Like it says on the tin, I'm wondering if crossgender is still a valid tag, in light of the site's current policies regarding sex and gender, as it applies to TWYSNWYK.

The admins, in particular, have argued very passionately that images are to be considered on an individual basis and in a vacuum of all other content, including other images on the site which feature the same character.

I don't disagree with the merits of their case, either. Artists in the community frequently drop away, or clean out their profiles, or otherwise make external references unavailable for authoritatively tagging the contents of their images.

crossgender has been applied to 13,874 posts as of this writing, as recently as 3 hours ago. That places it somewhere slightly above the 500th most common tag.

But crossgender inherently requires the application of external knowledge. crossgender miles_prower, formerly known as tailsko, is understood to be female, because Miles is understood to be male. crossgender applejack_(mlp) is understood to be male, because Applejack is understood to be female.

Those are major franchises, of course, and it's unlikely that the characters' canonical genders will become unknown. What about less well known characters? clovis_(twokinds) is canonically male, and female depictions contribute to the crossgender tag count. So does katia_managan of Prequel. Do we accept these as well, simply because they're relatively well-known by the fandom?

If we accept this much, then I'm guessing the line still has to be drawn somewhere shy of accelo_(character), who is canonically male, and female depictions also contribute to the crossgender tag, as recently as 10 months ago.

So, is there a line to draw, or is this a bad tag that needs to go away?