Note: This thread contains thoughts, not a serious suggestion yet unless an admin sees it as viable.

I know this has been discussed a lot before, but since the charr discussion is kinda drifting into other territory, I wanted to voice some thoughts here about more accurate tagging when it comes to TWYS and such. Shared some of these in a private skype discussion to think about if it were viable, figured I'd start something here too. Most of the past forums on this subject didn't quite lead to anything conclusive and devolved into a lot of dumb fighting, so I'll propose some new thoughts on the matter in a clean thread.

Cuntboys are just females with no breasts or a flat chest. Instead of tagging them as cuntboy, they can be summed up with vagina + no_breasts / flat_chested.

A female with small breasts can be summed up with vagina + small_breasts.

A male with breasts (dickgirl) can be summed up with breasts + penis.

I realize this might not be useful for blacklists because some pictures can contain breasts and a penis and have a herm somewhere in the mix, so perhaps we can sum it up with a few new tags or redefinitions of old ones:

• penis/dick/balls - implies male/masculine_genitals
• vagina/pussy/clitoris - implies female/feminine_genitals
• breasts are breasts. not technically genitals, so implies feminine_chest
• pecs are pecs. also not genitals, but implies masculine_chest (same goes for no_breasts, but are not necessarily pecs)
• flat_chested gets a cleanup to file things under small_breasts or pecs/masculine_chest
• anus is just an anus. poor thing doesn't have a gender.

New, organized gender terms:

• female - for traditionally female traits, implies breasts + vagina, which imply feminine_genitals + chest (I don't mean implies in the tag-related sense of the word. if only one or the other is visible, breasts or vagina, this term takes precedence over anything below, same goes for male but with opposite parts)
• male - for traditionally male traits, implies pecs + dick, which imply masculine_genitals + chest
• intersex/mixed_genitals - for both a vagina + dick, so implies both masculine/feminine_genitals, one can add "breasts" to their search to find herms with breasts
• flat-chested_female - for "cuntboys"/ implies pecs/masculine_chest + vagina/feminine_genitals - does not imply intersex, but perhaps mixed(_gender)_traits
• breasted_male - for "dickgirls"/ implies breasts/feminine_chest + cock/masculine_genitals (I like the sound of "female_with_penis" or "penis-equipped_female" but I feel the genital-type should be leading the name of the tag) - does not imply intersex
• ambiguous_gender stays if literally nothing applies (masculine or feminine chest/genitals, use the below "appearance" tags)
• I was also thinking implied_female/male for shots of characters from the back where you can tell by the curves or lack of that it is female or male, but I'm not sure on this one.

The above gender terms seem less harsh on the tongue, as I know some have been offended by the tag names (dickgirl/cuntboy) themselves and, to be quite honest, they're pretty outdated and could use a change. These are basically just a bunch of tag renames/aliasing to make them seem more attractive when tagging or looking through tags.

Should also add/rename tags for appearance, such as:

• manly = masculine_appearance (replaces maleherm, as manly + intersex)
• girly = feminine_appearance

Perhaps add tags to reflect what genitals are being utilized:

• penis_in_vagina (implies vaginal_penetration, penis/masculine_genitals, vagina/feminine_genitals)
• should not be aliased to vaginal_penetration because toys get put in vaginas too.
• penis_in_anus
• penis_on/between_breasts
• etc.

Not sure how this would affect male/male, male/female, male/intersex tags, and I can't really think of alternatives at the moment (already put in a lot of thought with the above), though with tags like the ones listed above, they may be redundant. Want to see a basic dude with a not-herm? penis_in_vagina -intersex, and if you don't like flat-chested ladies either (or you don't want the dude in this example to be a dickgirl), you just add -flat-chested_female (or -mixed_traits) to the search.

ah, scratch that. looks like you did cover the whole flat chested female aka cuntboy thing.

treos said:
ah, scratch that. looks like you did cover the whole flat chested female aka cuntboy thing.

Hehe, yeah, the start of my post is a little confusing and vague, but I was mostly trying to set up the differences between genitals and chests/appearances. This all stems from my great dislike of the term "cuntboy" used in an art context and how it feels like it erases all femininity from characters it's applied to when most of them appear to be more girl than boy in the first place (also the female Charr, from the other discussion, who are being labeled as boys despite them being very much female, just with no breast tissue). I figured feminine/masculine chests/genitals are tags that tie in well with animal_genitals and are good for organizational purposes. Cuntboy is really only a good term in writing, not as a descriptive term in artworks, where flat-chested + female (genitals) + female/male_appearance cover it without as harsh/vulgar a term.

Overall, the site is TWYS and when I see a "cuntboy", I see a female (genitals) with a very flat or masculine chest.

I see what you are aming for, Kida. Gender tags could never be true TWYS because we cannot see the gender. We see gender traits and interpret certain combinations as one or the other gender. Naturally people will interpret differently and disagree on the gender tags.

