2,229 articles
Civil rights movements
Civil rights movements are organized campaigns for equal legal treatment, from the US Black freedom struggle of the 1950s-1960s (Montgomery boycott, Civil Rights Act of 1964, Voting Rights Act of 1965) to Black Lives Matter and 2025-2026 voting rights protests, with parallel women's, LGBTQI+, and global movements.
Civil union
Civil union: a legally registered relationship giving couples some or all marriage rights without marriage; also called registered partnership (partnerschap, PACS). First law Denmark 1989; spread through Europe and US states; largely displaced by same-sex marriage.
Claire Wineland
Claire Wineland, also known as Claire Lucia Wineland, was an American activist with cystic fibrosis who founded Claire's Place Foundation and died in 2018 at age 21.
Clan
Clan: a unilineal or ambilineal descent group claiming common, often mythical, ancestry without demonstrated genealogical links (Gaelic clann). Distinct from a lineage; typically exogamous; genetic studies of Central Asian clans support shared clan ancestry but not tribal ancestry.
Claudette Colvin
Claudette Colvin (1939–2026), American civil rights pioneer arrested March 2, 1955 at age 15 for refusing a Montgomery segregated bus seat nine months before Rosa Parks, and plaintiff in Browder v. Gayle.
Clement Payne
Clement Osbourne Payne (1904–1941) was a Trinidad-born Barbadian labor organizer whose deportation in July 1937 triggered four days of rioting known as the 1937 Disturbances.
Clerical celibacy
Clerical celibacy is the church-law requirement that clergy be unmarried and continent, mandatory in the Latin Catholic Church since the Gregorian Reform and Lateran councils, while Eastern Orthodox and Eastern Catholic Churches ordain married priests but choose celibate bishops.
Clerical celibacy in the Catholic Church
Clerical celibacy in the Catholic Church: the Latin Church discipline binding clerics to continence and celibacy (canon 277), its history from Elvira to the Lateran councils, Eastern married-priest practice, exceptions, and official rationales.
Clerical marriage
Clerical marriage is the marriage of ordained clergy, permitted in Orthodox, most Eastern Catholic, and Protestant churches while barred in the Latin Catholic rite; history spans early married bishops, the 1139 nullification ban, and Meiji Japan's nikujiki saitai.
Cleve Jones
Cleve Jones, American LGBT and AIDS activist mentored by Harvey Milk, co-founder of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation (1983) and originator of the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt; author of When We Rise (2016), UNITE HERE organizer.
Cleveland Street scandal
Cleveland Street scandal, or West End scandal: 1889 London male brothel at 19 Cleveland Street where GPO telegraph boys served aristocratic clients; named peers, cover-up accusations, Labouchere Amendment context.
Closeted
Closeted describes concealing one's sexual orientation or gender identity. Covers the metaphor's debutante-ball origins, concealment strategies, mental health findings, and structural stigma effects on coming out.
Cloward–Piven strategy
Cloward–Piven strategy: 1966 proposal by sociologists Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven in The Nation to overload US welfare rolls and force a guaranteed annual income; later a tea party conspiracy theory.
Codependency
Codependency, a non-DSM behavioral pattern of prioritizing another's needs and enabling self-destructive behavior, emerged in 1970s addiction treatment, faces feminist critiques, and is measured by scales like the Holyoake Codependency Index.
Coffee Meets Bagel
Coffee Meets Bagel (CMB) is a dating app founded in 2012 by sisters Arum, Dawoon, and Soo Kang, known for daily curated matches at noon and for declining Mark Cuban's record $30 million Shark Tank offer.
Cohabitation
Cohabitation is an arrangement in which an unmarried couple share a household as an intimate partnership, now the normal way most couples in many countries begin shared lives.
Cohabitation agreement
Cohabitation agreement: a legal contract between unmarried people living together, covering finances, property, children and next of kin. Also used by non-romantic households; valid in England and Wales when made as a deed and signed.
Collective action
Collective action is group action toward a common goal, also called the collective action problem or free rider problem. Defined by Olson's 1965 Logic of Collective Action, studied via Ostrom's commons work, social movement theory, and psychology of protest participation.
Collective Shout
Collective Shout, founded by Melinda Tankard Reist, is an Australian grassroots anti-pornography campaign group opposing objectification of women and sexualization of girls; known for the 2018 Sexpo lawsuit win and the 2025 Steam payment-processor campaign.
Colorado City, Arizona
Colorado City, Arizona, twin of Hildale, Utah, forms the Short Creek community, an FLDS polygamist stronghold raided in 1953, sued by the Justice Department, and transformed after court supervision ended in 2025.
Colorado Springs nightclub shooting
Colorado Springs nightclub shooting: mass shooting at Club Q, an LGBTQIA+ nightclub in Colorado Springs, on November 19, 2022. Shooter Anderson Lee Aldrich killed five and wounded many before patrons subdued him; later sentenced to life plus 190 years.
Colt clan incest case
The Colt clan incest case: an Australian family, pseudonym "Colt", found in 2012 in rural New South Wales practicing four generations of incest; 12 children removed, 11 with related parents, followed by criminal prosecutions from 2014.
Combahee River Collective
Combahee River Collective: Black feminist socialist lesbian organization founded in Boston in 1974, named for Harriet Tubman's 1863 Combahee River raid; its 1977 Statement coined "identity politics" and anticipated intersectionality.
Coming out
Coming out is the process of disclosing one's LGBTQ+ sexual orientation or gender identity, a developmental process shaped by minority stress, with falling disclosure ages, generally positive outcomes, and distinct online dynamics.
Communalism in Mauritius
Communalism in Mauritius is the organization of political and social life around caste, class, language, and religious allegiances, embedded in a constitution requiring candidates to declare one of four communities.
Comparison of online dating services
Comparison of online dating services: Match.com, eHarmony, OkCupid, Tinder, Hinge, and Bumble differ in matching method, freemium pricing, ownership (Match Group versus Bumble), user demographics, harassment rates, and safety practices.
Complementarianism
Complementarianism is a Christian theological view that men and women are equal in worth but have distinct, God-ordained roles, with male headship in home and church. Also called the hierarchical position; opposed to Christian egalitarianism; formalized by CBMW's 1988 Danvers Statement.
Compton's Cafeteria riot
The Compton's Cafeteria riot was an August 1966 uprising by trans women, drag queens, and sex workers against police harassment at a 24-hour Tenderloin diner in San Francisco, three years before Stonewall, rediscovered by historian Susan Stryker.
Compulsory heterosexuality
Compulsory heterosexuality, from Adrienne Rich's 1980 essay 'Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence' in Signs, is the feminist claim that heterosexuality is an imposed institution, not a natural default, involving male identification and the lesbian continuum.
Compulsory sterilization
Compulsory sterilization is surgical sterilization without a person's informed consent, ordered by a state and now recognized as a human rights violation.