6,078 articles
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.
Masalit people
Masalit (Massalit), a non-Arab Muslim farming people of West Darfur, Sudan, and eastern Chad, former rulers of the Dar Masalit sultanate; speakers of a Maban Nilo-Saharan language, targeted in the 2023 El Geneina ethnic cleansing.
Masaru Emoto (江本勝)
Masaru Emoto (江本勝, 1943–2014), Japanese author, claimed words, music, and prayer change ice crystal beauty via his 1994 Water Crystal Photography; Messages from Water books; criticized for no blinding and no independent replication.
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.
Maslach Burnout Inventory
The Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) is a self-report questionnaire measuring occupational burnout across three dimensions, introduced by Christina Maslach and Susan E. Jackson in 1981 and used in about 90% of burnout studies.
Maslow's hierarchy of needs
Maslow's hierarchy of needs, from Abraham Maslow's 1943 "A Theory of Human Motivation", arranges five need levels from physiological to self-actualization. Empirical reviews such as Wahba and Bridwell (1976) and cross-cultural studies find the categories real but the strict sequencing unsupported.
Masonic bodies
Masonic bodies: the craft lodges, Grand Lodges (e.g. United Grand Lodge of England), and appendant and concordant bodies such as the Scottish Rite, York Rite, and Shriners that Master Masons may join beyond the three craft degrees.
Masonic lodge
Masonic lodge: the basic local unit of Freemasonry, chartered by a sovereign Grand Lodge, holding meetings and conferring the three Craft degrees. First Grand Lodge formed in London in 1717; recognition, Prince Hall, and research lodges distinguish the system.
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 media
Mass media: institutional and technological forms (print, broadcast, film, digital) distributing messages to large dispersed audiences. Known for gatekeeping, agenda-setting effects, and a 2020s shift toward social media, video networks, and AI chatbots as news sources.
Mass psychogenic illness
Mass psychogenic illness (MPI), also called mass hysteria or epidemic hysteria, is the rapid social spread of real physical symptoms through a group with no identifiable organic cause, typically in schools and workplaces, spreading by suggestion and line-of-sight contact.
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.
Mass sexual assault in Egypt
Mob sexual assaults of women around Cairo's Tahrir Square during protests and celebrations from 2011 to 2014, with pre-2011 precedents; documented by Amnesty and HRW, totaling over 500 survivors, prompting OpAntiSH and a 2014 harassment law.
Mass suicide
Mass suicide, also called collective suicide, is the simultaneous self-inflicted death of a social group's members, most famously the 1978 Jonestown deaths of more than 900 people.
Massage parlor
Massage parlor: commercial massage establishment, first attested 1894 as a euphemism for a brothel; in the U.S. now tied to illicit massage businesses, trafficking, and licensing regulation, while the legitimate profession uses massage therapy.
Master/slave (BDSM)
Master/slave (M/s) is a consensual BDSM power-exchange dynamic in which the Master holds ongoing authority over a slave; often 24/7 TPE with collar, contract, and revocable consent.
Masturbate-a-thon
Masturbate-a-thon, also called wank-a-thon, a charity event where participants masturbate for pledges. Originated 1995 in San Francisco via Good Vibrations' Masturbation Month; London's first UK event was 5 August 2006, filmed for Channel 4's Wank Week.
Masturbation
Masturbation, sexual self-stimulation of one's own genitals for pleasure (mutual masturbation when shared with a partner), is safe, common, and endorsed by health organizations; surveys quantify prevalence and its compensatory or complementary relation to partnered sex.
Match.com
Match.com, launched April 1995 by Gary Kremen's Electric Classifieds, is a search-based online dating service for serious relationships, now a Match Group brand alongside Tinder and Hinge; sued by the FTC in 2019 over fake love-interest ads and cancellation practices.
Matching algorithms in online dating
Matching algorithms in online dating are the recommendation systems that decide which profiles a user sees and in what order, using collaborative filtering, questionnaire scoring, and two-sided matching.
Matchmaking
Matchmaking, the arranged introduction of people for marriage or long-term partnership, spans French commercial marriage agencies from 1812, Jewish shidduchim, Saudi family-led spouse selection, diaspora matrimonial platforms, and algorithmic online dating systems.
Mathurmohan Biswas (মথুর মোহন বিশ্বাস)
Mathurmohan Biswas (মথুর মোহন বিশ্বাস), also Mathur Nath Biswas or Mathur Babu (1817–1871), Bengali zamindar, son-in-law of Rani Rashmoni, manager of Dakshineswar Kali Temple, patron of Sri Ramakrishna; died July 1871 leaving widow Jagadamba.
Matlatzinca
Matlatzinca is an indigenous people of central Mexico and their Oto-Mangue language, historically centered in the Toluca Valley and conquered by the Mexica under Axayacatl in 1476.
Matooskie
Matooskie, or Nancy McKenzie (c. 1790–1851), was a fur-trade country wife of John George McTavish, abandoned in 1830, remarried to Pierre Le Blanc, and later commemorated in art and by descendant Kevin Clifton.
Matriarchy
Matriarchy: term for rule by women, the counterpart of patriarchy, or in modern matriarchal studies a mother-centered, gender-egalitarian gift-economy society; no true female-dominant society is documented, and matriarchy differs from matrilineality.
Matrilineality
Matrilineality: kinship descent, inheritance, and belonging traced through the female line (matriliny), as among the Minangkabau, Khasi, Mosuo, and Akan. Distinct from matriarchy; often paired with matrilocal or avunculocal residence and mother's-brother inheritance.