Anna Seward was an English poet, literary critic, and intellectual who attained fame and critical acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic with her poems Elegy on Captain Cook (1780) and Monody on Major André (1781). Seward fostered a close-knit network of friends and correspondents from across many

William H. Seward was a U.S. politician, an antislavery activist in the Whig and Republican parties before the American Civil War and secretary of state from 1861 to 1869. He is also remembered for the purchase of Alaska in 1867—referred to at that time as “Seward’s Folly.” Admitted to the New York

William H. Seward was a U.S. politician, an antislavery activist in the Whig and Republican parties before the American Civil War and secretary of state from 1861 to 1869. He is also remembered for the purchase of Alaska in 1867—referred to at that time as “Seward’s Folly.” Admitted to the New York

basketry: Sewed coiling: Sewed coiling has a foundation of multiple elements—a bundle of fine fibres. Sewing is done with a needle or an awl, which binds each coil to the preceding one by piercing it through with the thread. The appearance varies according to whether the…

basketry: Sewed coiling: …coiling, made from a long braid sewed in a spiral, has been found throughout North Africa since ancient Egyptian times.

El Teniente: …the early 20th century the Sewell Mining Town was founded by the Braden Copper Company at El Teniente. It fell out of use in the 1970s and was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2006. El Teniente also has a hydroelectric plant.

Anna Sewell was a British author of the children’s classic Black Beauty. Sewell’s concern for the humane treatment of horses began early in life when she spent many hours driving her father to and from the station from which he left for work. She was crippled at a young age, and though she had

Helen Moore Sewell was an American artist and children’s author especially known for her illustrations for American author Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House series and for books of classic literature. Sewell was the eldest of three daughters born to William Elbridge Sewell, a commander in the

Henry Sewell was a British colonizer and politician who served as the first premier of New Zealand (1856) after the colony had been granted responsible government. As a solicitor in London he became secretary and deputy chairman of the Canterbury Association for the Colonisation of New Zealand and

mountain beaver, (Aplodontia rufa), a muskrat-sized burrowing rodent found only in the Pacific Northwest of North America. Unlike the American and Eurasian beavers (genus Castor), the mountain beaver has an extremely short tail and is less than a half metre (1.6 feet) in length; weight is less than

sewer, conduit that carries wastewater from its source to a point of treatment and disposal. The wastewater may be domestic (sanitary) sewage, industrial sewage, storm runoff, or a mixture of the three. Large-diameter pipes or tunnels that carry a mixture of the three types of liquid wastes, called

brown rat, (Rattus norvegicus), species of rat (family Muridae) found on every continent except Antarctica. The alternate name “Norway rat” came from a false hypothesis widely believed in 18th-century England that the rats were native to Norway. Research has confirmed, however, that the brown rat

sewerage system, network of pipes, pumps, and force mains for the collection of wastewater, or sewage, from a community. Modern sewerage systems fall under two categories: domestic and industrial sewers and storm sewers. Sometimes a combined system provides only one network of pipes, mains, and

needle: sewing or embroidering and, in variant forms, for knitting and crocheting. The sewing needle is small, slender, rodlike, with a sharply pointed end to facilitate passing through fabric and with the opposite end slotted to carry a thread. Bone and horn needles have been used…

sewing machine, any of various machines for stitching material (such as cloth or leather), usually having a needle and shuttle to carry thread and powered by treadle, waterpower, or electricity. It was the first widely distributed mechanical home appliance and has been an important industrial

South Korea: The Sixth Republic: …April 2014 after the ferry Sewol sank en route from Incheon to Jeju Island, resulting in the deaths of all but 172 of the nearly 500 passengers on board, most of them high-school students. The ship had been made unstable by structural retrofitting and an excessive cargo load. Park’s administration…

sex, the sum of features by which members of species can be divided into two groups—male and female—that complement each other reproductively. Sex, sexuality, and reproduction are all closely woven into the fabric of living things. All relate to the propagation of the race and the survival of the

