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Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions
Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) is a Palestinian-led campaign launched 9 July 2005 by over 170 organizations, demanding an end to occupation, equality for Palestinian citizens of Israel, and refugee rights, modeled on anti-apartheid South Africa.
Boyfriend
Boyfriend: a man or boy someone has a romantic or sexual relationship with; word first recorded 1895-1900, paired with girlfriend in early-1900s US dating culture. Also a fashion adjective for men's-inspired women's clothing.
Boys & Girls Clubs of America
Boys & Girls Clubs of America (BGCA), begun as the 1860 Dashaway Club in Hartford, is a national youth nonprofit with 5,500+ Clubs serving 4 million youth ages 6-18 annually in academics, health, leadership, and workforce readiness.
Boys Town (organization)
Boys Town (Father Flanagan's Boys' Home) is a US nonprofit child and family care organization founded by Father Edward Flanagan in Omaha in 1917, known for the Teaching-Family Model residential care, its Nebraska village campus, and Boys Town National Research Hospital.
Boys' Brigade
The Boys' Brigade, founded in Glasgow on 4 October 1883 by William Alexander Smith, was the world's first voluntary uniformed youth movement. A Christian organisation for ages 5 to 18 with motto "Sure and Stedfast" and anchor emblem, it inspired Scouting and now operates in nearly 100 countries.
Brahmin (ब्राह्मण)
Brahmin (ब्राह्मण, Brahman): highest of the four Hindu varnas, historically priests, teachers, and scholars. About 65–70 million people in India and Nepal, over 1,800 endogamous subgroups divided into Pancha Gauda and Pancha Dravida.
Brainstorming
Brainstorming, coined by Alex Osborn at BBDO and set out in Applied Imagination (1953), is a group idea-generation method with rules deferring evaluation; research shows nominal groups outperform interactive ones, with production blocking the main cause.
Brainwashing
Brainwashing: popular term for coerced radical belief change, from Edward Hunter's 1950 translation of Chinese hsi nao during the Korean War; scholarly successors are Lifton's thought reform and Schein's coercive persuasion, both lacking a settled scientific definition.
Bralessness
Bralessness is the practice of not wearing a brassiere, tied to 1960s feminist protest (the 1968 Miss America "Freedom Trash Can" and the bra-burning myth), Rudi Gernreich's transparent "no bra," workplace dress-code law, and recent survey and perception research.
Brandon Teena
Brandon Teena (Teena Renae Brandon), 21, a Nebraska transgender man raped December 25, 1993 and murdered December 31 with Lisa Lambert and Phillip Devine; Lotter and Nissen convicted, sheriff found negligent in Brandon v. County of Richardson.
Brazilians
Brazilians: people of Brazil, legally defined by jus soli nationality and statistically by self-declared color/race. Formed by Portuguese colonization, Atlantic slavery, and mass post-1822 immigration; parda plurality in the 2022 census.
Breadcrumbing
Breadcrumbing: sending intermittent, vague messages of interest to keep a dating partner hooked without intending commitment; colloquial term from Hansel and Gretel, driven by intermittent reinforcement, linked to loneliness and reduced life satisfaction.
Breast fetishism
Breast fetishism is a sexual interest in which breasts become a predominant focus of arousal. A medical dictionary uses the term for an interest that excludes most other physical features, a narrower.
Breast ironing
Breast ironing, also called breast flattening, is the practice of pressing pubescent girls' breasts with hot objects to delay development, reported most often in Cameroon.
Breast torture
Breast torture, also called tit torture or TT, is a consensual BDSM pain play targeting the breasts, areolas, and nipples with clamps, weights, impact, wax, or rope, ranging from clothespins to edgeplay such as breast suspension.
Breastfeeding in public
Breastfeeding in public: nursing an infant in cafes, transport, and other shared spaces. Legally protected in the US since New York's 1984 law and under the UK Equality Act 2010, yet stigma remains a documented barrier to breastfeeding.
Brenda Biya
Brenda Biya (King Nasty), born 1997, daughter of Cameroon's President Paul Biya; came out publicly in June-July 2024 and called for decriminalization of same-sex conduct, illegal in Cameroon since 1972 under Penal Code article 347-1.
Bretons
Bretons (Brezhoned) are the Celtic-derived people of Brittany, northwest France, descended partly from Brittonic migrants of the 5th-6th centuries; most combine strong Breton and French identity, and their language is declining.
Brian Weiss
Brian Weiss, also known as Brian Leslie Weiss, is an American psychiatrist and hypnotherapist whose 1988 book Many Lives, Many Masters popularized past-life regression therapy.
Bridal shower
A bridal shower, also called a wedding shower, is a pre-wedding party, mainly in the United States, at which guests give the bride or couple gifts for their future home.
Bride
Bride: a woman on her wedding day, from Teutonic bruths/bryd. Covers etymology, bride-cake origins, the white dress popularized by Queen Victoria, bridal music, and marriage payments like bridewealth and dowry.
Bride kidnapping
Bride kidnapping, or ala kachuu (кыз ала качуу), is forced marriage by abduction, most associated with Kyrgyzstan. Rare before Soviet rule, it grew from the 1970s, driven by rigid bride prices, shame norms, and weak enforcement.
Bride price
Bride price, or bridewealth, is a marriage payment from the groom's family to the bride's family, the most common form of marriage compensation worldwide, contrasted with dowry, which moves in the opposite direction.
Bridesmaid
A bridesmaid is a woman who attends and supports the bride at a wedding. The role spans ceremony duties, months of planning labor, and costs of roughly $1,700 per bridesmaid, with parties shrinking to about four per side by 2026.
Brief Self-Control Scale
The Brief Self-Control Scale (BSCS) is a 13-item self-report questionnaire measuring trait self-control, developed by Tangney, Baumeister, and Boone in 2004 and used in over 100 studies.
Brief Symptom Inventory
The Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI) is a 53-item self-report questionnaire measuring psychological distress across nine domains, including depression and anxiety, derived from the SCL-90-R and reported in 1983.
Brigitte Gabriel (حنان قهوجي)
Brigitte Gabriel (حنان قهوجي), Lebanese-born American activist and founder of ACT for America (2007), an SPLC-designated anti-Muslim group; former Middle East TV anchor, author, and 2025 Menachem Begin Prize recipient.
Bristol Palin
Bristol Palin (born 1990, Wasilla, Alaska) is Sarah Palin's eldest daughter, announced pregnant at 17 during the 2008 McCain campaign; later a Dancing with the Stars contestant, memoirist, and teen abstinence advocate.
British African-Caribbean people
British African-Caribbean people, also called the Windrush generation, are Black Britons of Caribbean heritage. Defined by post-1948 migration under the British Nationality Act 1948, settlement in Brixton, Notting Hill Carnival, and the 2018 Windrush scandal.
British Americans
British Americans: US residents of English, Scottish, Welsh, or Scotch-Irish descent, from colonial settlers and later UK immigrants; 1938 census counted 40 million English, 14.2 million Scottish, 2.5 million Welsh ancestry; self-reporting understates the total.