The condition, practice, or ideology of maintaining or favoring relationships and associations outside conventional or traditional social structures.
From hetero- (other, different) plus -ism (condition, practice, or ideology). Developed in 19th-century sociology to describe variations from conventional arrangements.
Heterism was the technical term early sociologists used when they were trying to sound scientific about relationships that didn't fit Victorian norms—it's academia's cautious way of saying 'people do things differently.'
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