In its current state the gender tags would need some sort of voting system to determin what gender is perceived by the the most people. (Maybe percentages for a feniminity/masculinity rating.)

So instead of one group of tags ('gender') you suggest several groups to describe the appearance: 'crotch', 'chest', 'bodyshape' (and maybe 'face'? I often look at the face to say if it is a cuntboy or a flat girl.).

In general, I like the idea though I fear it might complicate tagging by making it nessesary to add a lot more tags. There are already so many posts without gender tags.

Kida said:
Perhaps add tags to reflect what genitals are being utilized:

• penis_in_vagina (implies vaginal_penetration, penis/masculine_genitals, vagina/feminine_genitals)
• should not be aliased to vaginal_penetration because toys get put in vaginas too.
• penis_in_anus
• penis_on/between_breasts
• etc.

I always wondered why we don't have these already! It is almost too obvious to just tag what characters are doing with their genitals.

Lord_Ocean said:
I see what you are aming for, Kida. Gender tags could never be true TWYS because we cannot see the gender. We see gender traits and interpret certain combinations as one or the other gender. Naturally people will interpret differently and disagree on the gender tags.

I'm so glad someone sees what I'm trying to get at; I spent a lot of time mulling over this post, worried I would get torn apart if I made too many suggestions, or if they were too drastic, since lots of people have brought up this issue before and were chewed up for it. ;-; I definitely agree, of course; we don't see gender, we just see sexual organs and acts and go off of those.

Lord_Ocean said:
In its current state the gender tags would need some sort of voting system to determin what gender is perceived by the the most people. (Maybe percentages for a feniminity/masculinity rating.)

That's actually really funny. When you mention that, I imagine a variant of the upvote/downvote system but with femininity and masculinity as the up and down, and a visual bar in between to indicate where the post lies, haha. Kinda like tug-o-war.

Lord_Ocean said:
So instead of one group of tags ('gender') you suggest several groups to describe the appearance: 'crotch', 'chest', 'bodyshape' (and maybe 'face'? I often look at the face to say if it is a cuntboy or a flat girl.).

In general, I like the idea though I fear it might complicate tagging by making it nessesary to add a lot more tags. There are already so many posts without gender tags.

That's what I was going for with feminine/masculine genitals/chest ideas in the post, yes! But the good thing about it is I made sure the new tags would just be implied or aliased from current tags already in place on a lot of art, so the only actions taken would be expanding upon the current tags or adding new tagging projects for feminine/masculine faces. In fact, faces is the only body part that doesn't already have a tag for it.

Lord_Ocean said:
I always wondered why we don't have these already! It is almost too obvious to just tag what characters are doing with their genitals.

I thought it was too obvious as well when I was typing up that section! We have those kinds of tags for cum (cum_on_breasts, cum_in_vagina), why not for genital actions too? Sounds like a fun new tagging project, if I were to have approval for such a large-scale addition from an admin.

I want to think over your post for some time before giving a more detailed response, but I wanted to address a couple things before I do.

Kida said:

[by current tagging standards] Cuntboys are just females with no breasts or a flat chest.

This is incorrect. The tag is meant for masculine characters, it just ends up getting mixed in with scalie/sergal/charr gendering debates, which have never really been addressed specifically.

I do think that the cuntboy tag needs to be refined/cleaned up, however.

Kida said:
This all stems from my great dislike of the term "cuntboy"

The practicalities of the tag itself outweigh personal preferences and tastes. The name is just a shorthand for certain characteristics that are common in some characters, nothing more. Likewise, we won't support making destructive changes to the system just to make it "sound" nicer (e.g., eliminate intersex tags in favor of binary gendering). I know that isn't exactly what you were implying in the OP, but I feel it's worth mentioning.

That being said, I am open to suggestions about renaming or repurposing the system. I believe that even crazy changes like adding more gender tags or getting rid of the gender tags altogether are worth considering (for example, at the time the gay -> male/male change was huge, but it turned out to be massively beneficial for us in the long run).

Who knows, maybe your absolutely crazy change would work well in practice. :)

parasprite said:
This is incorrect. The tag is meant for masculine characters, it just ends up getting mixed in with scalie/sergal/charr gendering debates, which have never really been addressed specifically.

I do think that the cuntboy tag needs to be refined/cleaned up, however.

Perhaps, since it's meant for masculine characters with pussies (but feminine characters with little/no breasts keep getting lumped in there as well), there could be two variants of "cuntboy"? In fact, "vagina/pussy-equipped_male" or "male_with_pussy" acts as a nice contrast to "penis-equipped_female"/"female_with_dick" , which was one of my propositions for a better term than "dickgirl". Then flat-chested_female can be used for feminine characters (namely charr ;-;) that don't fit in with the rest of the cuntboy tag.

parasprite said:
The practicalities of the tag itself outweigh personal preferences and tastes. The name is just a shorthand for certain characteristics that are common in some characters, nothing more. Likewise, we won't support making destructive changes to the system just to make it "sound" nicer (e.g., eliminate intersex tags in favor of binary gendering). I know that isn't exactly what you were implying in the OP, but I feel it's worth mentioning.