Mae West: In the first of these, Sex (1926), her performance as a prostitute created a sensation but also earned her an eight-day jail sentence for “corrupting the morals of youth,” from which she emerged a national figure. Her plays Diamond Lil (1928) and The Constant Sinner (1931) were also successful. For…

sexual abuse, in criminal law, any act of sexual contact that a person suffers, submits to, participates in, or performs as a result of force or violence, threats, fear, or deception or without having legally consented to the act. Sexual contact in this context is usually understood to encompass

Otto Weininger: …work, Geschlecht und Charakter (1903; Sex and Character), served as a sourcebook for anti-Semitic propagandists.

personality: Morphological (body type) theories: In her book Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies (1935), she showed that masculinity is not necessarily expressed through aggressiveness and that femininity is not necessarily expressed through passivity and acquiescence. These demonstrated variations raised questions about the relative roles of biology, learning, and cultural pressures in…

Sex and the City, American comedy series, filmed over six seasons (1998–2004) in New York City by HBO, which became one of the most popular and influential television series of the late 1990s and early 2000s. Based on Candace Bushnell’s best-selling book of the same name and created by Darren Star

Sarah Jessica Parker: …in the film versions of Sex and the City (2008 and 2010). In 2009 she starred with Hugh Grant in Did You Hear About the Morgans?, a comedy about a married couple who enter a witness-protection program after seeing a murder. She later appeared as an overworked mother in the…

Sarah Jessica Parker: …and the City (2008 and 2010). In 2009 she starred with Hugh Grant in Did You Hear About the Morgans?, a comedy about a married couple who enter a witness-protection program after seeing a murder. She later appeared as an overworked mother in the comedy I Don’t Know How She…

Helen Gurley Brown: Sex and the Office (1964) dealt with similar issues. For a time Brown also conducted a syndicated newspaper advice column entitled “Woman Alone.”

Richard Quine: In 1964 Quine also directed Sex and the Single Girl, which featured Tony Curtis and Natalie Wood; the romantic comedy had little to do with Helen Gurley Brown’s how-to guide. How to Murder Your Wife (1965) was a deft black comedy starring Lemmon as a man who fantasizes about killing…

Helen Gurley Brown: …1962 when her first book, Sex and the Single Girl, became an immediate best seller. Her advice to young single women on such topics as career, fashion, love, and entertainment emphasized the positive benefits of unmarried life and provoked some criticism by recognizing that sex was a part of that…

gamete, sex, or reproductive, cell containing only one set of dissimilar chromosomes, or half the genetic material necessary to form a complete organism (i.e., haploid). Gametes are formed through meiosis (reduction division), in which a germ cell undergoes two fissions, resulting in the production

sex chromosome: …as a small, dark-staining structure—the Barr body—in the cell nucleus.

sex chromosome, either of a pair of chromosomes that determine whether an individual is male or female. The sex chromosomes of human beings and other mammals are designated by scientists as X and Y. In humans the sex chromosomes consist of one pair of the total of 23 pairs of chromosomes. The other

sex determination, the establishment of the sex of an organism, usually by the inheritance at the time of fertilization of certain genes commonly localized on a particular chromosome. This pattern affects the development of the organism by controlling cellular metabolism and stimulating the

androgyny: …in which characteristics of both sexes are clearly expressed in a single individual. In biology, androgyny refers to individuals with fully developed sexual organs of both sexes, also called hermaphrodites. Body build and other physical characteristics of these individuals are a blend of normal male and female features.

sexism, prejudice or discrimination based on sex or gender, especially against women and girls. Although its origin is unclear, the term sexism emerged from the “second-wave” feminism of the 1960s through ’80s and was most likely modeled on the civil rights movement’s term racism (prejudice or

