2,229 articles
Public sex
Public sex is sexual activity carried out in public settings like parks, beaches, rest stops, and public toilets, practices known as cruising, cottaging, and dogging.
Punjabi wedding traditions
Punjabi wedding traditions (viah, ਵਿਆਹ) are the week-long sequence of Punjabi marriage customs: roka, maiyan, mehndi, jaggo, chooda, baraat, milni, doli, capped by the Sikh Anand Karaj, Hindu pheras, or Muslim nikah.
Puppy love
Puppy love, also called adolescent romance or calf-love, is an intense but often short-lived romantic attachment of young people. Distinguished by dismissive adult framing, early-19th-century English origin, and research showing real developmental significance.
Purity ring
Purity ring, also called chastity or promise ring: a ring worn to signal an abstinence-until-marriage pledge, originating in 1990s US evangelical True Love Waits and Silver Ring Thing movements, with peer-reviewed research questioning pledge effectiveness.
Push present
Push present (push gift, birthing present): a gift given to a new mother or birthing parent, typically jewelry from her partner, around the time of birth; distinct from baby shower gifts, term first recorded on Fox News in 2003.
Qandeel Baloch
Qandeel Baloch (Fauzia Azeem), Pakistani social media celebrity murdered by her brother Waseem in Multan in July 2016 in an honor killing; her death prompted Pakistan's 2016 anti-honor-killing law, his 2019 life sentence, and 2022 acquittal.
QAnon
QAnon, also called the Q conspiracy, is a far-right conspiracy movement begun by anonymous "Q" posts on 4chan in October 2017, claiming a Satanic pedophile cabal that Trump fights, linked to Pizzagate, violence, and the GOP.
Qubilah Shabazz
Qubilah Shabazz (born 1960), second daughter of Malcolm X and Betty Shabazz, was indicted in 1995 for plotting to kill Louis Farrakhan via FBI informant Michael Fitzpatrick; charges were settled without trial in 1995.
Queer
Queer is an umbrella term for sexual orientations, gender identities, and gender expressions outside societal norms, and shorthand for the LGBTQ community. Once a pejorative, it was reclaimed during the 1980s-1990s AIDS crisis and underpins queer theory.
Queer heterosexuality
Queer heterosexuality (queer straight): a queer theory concept for heterosexual identities that subvert heteronormative norms of gender and monogamy, developed by Schlichter and Heasley, and contested for co-optation.
Queer theory
Queer theory: interdisciplinary framework treating sex, gender, sexuality, and identity as constructed and performative; coined by Teresa de Lauretis in 1990; founded on Butler's Gender Trouble and Sedgwick's Epistemology of the Closet; focuses on normativity, not identity categories.
Queerbaiting
Queerbaiting: a fan-coined pejorative for media producers hinting at or advertising queer content to attract LGBTQ audiences without delivering it. Known in Sinophone fandom as maifu; debated around authorial intent, celebrity personas, and Thai Y-series.
Questioning (sexuality and gender)
Questioning (sexuality and gender), the Q in LGBTQ, is the process of exploring one's sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression. Covers definitions, identity-development timing, SOGI survey measurement, and youth mental health.
Quiverfull
Quiverfull is an American evangelical Protestant movement whose members reject all birth control, seek many children per Psalm 127, and practice homeschooling and male headship; rooted in Mary Pride's 1985 The Way Home and the Hesses' 1990 A Full Quiver.
Race and sports
Race and sports, also known as race in sports, is a field of study examining how racial categories and racism shape athletic participation, performance, and organization, a critical sociology that developed from the 1990s.
Rachael Denhollander
Rachael Denhollander, American attorney, author, and advocate, first woman to publicly accuse USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar in 2016; author of What Is a Girl Worth?; delivered final sentencing statement.
Rachel Corrie
Rachel Aliene Corrie (1979–2003) was an American peace activist from Olympia, Washington, crushed by an Israeli military bulldozer in Rafah, Gaza, while protecting a Palestinian home from demolition.
Rachel Dolezal
Rachel Dolezal, later Nkechi Diallo, is an American activist who led the Spokane NAACP chapter until June 2015, when her parents said she was white; she resigned and said she identifies as black.
Rachel Goldberg-Polin
Rachel Goldberg-Polin, American-Israeli educator and activist, mother of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, taken October 7, 2023 from the Nova festival and murdered in Gaza in August 2024; TIME100 2024, Lantos Prize 2025, memoir When We See You Again.
Rachel Jackson
Rachel Jackson (c. 1767–1828), born Rachel Donelson, wife of President Andrew Jackson. Her unresolved divorce from Lewis Robards fueled the 1828 campaign attacks; she died of a heart attack before his inauguration.
Rachel Uchitel
Rachel Uchitel, American nightclub VIP concierge, became known in 2009 when the National Enquirer alleged an affair with Tiger Woods; she denied it, settled for a reported $8 million, and confirmed the affair in HBO's 2021 Tiger docuseries.
Racial discrimination
Racial discrimination is unfavorable treatment based on race, color, or associated characteristics. Covered by the 1964 Civil Rights Act and 1965 CERD; measured by field experiments; recent US enforcement has shifted toward intentional discrimination only.
Racial hygiene
Racial hygiene (Rassenhygiene), coined by Alfred Ploetz in 1895 alongside Galton's eugenics, was a movement to improve population heredity via positive and negative selection; it shaped US, Scandinavian, and Nazi sterilization laws, producing 400,000 German sterilizations.
Racial integration
Racial integration: ending racial segregation and incorporating racial or ethnic groups into shared institutions. Covers Brown v. Board (1954), US school desegregation trends, integration vs assimilation, European integration policy, and outcome measurement.
Racial segregation
Racial segregation is the enforced separation of racial groups in housing, schools, and public life; in the US it spanned Jim Crow law (Plessy 1896, Brown 1954), FHA redlining, and persistent residential and school segregation measured by indices such as the dissimilarity index.
Racial views of Donald Trump
Racial views of Donald Trump: decades of statements, lawsuits, and policies, from the 1973 housing suit and Central Park Five ads to birtherism, the 2016 campaign, and second-term disparate-impact rollbacks, with his denials.
Racial views of Winston Churchill
Churchill's documented racial views: 1937 'higher-grade race' testimony, 1919 gas memo, Bengal famine debate, 1954 immigration cabinet, and the historiographical dispute over whether he was typical or exceptional.
Racism
Racism: unequal treatment based on race, from individual prejudice to institutional and structural forms; no scientific basis for racial hierarchy; studied via five quantitative traditions and monitored by UN, UNESCO, and national surveys.
Racism against Native Americans in the United States
Racism against Native Americans in the United States: interpersonal, structural, and representational discrimination against Native peoples, including boarding schools, jurisdictional gaps, survey-documented discrimination, and stereotyping in sports and media.
Racism in Australia
Racism in Australia spans terra nullius, the White Australia policy (Immigration Restriction Act 1901 to Migration Act 1973), the Stolen Generations, the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 and 1995 vilification provisions, and Scanlon survey findings on discrimination and social cohesion.