Topic: Sexual Dimorphism and Tagging Sex: Hyenas, Charrs and Pokemon

leomole

Former Staff

I recently found myself confused about how to tag post #1287147, a hyena with breasts and what might be considered a pseudo-penis. In reading through old forums I found that this is part of a larger issue which I am here summarizing for easier future reference and also proposing a novel solution for discussion among admins and users.

Summary

Literature Review

Method: I performed a search for forum posts about hyenas or charrs and followed links from those posts as well. In chronological order here is the input I found from admins:

forum #62808: Tagging is not based on lore. Tagging should cater to typical users who don't know the lore.

forum #108849: If a majority of users cannot see a difference it should not be tagged. Tags should facilitate searching.

forum #130336: Some species can be tagged based on sexually dimorphic features. For example deer with antlers can be tagged as male. But this is only when a majority of users are familiar with that feature. Many real and fictional species (including charrs) should not be tagged based on little known sexually dimorphic features.

forum #132035: Feral characters are usually tagged solely based on their genitals even when the rest of the body is ambiguous (post #1266239, post #1266241). But when an anthro character has a pussy and an ambiguous body there's a lot of confusion. That's because we expect anthropomorphized characters to have certain body and facial features. In this situation the character should be tagged as female not ambiguous_gender.

forum #138632: Suggestion: Tagging the sex of a fictional species should be based on official artwork, for example this is male and this is female.

forum #139178: Tagging should facilitate searching.

forum #172539: RULING: Lore can influence tagging. For example a charr with an ambiguous body but canonically feminine tail and horns can be tagged as female (post #679439, post #1284030). However a masculine body should be tagged as male even if there are canonically feminine features (post #346064, post #710788, post #1104606). And a masculine body with a pussy should still be tagged as cuntboy (post #1192127). Contentious posts should be referred to the admins.

forum #186564: A character can be tagged based on sexually dimorphic features when its species is real and the dimorphism is common knowledge.

As you can see there is a range of opinions even among the admins. The current ruling seems to be

For real species, well known sexually dimorphic features (antlers, mane) can be taken into account but genitals trumps them.

For fictional species, lore can be taken into account but this is meant for contentious examples (charr), don't just tag all Pikachu as male just because they don't have rounded tails.

Above all tagging should be done with the typical user's searches in mind.

post #1287147

Based on the above information as well as the rest of forum #186509 I believe the character in post #1287147 has a penis not a pseudo-penis and is therefore a dickgirl. Based on the tag history this is also the conclusion of an admin. It was changed by Ko-san, who I'm sorry to say has been on the wrong side of many of the discussions I read in these forums, so I feel comfortable reverting their edits.

Solution

Right now the biggest conflict I see is the tagging of fictional species. When exactly should lore be brought in? I say we go for the whole shebang. I propose the use of canonically_male, canonically_female, etc tags.

This will:
  • Settle tag wars. The basic sex tag is TWYS, all the time.
  • Recognize canonicity. This will satisfy picky taggers and make artists less unhappy about their character's sex being identified incorrectly.
  • Not interfere with the typical user. They can go about their searching as usual.
  • Not require too much work. There are a limited number of sexually dimorphic fictional species. And this is a supplemental sex tag, it's not vital that every relevant post gets it.
  • Allow users to specify heavily sexually dimorphic species. For example canonically_male Meowstic (post #724143) are very different from canonically female Meowstic (post #724150) even though both are just tagged as ambiguous_gender right now. They're basically different species, like Nidoran♂ (post #702858) and Nidoran♀ (post #397673). A search for canonically_male meowstic lets users specify which species they see.

What would this look like? post #679439 is a canonically_female ambiguous_gender. Users searching for female anthros don't have to see it. post #1104606 is a canonically_female male charr, which allows us to distinguish it from a canonically_male male charr like post #1104573.

What do you think? Honestly I don't expect we will adopt this policy, despite the benefits it's a big change and the current policy seems to be working okay. But let's have a productive discussion anyway. Please keep in mind we're all here to make e6 the best it can be.

Updated by BlueDingo