United Kingdom: Family and gender: …however; for example, despite the Sex Discrimination Act of 1975, under which the Equal Opportunities Commission was established, women’s pay rates in the 1980s were only about two-thirds of those of men. Still, higher education was increasingly opened to women from the 1960s, so that by 1980 they formed 40…

population: Sex ratio: A second important structural aspect of populations is the relative numbers of males and females who compose it. Generally, slightly more males are born than females (a typical ratio would be 105 or 106 males for every 100 females). On the other hand,…

sexual motivation, the impulse to gratify sexual needs, either through direct sexual activity or through apparently unrelated activities (sublimation). The term libido was coined by Sigmund Freud and used by him to encompass the seeking of pleasure in general, one of the major motivating forces for

Gillian Anderson: Other TV work: The Fall, Sex Education, and The Crown: …oversharing sex therapist mother in Sex Education (2019–23) and as Margaret Thatcher in the fourth season (2020) of The Crown; for her work in the latter series, the actress received her second Emmy. In the debut season (2022) of The First Lady, an anthology series about U.S. first ladies, she…

gender equality, condition of parity regardless of an individual’s gender. Gender equality addresses the tendency to ascribe, in various settings across societies, different roles and status to individuals on the basis of gender. In this context, the term gender generally refers to an individual’s

comparable worth, in economics, the principle that men and women should be compensated equally for work requiring comparable skills, responsibilities, and effort. In the United States the concept of comparable worth was introduced in the 1970s by reformers seeking to correct inequities in pay for

gonad, in zoology, primary reproductive gland that produces reproductive cells (gametes). In males the gonads are called testes; the gonads in females are called ovaries. (see ovary; testis). The gonads in some lower invertebrate groups (e.g., hydrozoans) are temporary organs; in higher forms they

sex hormone, a chemical substance produced by a sex gland or other organ that has an effect on the sexual features of an organism. Like many other kinds of hormones, sex hormones may also be artificially synthesized. See androgen;

Calvin Blackman Bridges: That same year he published “Sex in Relation to Chromosomes and Genes,” demonstrating that sex in Drosophila is not determined simply by the “sex chromosomes” (X and Y) but is the result of a “chromosomal balance”—a mathematical ratio of the number of female sex chromosomes (X) to the number of…

Mindy Kaling: She later created and cowrote The Sex Lives of College Girls (2021– ), a comedy series that centres on four college roommates; it aired on HBO Max.

sex: Abnormal chromosome effects: …are known as gynandromorphs, or sexual mosaics, and result from aberration in the distribution of the X chromosomes among the first cells to be formed during the early development of the embryo.

the Sex Pistols, rock group who created the British punk movement of the late 1970s and who, with the song “God Save the Queen,” became a symbol of the United Kingdom’s social and political turmoil. The original members were vocalist Johnny Rotten (byname of John Lydon; b. January 31, 1956, London,

population: Sex ratio: A second important structural aspect of populations is the relative numbers of males and females who compose it. Generally, slightly more males are born than females (a typical ratio would be 105 or 106 males for every 100 females). On the other hand,…

gender-affirming surgery, medical procedure in which the physical sex characteristics of an individual are modified. Gender-affirming surgery typically is undertaken when an individual chooses to align their physical appearance with their gender identity, enabling the individual to achieve a

Virginia E. Johnson: …began helping him with his sex research. She filled a crucial role in the recruitment of study participants. With her pragmatic attitude and sociable nature, she was able to persuade hundreds of men and women to participate, even though the research was widely considered untoward. She gathered information on participants’…

Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction, a nonprofit corporation affiliated with Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana, U.S., founded in 1947 under the sponsorship of the zoologist Alfred C. Kinsey, with whose pioneering studies of American sexual behaviour the institute

animal reproductive system: Sponges, coelenterates, flatworms, and aschelminths: …free-living nematodes are capable of sex reversal—if the sex ratio in a given population is not optimal or if environmental conditions are not ideal, the ratio of males to females can be altered. This sometimes results in intersexes; i.e., females with some male characteristics. Hermaphroditism occurs in nematodes, and self-fertilization…

