Glossary

Since I use some terms that are not (yet) in common usage, I thought I’d set up this glossary to help clarify things. I am also including some terms to clarify the way I define the term since they are often difficult to define, such as “religion.” Obviously, this is a work in progress… (What isn’t?!?)

If you’re looking for terms used in financial crisis coverage, please check out the Planet Money glossary.

Atheism
Strictly speaking this means the denial of a theistic god, i.e., a god that meddles in our day-to-day life. It is often expanded to include the denial of any gods or goddesses. One of my favorite definitions is: Believing in one less god than Christians/Muslims/Jews.

Conjugality
While this is mostly defined as “related to marriage,” I would like to broaden this definition to mean “sex and everything else” relationships. So, conjugality describes a relationship that at least at some point involved sex.

Types of Discrimination Unmarried Face

Family
A family includes a householder and one or more other people living in the same household who are related to the householder by birth, marriage, or adoption. All people in a household who are related to the householder are regarded as members of his or her family. A household can contain only one family for purposes of census tabulations. Not all households contain families since a household may be a group of unrelated people or one person living alone.
Families are classified by type as either a “married-couple family” or an “other family” according to the presence of a spouse. “Other family” is further broken out according to the sex of the householder. The data on family type are based on answers to questions on sex and relationship that were asked on a 100-percent basis.
(From the U.S. Census Bureau)

Heteronormativity
Onely has this great definition of it: “We use “heteronormative” to mean the hegemonic perspective that normalizes coupled relationships. “Heteronormative” historically refers to a perspective that fails to recognize “alternative” gender and sexual identities. At Onely, we believe that heteronormativity also fails to recognize those of us who prefer living alone to coupling.”

Humanism
Humanism that is devoid of anything supernatural. I am a bit ambivalent about the advantages of distinguishing secular humanism from humanism in general. I fear that this is creating an unnecessary splintering of the humanism movement.

Matrimania
Term coined by Bella DePaulo to summarize the cultural obsession with marriage and coupledom. It is “perpetuating the misguided notion that marriage is unequivocally beneficial for individuals and society” (Hat tip to Onely). More details are in this post.

Relationship
The term “relationship” has mostly been reduced to mean “conjugal relationship” but that is an incorrect narrow definition of the term. It simply means “a relation between people; a state of connectedness between people (especially an emotional connection).” We have relationships with many people around us; some of these are close and intimate; others are more more causal. Sexual contact may or may not be involved.

Religion
Books have been written about this one! I call anything a religion that acts or smells like one, i.e., a world view that contains at least some supernatural elements, whether those elements are a god or nirvana doesn’t really matter. For example, unlike many Western Buddhists, I think that Buddhism is a religion.

Singlism
Term coined by Bella DePaulo to describe discrimination and bias against people who are not married or part of a couple. More details are in this post.

Spirituality
A less organized version of religion, thus it includes something supernatural (like an unprovable presence of a free-floating consciousness in the universe aside from) and faith in something, such as a god, spirits, or ghosts (hungry or otherwise).

The Wrong or religious wrong
I use these terms to describe what is usually called the Right (or Religious Right). Although the opposite is “left,” the usage of the term “right” seems to imply that somehow they are right about what they’re claiming… More details are in this post.

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