio-Cortez is the younger brother of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC). In fall 2016 he nominated his sister to Brand New Congress, triggering her 2018 primary win over Joe Crowley.
Gay
Gay describes attraction to the same sex or gender, most often applied to men; about 4% of people identify with a same-sex orientation. Covers terminology, science, Stonewall-era history, and global legal status.
Gay and Lesbian Kingdom of the Coral Sea Islands
The Gay and Lesbian Kingdom of the Coral Sea Islands, or Gay Kingdom, was an unrecognized Australian micronation proclaimed on Cato Island on 14 June 2004 by gay rights activists protesting the Marriage Act amendment, led by Emperor Dale Parker Anderson, and dissolved 17 November 2017 after same-sex marriage was legalized.
Gay bar
Gay bar: LGBTQ+ drinking establishment, also called queer bar, historically central to gay social life. Known for police raids, the 1966 sip-in, Stonewall 1969, mafia ownership, and modern closures driven by gentrification, COVID-19, and rising rents.