gender role, a culturally and socially determined set of expected behaviors, attitudes, and characteristics based on concepts of masculinity and femininity. A gender role should not be confused with gender identity, which refers to an individual’s internal sense of being masculine, feminine, on a

sex slavery, condition in which one human being is owned by another and is forced or otherwise coerced into working in the sex trade. Activities associated with sex slavery include prostitution, pornography, child sex rings, sex tourism, and such occupations as nude dancing and modeling. Sex

sex therapy, form of behaviour modification or psychotherapy directed specifically at difficulties in sexual interaction. Many sex therapists use techniques developed in the 1960s by the Americans William Masters and Virginia Johnson to help couples with nonorganic problems that affect their sex

sex slavery: pornography, child sex rings, sex tourism, and such occupations as nude dancing and modeling. Sex trafficking is the procurement and transport of the victims.

human trafficking: …human trafficking into three categories—sex trafficking, labour trafficking, and the removal of organs—and defines human trafficking as the induction by force, fraud, or coercion of a person to engage in the sex trade, or the harbouring, transportation, or obtaining of a person for labour service or organ removal. Though…

COYOTE: …end the stigma associated with sex work, calling for the abolition of laws against sex workers, who included strippers, phone sex operators, prostitutes, and adult-film actors. They also advocated the abolition of laws against pimps and panderers but argued for governmental regulation of the prostitute-pimp relationship as a contractual labor…

Camille Paglia: …Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990), Sex, Art, and American Culture: Essays (1992), and Vamps & Tramps: New Essays (1994). Her public persona and iconoclastic views angered many academics and feminists and titillated audiences of television talk shows and college lecture halls as well as those who read her magazine essays…

Harvey Weinstein: Early life and Miramax: …the rights to the provocative sex, lies, and videotape, which became Miramax’s first major hit.

chemoreception: Pheromones: A sex-attractant pheromone would be disadvantageous if it also attracted individuals of other species. Specificity is dependent to some extent on the degree to which a particular molecular structure can be modified; for example, there are more possible permutations of the structure of a molecule with…

sex-controlled character, a genetically controlled feature that may appear in organisms of both sexes but is expressed to a different degree in each. The character seems to act as a dominant in one sex and a recessive in the other. An example of such a sex-controlled character is gout in humans;

sex-controlled character, a genetically controlled feature that may appear in organisms of both sexes but is expressed to a different degree in each. The character seems to act as a dominant in one sex and a recessive in the other. An example of such a sex-controlled character is gout in humans;

sex-limited character, an observable feature appearing only in members of one sex of a given population of organisms, although organisms of both sexes may have the genetic constitution that determines the trait. The genes that control milk yield and quality in dairy cattle, for example, are present

sex-linked character, an observable feature of an organism controlled by the genes on the chromosomes that determine the organism’s sex. Each individual has a pair of sex chromosomes; one member of the pair is inherited from each parent. In humans, for example, the X, or female-determining,

mathematics: The numeral system and arithmetic operations: …the base of 60 (sexagesimal). The reasons for the choice of 60 are obscure, but one good mathematical reason might have been the existence of so many divisors (2, 3, 4, and 5, and some multiples) of the base, which would have greatly facilitated the operation of division. For…

Ruse, city of northern Bulgaria, on the Danube River near the mouth of the Rusenski Lom. Bulgaria’s principal river port and a transportation hub for road and rail, Ruse has regular shipping services on the Danube and an airport. Upstream is the Friendship Bridge, built in 1954, carrying road and

