2,229 articles
Marriage in the Eastern Orthodox Church
Marriage in the Eastern Orthodox Church, or the Mystery of Crowning, is a sacrament joined by God, marked by betrothal rings and crowns, with no vows, a three-marriage limit, and economy-based remarriage after divorce.
Marriage in the United States
Marriage in the United States: a state-regulated legal status governed federally by 1 U.S.C. §7 (as amended by the 2022 Respect for Marriage Act), shaped by Loving v. Virginia (1967), Windsor (2013), and Obergefell (2015), with state variation in minimum age, recognition, and common law marriage.
Marriage license
A marriage license, also known as a wedding license, is a government-issued permission to marry, typically issued by a county clerk, distinct from the marriage certificate that proves the marriage occurred.
Marriage of Charlie Johns and Eunice Winstead
1937 Tennessee child marriage: tobacco farmer Charlie Johns (22 or 25) wed 9-year-old Eunice Winstead near Treadway, performed by preacher Walter Lamb for $1; national outrage led Tennessee to set a minimum marriage age.
Marriage of convenience
Marriage of convenience (sham marriage): a union contracted for advantage such as immigration status, tax, or political alliance rather than a genuine relationship. Valid in law, but ground for visa refusal; burden of proof on the state.
Marriage of Daddy and Peaches
The 1926 marriage of Edward W. "Daddy" Browning, 51, and 15-year-old Frances "Peaches" Heenan in Cold Spring, New York; a tabloid sensation that fueled 1920s child-marriage reform and ended in a contested 1927 separation.
Marriage officiant
A marriage officiant (solemniser, celebrant, registrar, or ordained minister) is a person legally authorized to solemnize marriage. Coverage spans US online ordination and notaries, UK celebrant-versus-registrar rules, Ireland's Register of Solemnisers, Australia's celebrant categories, and England and Wales officiant reform.
Marriageable age
Marriageable age: the minimum legal age to marry, set by national law and shaped by the 1962 UN Marriage Convention, CEDAW, and CRC standards favoring 18, with widespread parental or judicial exceptions allowing minors to wed in many countries.
Marry-your-rapist law
Marry-your-rapist laws, also called rape-marriage or marry-the-rapist laws, let a rapist escape prosecution or punishment by marrying his victim. Rooted in the French 1810 Napoleonic Code and Ottoman 1911 Code, they persisted in an estimated 18 countries; Tunisia, Jordan, and Lebanon repealed theirs in 2017 and Bahrain in 2023.
Marsha P. Johnson
Marsha P. Johnson (1945–1992), born Malcolm Michaels Jr., was a New York drag performer, sex worker, and LGBTQ+ activist of the Stonewall uprising, co-founder of the Gay Liberation Front and, with Sylvia Rivera, of STAR; her 1992 Hudson River death remains unsolved.
Martha Jefferson
Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson (1748-1782), wife of Thomas Jefferson and Monticello household manager; twice widowed-adjacent heiress, mother of six Jefferson children, half-sister of Sally Hemings, died at 33 after childbirth.
Martin Luther King III
Martin Luther King III, born 1957, eldest son of Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King, American civil rights activist; Fulton County commissioner 1986, fourth SCLC president 1997-2003, founder of Realizing the Dream, voting rights march organizer.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968), American Baptist minister and civil rights leader, led the Montgomery bus boycott, Birmingham Campaign, 1963 March on Washington, and Selma marches; won the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize and was assassinated in Memphis.
Martin Ssempa
Martin Ssempa (born 1968) is a Ugandan Pentecostal pastor, founder of Makerere Community Church and its Prime Time student rallies, an abstinence-focused HIV prevention advocate who testified before the U.S. Congress, and one of Uganda's most prominent anti-homosexuality activists.
Marxist feminism
Marxist feminism applies the Marxist critique of capitalism to women's oppression, centering unpaid reproductive labor; also called socialist feminism in some uses; key strands include Wages for Housework and social reproduction theory.
Mary Attenborough
Mary Attenborough, born Mary Clegg (1896-1961), Leicester philanthropist, magistrate, and wife of college principal Frederick Attenborough; helped Basque child refugees and adopted Kindertransport sisters Helga and Irene Bejach; mother of Richard, David, John Attenborough.
Mary Daly
Mary Daly (1928–2010), American radical feminist philosopher and theologian, author of The Church and the Second Sex, Beyond God the Father, and Gyn/Ecology; Boston College professor, distinct from economist Mary C. Daly and historian Mary E. Daly.
Mary Harrington
Mary Harrington, British writer and UnHerd contributing editor, author of Feminism Against Progress (2023) and originator of "reactionary feminism," critiquing technological progress and liberal feminism.
Mary Ingalls
Mary Ingalls (Mary Amelia Ingalls, born 1865, Pepin, Wisconsin) was Laura Ingalls Wilder's eldest sister, blinded at 14; the books blamed scarlet fever, but 2013 analysis points to viral meningoencephalitis. She graduated from the Iowa school for the blind and never married, unlike her TV character.
Mary Jo Buttafuoco
Mary Jo Buttafuoco (Mary Jo Connery, born 1955) is the Long Island woman shot in the head in 1992 by Amy Fisher, her husband Joey's teenage mistress; survivor, memoirist, and subject of the 2026 Lifetime film I Am Mary Jo Buttafuoco.
Mary Jo Kopechne
Mary Jo Kopechne (1940-1969) was an American political worker, RFK staffer and Boiler Room Girl, who died July 18, 1969, when Ted Kennedy's car went off Dike Bridge on Chappaquiddick Island; Kennedy pleaded guilty to leaving the scene.
Mary Whitehouse
Mary Whitehouse (1910–2001), British schoolteacher, founded the 1964 Clean Up TV campaign and the National Viewers' and Listeners' Association; her morality campaigns shaped UK censorship law and drew lasting satire and reappraisal.
Mary Williams (activist)
Mary Luana Williams (born 1967), American social activist and author, daughter of Black Panther parents, raised by Jane Fonda; founded the Lost Boys Foundation and wrote The Lost Daughter: A Memoir.
Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797), English moral and political philosopher, author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792); wife of William Godwin, mother of Mary Shelley, damaged posthumously by Godwin's 1798 Memoirs.
Masculinity
Masculinity: socially constructed norms of manhood, plural "masculinities"; defined by absence of femininity, power relations; central theory is Connell's hegemonic masculinity; studied since the 1980s across history, sociology, and health.
Masculinization (sexual activity)
Masculinization, also known as forced masculinization or forcemasc, is a consensual BDSM practice in which a participant, often a woman, temporarily adopts a masculine role through cross-dressing and personas.
Masculism
Masculism (masculinism): in scholarship, the ideology of masculine superiority defending patriarchy; in activism, men's-rights advocacy descended from the 1970s men's liberation split, linked to figures such as Warren Farrell and the manosphere.
Mass Democratic Movement
The Mass Democratic Movement was an informal coalition of anti-apartheid groups in South Africa in the late 1980s, formed after the United Democratic Front was banned in 1988.
Mass racial violence in the United States
Mass racial violence in the United States, also known as race riots in the United States, covers white mob attacks on Black Americans from Reconstruction through the twentieth century.
Mass sexual assault
Mass sexual assault: sexual violence by multiple perpetrators or against multiple victims, notably mass rape as a tactic of war (Bosnia, Tigray, Sudan) and sexual violence at mass gatherings; recognized under IHL and UNSC Resolutions 1820 and 2467.