2,229 articles
Scouting
Scouting: global non-formal educational youth movement founded by Robert Baden-Powell (Brownsea Island camp, 1907; Scouting for Boys, 1908), now about 60 million members via WOSM (176 NSOs) and WAGGGS; distinct from talent scouting in sports.
SCUM Manifesto
SCUM Manifesto, by Valerie Solanas (Society for Cutting Up Men), is a 1967 self-published radical feminist tract calling for eliminating the male sex; it gained notoriety after Solanas shot Andy Warhol in 1968.
Sealing (Mormonism)
Sealing (Mormonism): LDS temple ordinance binding spouses, children, and generations for eternity, based on Joseph Smith's 1843 revelation, including proxy sealings for the dead, adoption sealings ended in 1894, and divorce cancellation rules.
Sealioning
Sealioning is a trolling and harassment tactic of relentless, superficially polite demands for evidence, coined from David Malki's 2014 Wondermark comic "The Terrible Sea Lion" and named during GamerGate; it exhausts targets and undermines their authority.
Sean Eldridge
Sean Eldridge, American political activist, Freedom to Marry communications and political director (2010-2011), OutRight Action International board member, NY LEAD co-founder, and 2014 Democratic House candidate in New York's 19th District; husband of Chris Hughes.
Second-wave feminism
Second-wave feminism, the women's movement of the 1960s to early 1980s following first-wave suffragism, addressed workplace equality, reproductive rights, and domestic life. Key figures include Friedan, Steinem, Beauvoir, and Black feminist critics.
Sectarianism in Glasgow
Sectarianism in Glasgow: Protestant-Catholic tension expressed chiefly through the Old Firm football rivalry, marches, and religion-linked identity, with strong perceptions (88%) but low reported personal experience.
Section 28
Section 28 (Clause 28, Section 2A) was a 1988 UK law banning local authorities from 'promoting homosexuality', in force until 2000 in Scotland and 2003 in England and Wales; repealed after Stonewall's campaign, never used to prosecute.
Section 377
Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code (1860), drafted under Thomas Macaulay, criminalized "carnal intercourse against the order of nature" and spread across British colonies; India's Supreme Court read it down in Navtej Singh Johar (2018), and the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita deleted it from 2024.
Seduction
Seduction is persuading someone to sexual activity; also a US legal tort and felony (1848–1935 heart balm era), an eighteenth-century literary genre, and the modern pick-up artist industry criticized for weak evidence.
Self-hating Jew
Self-hating Jew: pejorative for Jews who criticize Israel or Judaism; also a psychological concept of internalized antisemitism coined by Anton Kuh, analyzed by Theodor Lessing (1930) and Kurt Lewin (1941).
Self-Made Man (book)
Self-Made Man (2006) is Norah Vincent's immersion-journalism memoir of 18 months living as a man, "Ned," joining a bowling league, dating, and infiltrating a monastery; a New York Times bestseller from Viking.
Senpai and kōhai
Senpai (先輩) and kōhai (後輩) are Japanese senior–junior relationship roles based on time of entry into a school, company, or club, not age or rank; same-year members are doki. Central to Japanese hierarchy, language use, and mentoring, with related forms in China and Korea.
Sewing Circle (Hollywood)
The Sewing Circle was the informal, allusive name for Hollywood actresses thought to be lesbian or bisexual, roughly the 1910s to 1950s; traced to Alla Nazimova or Marlene Dietrich, popularized by Axel Madsen's 1995 book, with Garbo, Dietrich, and Bankhead named.
Sex assignment
Sex assignment, also called sex designation, is the classification of a newborn as male, female, or other, usually based on external genitalia and recorded on the birth certificate.
Sex at Dawn
Sex at Dawn (2010) by Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá argues human ancestors were promiscuous, bonobo-like foragers and that monogamy arose with agriculture; a bestseller popularly, it drew strong academic criticism, notably Lynn Saxon's 2012 rebuttal Sex at Dusk.
Sex club
Sex club: venue or organization where adults pay to engage in or observe sexual activity; also called swingers, lifestyle, or on-premises clubs. Distinct from brothels; regulated by zoning, licensing, and public health codes.
Sex differences in psychology
Sex differences in psychology: average male-female differences in cognition, personality, and behavior. Meta-analyses (Hyde 2005; Zell 2015) find most effects small, average d = 0.21, with context-dependent exceptions.
Sex life
Sex life: the pattern of sexual activity, desire, and intimate expression in a person's life, also called sexuality and sexual health; defined by the WHO as well-being in relation to sexuality, studied across history, cohorts, and the lifespan.
Sex Matters (advocacy group)
Sex Matters is a UK human-rights charity and advocacy group (CIO 1207701, registered 3 April 2024), co-founded by Maya Forstater, campaigning on biological sex, single-sex services, and women's sport.
Sex position
Sex position: the bodily arrangement partners use during sexual intercourse or other sexual activity. Also called coital positions; classified into frontal, rear-entry, side-lying, woman-on-top, and adapted variants; studied for pain, injury risk, and disability adaptation.
Sex scandal
Sex scandal: a media-amplified public controversy over the sexual conduct of public figures. Key cases include Lewinsky (1998), Sandusky (2011), Nassar, and Weinstein (2017, #MeToo); research emphasizes gendered double standards in framing.
Sex segregation
Sex segregation is the separation of people by sex in workplaces, schools, facilities, and public life. Also called gender segregation, it spans occupational segregation (Reskin, Charles), sex-separated restrooms, single-sex schooling, and sport, with divergent legal treatment in US and UK law.
Sex segregation in Saudi Arabia
Sex segregation in Saudi Arabia separates unrelated men and women in public spaces, workplaces, and schools; ikhtilat (mixing) was long the contested concept, enforced by the Mutaween, then relaxed after 2016 Vision 2030 reforms lifted driving and guardianship restrictions.
Sex work
Sex work is the exchange of sexual services, performances, or products for material compensation, including pornography. Also called prostitution by critics, it spans four legal models (criminalization, Nordic, legalization, decriminalization), has a rights movement dating to COYOTE in 1973, and gained full labor rights in Belgium in 2024.
Sex worker
Sex worker: an adult providing consensual sexual services for pay, spanning street, indoor, and online work. Distinguished from trafficking; 168 countries criminalize some aspect; HIV risk nine times higher; decriminalized in New Zealand (2003) and Belgium (2022).
Sex-positive feminism
Sex-positive feminism, also called pro-sex or sex-radical feminism, is a current arising in the early 1980s during the feminist sex wars; it affirms sexual pleasure and opposes legal or social control of consensual adult sexual activity, conflicting with anti-pornography feminism.
Sex-positive movement
Sex-positive movement: also sex-positive or pro-sex feminism, a current treating consensual sexuality and pleasure as healthy, arising in the 1980s feminist sex wars against anti-pornography feminism, later shaping HIV prevention, sex education, and sexology.
Sexism
Sexism is prejudice or discrimination based on sex or gender, spanning individual, institutional, and structural levels; coined in 1960s US feminism, it is measured poorly and, per UN 2026 data, no SDG 5 indicator is on track for 2030.
Sexless marriage
Sexless marriage: a marriage with little or no sex, often defined as fewer than 10 occasions per year. Key facts: US estimates around 20 percent sexless, desire discrepancy is the leading clinical driver, and treatment combines medical workup with couples therapy.