Jeanette Winterson: Winterson’s subsequent novels included Sexing the Cherry (1989); Written on the Body (1992); Art and Lies (1994), about dehumanization and the absence of love in society; Gut Symmetries (1997); and The PowerBook (2000). She later published Lighthousekeeping (2004), an exploration of the nature of storytelling

sexism, prejudice or discrimination based on sex or gender, especially against women and girls. Although its origin is unclear, the term sexism emerged from the “second-wave” feminism of the 1960s through ’80s and was most likely modeled on the civil rights movement’s term racism (prejudice or

sexology, interdisciplinary science that focuses on diverse aspects of human sexual behavior and sexuality, including sexual development, relationships, intercourse, sexual dysfunction, sexually transmitted diseases, and pathologies such as child sexual abuse or sexual addiction. Although the term

divine office: Terce, sext, and none correspond to the mid-morning, noon, and mid-afternoon hours. Compline, a night prayer, is of monastic origin, as was prime, recited in the early morning before being suppressed in 1964. The office has for centuries been primarily the responsibility of monks, who sang…

Sextans, constellation at about 10 hours right ascension and on the celestial equator in declination. It is a faint constellation; the brightest star is Alpha Sextantis, with a magnitude of 4.5. Polish astronomer Johannes Hevelius invented this constellation in 1687; it commemorates the sextant

World War II: The western Allies and Stalin: Cairo and Tehrān, 1943: Sextant, the conference of November 22–27, 1943, for which Churchill, Roosevelt, and Chiang Kai-shek met in Cairo, was, on Roosevelt’s insistence, devoted mainly to discussing plans for a British–U.S.–Chinese operation in northern Burma. Little was produced by Sextant except the Cairo Declaration, published on December…

sextant, instrument for determining the angle between the horizon and a celestial body such as the Sun, the Moon, or a star, used in celestial navigation to determine latitude and longitude. The device consists of an arc of a circle, marked off in degrees, and a movable radial arm pivoted at the

measurement system: Greeks and Romans: …capacity measures were the hemina, sextarius, modius, and amphora for dry products and the quartarus, sextarius, congius, urna, and amphora for liquids. Since all of these were based on the sextarius and since no two extant sextarii are identical, a mean

chamber music: Sources and instruments: …a second viola), and string sextet (quintet plus a second cello) are chief among them.

Alan Hovhaness: …instrumental groupings, as does his Sextet for violin, timpani, drums, tam-tam, marimba, and glockenspiel (1966).

Irving Rapper: Later films: …as a dialogue director on Sextette (1978), a Mae West musical, Rapper retired. He died just weeks before his 102nd birthday.

August, eighth month of the Gregorian calendar. It was named for the first Roman emperor, Augustus Caesar, in 8 bce. Its original name was Sextilus, Latin for “sixth month,” indicating its position in the early Roman

sexting, the sending or receiving of sexual words, pictures, or videos via technology, typically a mobile phone. A portmanteau of the words sex and texting, sexting gained popularity as both a cultural phenomenon and a topical study of research interest in the early part of the 21st century. As

José María Arguedas: His novel El sexto (1961; “The Sixth One”) is based on his imprisonment (1937–38) during Oscar Benavides’s dictatorship. The novel Todas las sangres (“All the Races”) appeared in 1964 and was followed by an unfinished novel, El zorro de arriba y el zorro de abajo (1971; The…

sexton, church custodian charged with keeping the church and parish buildings prepared for meetings, caring for church equipment, and performing related minor duties such as ringing the bell and digging graves. The term is sometimes used interchangeably with “sacristan,” denoting a church officer

Anne Sexton was an American poet whose work is noted for its confessional intensity. Anne Harvey attended Garland Junior College for a year before her marriage in 1948 to Alfred M. Sexton II. She studied with the poet Robert Lowell at Boston University and also worked as a model and a librarian.

sexting: Sexting, victimization, and exploitation: …engage in nonconsensual pornography or sextortion can face legal penalties, which range in severity. Sexting among minors is also associated with legal penalties, though statutes to address sexting in this group vary widely. In some jurisdictions, minors who create, send, or receive pornographic images are subject to child pornography laws.…

