2,229 articles
Boi (slang)
Boi is an informal spelling of "boy" used as playful internet slang and as a queer identity term rooted in Black American vernacular and lesbian communities; also a Welsh greeting and the BOI finance acronym.
Bolivian hunger strikes of 1977–1978
The Bolivian hunger strikes of 1977–1978 began with four miners' wives in La Paz and grew to about 1,200 strikers, forcing dictator Hugo Banzer to grant amnesty.
Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home
Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home, also St Mary's, Tuam, County Galway: Catholic-run institution for unmarried mothers, 1925–1961, where 796 children died and a septic-tank mass grave is being excavated since 2025.
Boneghazi
Boneghazi, or the stealing human bones controversy, was a December 2015 Tumblr scandal accusing New Orleans witch Ender Darling of taking cemetery bones for rituals; it spawned memes and a January 2016 police raid.
Boomerang Generation
Boomerang generation: young adults who leave the family home and return to their parents, often for financial reasons. Also called boomerang kids; measured by rising coresidence rates in the US, OECD, UK, and Australia.
Bootblacking (BDSM)
Bootblacking, in leather and BDSM communities, is the ritual care, cleaning, and polishing of boots and leather gear, often as service submission; known for bar stands since the 1970s and contests like International Mr./Ms. Bootblack (split 1998) and International Community Bootblack (2003).
Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza
Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza is Gloria Anzaldúa's 1987 hybrid book of prose and poetry from Aunt Lute Books on the U.S.-Mexico border, Chicana feminism, code-switching, and mestiza consciousness; issued in five editions plus a 2021 critical edition.
Boston marriage
Boston marriage: a late 19th- to early 20th-century New England term for a long-term cohabiting relationship between two unmarried, often college-educated and financially independent women; popularized by Henry James's The Bostonians (1886), exemplified by Annie Fields and Sarah Orne Jewett.
Bouvier family
Bouvier family: the American family founded by Michel Bouvier of Pont-Saint-Esprit, Philadelphia cabinetmaker turned real-estate tycoon; best known through Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis and the 1953 Kennedy marriage.
Boy
Boy: a male child; boyhood as a biological and social stage. Covers word history, developmental vulnerability, nurture gaps, education outcomes, masculinity norms, manosphere influence, and care research.
Boycott
Boycott: collective refusal to buy from, work for, or deal with a target to force change, named after Captain Charles Boycott, ostracized in Ireland in 1880; a core nonviolent-resistance tactic.
Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions
Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) is a Palestinian-led campaign launched 9 July 2005 by over 170 organizations, demanding an end to occupation, equality for Palestinian citizens of Israel, and refugee rights, modeled on anti-apartheid South Africa.
Boyfriend
Boyfriend: a man or boy someone has a romantic or sexual relationship with; word first recorded 1895-1900, paired with girlfriend in early-1900s US dating culture. Also a fashion adjective for men's-inspired women's clothing.
Bralessness
Bralessness is the practice of not wearing a brassiere, tied to 1960s feminist protest (the 1968 Miss America "Freedom Trash Can" and the bra-burning myth), Rudi Gernreich's transparent "no bra," workplace dress-code law, and recent survey and perception research.
Brandon Teena
Brandon Teena (Teena Renae Brandon), 21, a Nebraska transgender man raped December 25, 1993 and murdered December 31 with Lisa Lambert and Phillip Devine; Lotter and Nissen convicted, sheriff found negligent in Brandon v. County of Richardson.
Breadcrumbing
Breadcrumbing: sending intermittent, vague messages of interest to keep a dating partner hooked without intending commitment; colloquial term from Hansel and Gretel, driven by intermittent reinforcement, linked to loneliness and reduced life satisfaction.
Breast fetishism
Breast fetishism is a sexual interest in which breasts become a predominant focus of arousal. A medical dictionary uses the term for an interest that excludes most other physical features, a narrower.
Breast ironing
Breast ironing, also called breast flattening, is the practice of pressing pubescent girls' breasts with hot objects to delay development, reported most often in Cameroon.
Breast torture
Breast torture, also called tit torture or TT, is a consensual BDSM pain play targeting the breasts, areolas, and nipples with clamps, weights, impact, wax, or rope, ranging from clothespins to edgeplay such as breast suspension.
Breastfeeding in public
Breastfeeding in public: nursing an infant in cafes, transport, and other shared spaces. Legally protected in the US since New York's 1984 law and under the UK Equality Act 2010, yet stigma remains a documented barrier to breastfeeding.
Brenda Biya
Brenda Biya (King Nasty), born 1997, daughter of Cameroon's President Paul Biya; came out publicly in June-July 2024 and called for decriminalization of same-sex conduct, illegal in Cameroon since 1972 under Penal Code article 347-1.
Bridal shower
A bridal shower, also called a wedding shower, is a pre-wedding party, mainly in the United States, at which guests give the bride or couple gifts for their future home.
Bride
Bride: a woman on her wedding day, from Teutonic bruths/bryd. Covers etymology, bride-cake origins, the white dress popularized by Queen Victoria, bridal music, and marriage payments like bridewealth and dowry.
Bride kidnapping
Bride kidnapping, or ala kachuu (кыз ала качуу), is forced marriage by abduction, most associated with Kyrgyzstan. Rare before Soviet rule, it grew from the 1970s, driven by rigid bride prices, shame norms, and weak enforcement.
Bride price
Bride price, or bridewealth, is a marriage payment from the groom's family to the bride's family, the most common form of marriage compensation worldwide, contrasted with dowry, which moves in the opposite direction.
Bridesmaid
A bridesmaid is a woman who attends and supports the bride at a wedding. The role spans ceremony duties, months of planning labor, and costs of roughly $1,700 per bridesmaid, with parties shrinking to about four per side by 2026.
Brigitte Gabriel (حنان قهوجي)
Brigitte Gabriel (حنان قهوجي), Lebanese-born American activist and founder of ACT for America (2007), an SPLC-designated anti-Muslim group; former Middle East TV anchor, author, and 2025 Menachem Begin Prize recipient.
Bro Code
Bro Code: an unwritten rulebook of male-friendship loyalty, popularized by How I Met Your Mother's Barney Stinson (2008 book) and reworked in gender studies by Thomas Keith for sexist bro culture.
Bromance
Bromance: a close, emotionally intimate, nonsexual friendship between men; portmanteau of brother and romance. Popularized in the mid-2000s via films like Superbad; studied as a form of homosociality tied to declining homophobia.
Bronisław Malinowski
Bronisław Malinowski (1884–1942), Polish-born British social anthropologist at LSE, pioneer of intensive Trobriand Islands fieldwork, author of Argonauts of the Western Pacific (1922), and founder of functionalist kinship theory.