I definitely want an easy solution to renaming/aliasing the tags for more.. friendly(?) language. I'm not trying to suggest anything destructive, no, just a little more specific than the current system! That's why I suggested an alternative, with intersex being strictly for mixed_genitals (herm) while the others are just mixed_traits (which can imply intersex!), with genitals/chests not matching up to female + female or male + male. If that makes sense. A bit like a gender hybrid of sorts (I like the sound of that. "hybrid gender".)

parasprite said:
That being said, I am open to suggestions about renaming or repurposing the system. I believe that even crazy changes like adding more gender tags or getting rid of the gender tags altogether are worth considering (for example, at the time the gay -> male/male change was huge, but it turned out to be massively beneficial for us in the long run).

Who knows, maybe your absolutely crazy change would work well in practice. :)

I'm glad you're open to suggestions! You're an awesome admin like that. I didn't want to outright suggest getting rid of gender tags, since they're good for blacklists, but I definitely think getting more specific and specifying different sets of male and female characteristics (like chests and genitals) is a good plan, allows for more customization of blacklists and searches, and less mis-tagging.

And I'll take that last sentence as a compliment. :D

I've been thinking along the same lines: instead of tagging cuntboy/dickgirl, we could just tag specific features. It's what some of the other boorus do, and they seem to have a lot less arguments about it.

The main downside is that there would likely be a major backlash from artists who identify their characters by those terms.

Genjar said:
I've been thinking along the same lines: instead of tagging cuntboy/dickgirl, we could just tag specific features. It's what some of the other boorus do, and they seem to have a lot less arguments about it.

The main downside is that there would likely be a major backlash from artists who identify their characters by those terms.

Well it is worth mentioning that there is already backlash from artists who feel their characters are misgendered by our current system, so I think that ends up neutral, rather than negative.

The biggest problem with this that I see is that there is then no way to search for characters who exhibit all the characteristics associated with females, or all the characteristics associated with males.

Furthermore, if we got rid of the male and female tags, it would have significant implications on the male/female, male/male and female/female tags, and I don't think they could survive the blow. And I think they are very useful tags.

All in all, I think the problems caused by gender tags are probably less than the problems that would be caused by not having those tags. This includes the various intersex tags. A solution would be nice, certainly, but I don't think this is the solution.

Clawdragons said:
Well it is worth mentioning that there is already backlash from artists who feel their characters are misgendered by our current system, so I think that ends up neutral, rather than negative.

The biggest problem with this that I see is that there is then no way to search for characters who exhibit all the characteristics associated with females, or all the characteristics associated with males.

Furthermore, if we got rid of the male and female tags, it would have significant implications on the male/female, male/male and female/female tags, and I don't think they could survive the blow. And I think they are very useful tags.

All in all, I think the problems caused by gender tags are probably less than the problems that would be caused by not having those tags. This includes the various intersex tags. A solution would be nice, certainly, but I don't think this is the solution.

Long response

I've posted this around 11:15 PM (UTC-5:00 where I live) and I have a feeling I may have created flaws in what I wrote. So if you find any and point them out (Give me criticism) I won't throw a fit, I'll be happy to continue this debate if you want. (Privately or publicly)

Clawdragons said:
The biggest problem with this that I see is that there is then no way to search for characters who exhibit all the characteristics associated with females, or all the characteristics associated with males.

The female and male tags would remain, just with some clarification (they have to have female chest and female genitals, for example). I didn't say anything about ridding of the gender tags in my initial post, just expanding on tags in terms of genitalia/features.

Clawdragons said:
Furthermore, if we got rid of the male and female tags, it would have significant implications on the male/female, male/male and female/female tags, and I don't think they could survive the blow. And I think they are very useful tags.

This is why I proposed the penis_in_vagina, penis_in_ass, etc. alongside the new implications of female/male_genitals. It would be more efficient for finding the content one wants than the current system, I think. Also, again, I never proposed getting rid of female or male, just renaming some of the others (and also mentioned that they could still imply intersex, or a new tag "mixed_traits", if desired).

"There are no dickgirls, only men with boobs."

Kida said:
Various Stuff

Sorry, I obviously misunderstood what you were proposing. I thought you were proposing replacing the female and male tags with these new sets of tags. I admit my error in that regard.

Your proposal is more reasonable. That said, I feel like focusing on the chest is a bit problematic, and I still feel like masculine/feminine_body or masculine_female feminine_male would be a more comprehensive solution.

Unrelated to any of that, what might be an interesting part of a solution (with Charr and some other species) would be a tag which embodies the idea of "species-specific gender cues". In other words, the presence of species-specific gender cues could be tagged in a general manner, such that the tag could be added in addition to the standard TWYS gender rules in order to indicate that additional knowledge of the species would help clarify the case of an otherwise ambiguous gender.