Sextus Empiricus was an ancient Greek philosopher-historian who produced the only extant comprehensive account of Greek Skepticism in his Outlines of Pyrrhonism and Against the Mathematicians. As a major exponent of Pyrrhonistic “suspension of judgment,” Sextus elaborated the 10 tropes of

sexual abuse, in criminal law, any act of sexual contact that a person suffers, submits to, participates in, or performs as a result of force or violence, threats, fear, or deception or without having legally consented to the act. Sexual contact in this context is usually understood to encompass

human sexual activity, any activity—solitary, between two persons, or in a group—that induces sexual arousal. There are two major determinants of human sexual activity: the inherited sexual response patterns that have evolved as a means of ensuring reproduction and that are a part of each

pheromone: Pheromones play a role in sexual attraction and copulatory behaviour, and they have been shown to influence the sexual development of many mammals as well as of insects such as termites and grasshoppers. Such pheromones tend to last relatively longer and extend farther distances than alarm pheromones. Aspects of vertebrate…

Alfred Kinsey: …Kinsey scale first appeared, and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953). These reports, based on 18,500 personal interviews, indicated a wide variation in behaviour and sexual orientation. Although interviews were carefully conducted and certain statistical criteria met, the studies were criticized because of irregularities in sampling and the general…

Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, statistical study published in 1948 by A.C. Kinsey and his associates W.B. Pomeroy and C.E. Martin, the first of its kind. Both this work and Kinsey’s Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953) relied on personal interviews. Sexual Behavior in the Human Male

human sexual activity, any activity—solitary, between two persons, or in a group—that induces sexual arousal. There are two major determinants of human sexual activity: the inherited sexual response patterns that have evolved as a means of ensuring reproduction and that are a part of each

character: A sexual character is one that distinguishes male from female. An organism’s primary sexual characters are its reproductive organs and gametes (sex cells); an organism’s secondary sexual characters include all other structural or visual differences, such as mammary glands, muscular development, plumages, and behavioral patterns, that…

Carole Pateman: In her most famous work, The Sexual Contract (1988), Pateman challenged the liberal idea that the power of the state does not contradict the freedom of individuals because it is founded upon their consent. Social-contract theorists like Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau rejected the notion that political authority could be obtained…

mental disorder: Paraphilic disorders: Paraphilias, or sexual deviations, are defined as unusual fantasies, urges, or behaviors that are recurrent and sexually arousing. In fetishism, inanimate objects (e.g., shoes) are the person’s sexual preference and means of sexual arousal. In transvestism, the recurrent wearing

Luce Irigaray: …for her theory of “sexual difference,” according to which the supposedly sexless notion of the subject, or ego, in Western philosophy and psychoanalytic theory subtly reflects the interests and perspectives of men, while women are associated with the nonsubject (the Other) or with matter and nature. She argued that…

sexual differentiation, in human embryology, the process by which the male and female sexual organs develop from neutral embryonic structures. The normal human fetus of either sex has the potential to develop either male or female organs, depending on genetic and hormonal influences. In humans,

sexual dimorphism, the differences in appearance between males and females of the same species, such as in colour, shape, size, and structure, that are caused by the inheritance of one or the other sexual pattern in the genetic material. The differences may be extreme, as in the adaptations for

animal social behaviour: Social interactions involving sex: …mate with males with elaborate courtship signals (such as the greatly elongated tail of the male long-tailed widowbird), then this preference will be reinforced over time by the greater ability of the male offspring that possess the signal to attract mates. This preference will also be reinforced if both the…

sexual dysfunction, the inability of a person to experience sexual arousal or to achieve sexual satisfaction under appropriate circumstances, as a result of either physical disorder or, more commonly, psychological problems. The most common forms of sexual dysfunction have traditionally been

gender equality, condition of parity regardless of an individual’s gender. Gender equality addresses the tendency to ascribe, in various settings across societies, different roles and status to individuals on the basis of gender. In this context, the term gender generally refers to an individual’s

Germaine Greer: …and feminist who championed the sexual freedom of women.

sexual harassment, unsolicited verbal or physical behaviour of a sexual nature. Sexual harassment may embrace any sexually motivated behaviour considered offensive by the recipient. Legal recourse is available in cases that occur in the workplace, though it is very difficult to obtain convictions.