From the e621 site:

Explicit

Any image where the vagina or penis are exposed and easily visible. This includes depictions of sex, masturbation, or any sort of penetration.

Illustrations with no exposed penis, but containing a sheath (specially posing) have been rated either "explicit" or "questionable". Although it depends a lot on the viewer, it seems a bit odd having 2 types of rating for similar pictures.

Is there some kind of unspoken rule that might help decide on which rating to submit it under? Just wondering really.

I don't think we have any rules about the content level of sheaths.

It seems worth discussing.

Generally speaking, I'd think a visible sheath without the penis visible is the furry equivalent of a flaccid, intact human.

Now, knowing that the latter would generally be regarded as Explicit unless it was a statue or painting from the Renaissance, I'd think that the same should apply to furry images.

Which makes me ponder, what if a renaissance statue of a furry character surfaced? That would be rather interesting. Then again, there are plenty of Egyptian carvings of the sort, I'm sure...

Percy101 said:
What if a renaissance statue of a furry character surfaced? That would be rather interesting.

that would be quite amazing! Kudos to the artist that draws that.

Also I agree, any type of cock is still a cock, and should be regarded as nudity. Not trying to rain on anyone's parade here, I actually love sheaths much more than human dicks, and am all for the showing of them! (sheaths)

I'd say use questionable if it's an artistic, nonsexual representation with no actual penis showing, like this:

post #126403 post #20455 post #20464 post #957

I'd still mark the following as explicit though:

post #11370
post #46234

A sheath isn't a penis.
A penis is a penis.

ExplosiveBlaziken said:
A sheath isn't a penis.
A penis is a penis.

Yet a sheath can still be considered as part of a male furry's genitalia.

I think that any image depicting an anthropomorphic, male furry with a sheath should be rated as explicit because of the fact that a sheath is a male genital, or for furries at least.

Think of a naked, female furry. Although the characterstics might be slightly more acute, the picture is still considered explicit. This should be the same way for the opposite sex.

Naked humans are, obviously, considered explicit as well.

As for feral furries, since they are seen in a "natural" state, I would be more inclined to allieviate the "naked rule" for the rating.

ExplosiveBlaziken said:
A sheath isn't a penis.
A penis is a penis.

But a sheath does denote a penis.
Sheath is fairly equivalent to foreskin.

Thus, a furry character with sheath visible should be equivalent to a human with at least foreskin visible.

If penis being visible in an image is an automatic Explicit rating, I do believe it would be right and fair. In sheath images, the character is still naked where it matters, but merely flaccid.

Tagging and rating were created to help users filter the pictures they want to see. I think what is important here is:

- Do people that search for explicit only, want to see sheaths?

Since I doubt anyone actually searches for questionable rated pictures alone.

ExplosiveBlaziken said:
A sheath isn't a penis.
A penis is a penis.

A scrotum isn't a penis.

But it's still genitalia and it's still explicit.

Bumping this two year old topic because it never seemed to come to an official consensus. I believe it's still worth discussing, seeing how there are several pages of pictures where sheaths are present and the rating is questionable.

If it were up to me I would say if the sheath is just there, and it isn't being presented in any sexual way to be questionable, basically like a tasteful nude. If there are sexual themes present alongside the sheath then I would say explicit.

If it doesn't matter whether tits are sexualized, then it shouldn't matter whether genitals are sexualized.

Imo, if it's sheath and balls present, that's explicit to me

If it's tastefully presented in an artistic fashion, questionable. If it's obviously depicted as pornography, explicit. If there's any peeking regardless of artistry, explicit. Sheathes are closer to the marsupial pouch than to foreskin.

Hm, good question, AC, and many other games lately, feature obviously male animals where you can see a sheath, and those games aren't rated 18.

123easy said:
If it's tastefully presented in an artistic fashion, questionable. If it's obviously depicted as pornography, explicit. If there's any peeking regardless of artistry, explicit. Sheathes are closer to the marsupial pouch than to foreskin.

I concur.
Images such as these don't seem explicit to me:
post #226303 post #106174

NotMeNotYou said:
Hm, good question, AC, and many other games lately, feature obviously male animals where you can see a sheath, and those games aren't rated 18.

Wait, Animal Crossing is doing this? Since when?

So judging based on the comments above me, my guess is that we are officially going with the premise of "If it's presented sexually it's explicit and if not it's questionable."?

Assassins Creed 3, 2 didn't have them.

NotMeNotYou said:
Assassins Creed 3, 2 didn't have them.

NotMeNotYou said:
Assassins Creed 3, 2 didn't have them.

AssCreed 3(usually shortened like that to prevent crossover with Animal Crossing) has animals with sheathes? o.o Whoa.

I recently uploaded three images of taurs all of which had visible sheaths, no visible penis and depict non-sexual situations. The first was switched to explicit, the second to safe and the third to questionable. I'm very confused by how to rate these pics now.

post #731268 Explicit post #731538 Safe post #731542 Questionable

dinahmoe said:
I recently uploaded three images of taurs all of which had visible sheaths, no visible penis and depict non-sexual situations. The first was switched to explicit, the second to safe and the third to questionable. I'm very confused by how to rate these pics now.

post #731268 Explicit post #731538 Safe post #731542 Questionable

well in the first one the sheath is pretty visible and defined, in second one its barely visible, just a small hint (im p sure that i could show this to my grandma without feeling weird about it) and in last one its visible but not defined and clearly not there for any sexual purposes

Mutisija said:
well in the first one the sheath is pretty visible and defined, in second one its barely visible, just a small hint (im p sure that i could show this to my grandma without feeling weird about it) and in last one its visible but not defined and clearly not there for any sexual purposes

I do like the grandma standard of what's safe or not. I don't get the difference between defined and not defined though. They both seem to have the same amount of detail (except in their muscle definition) and neither one looks very sexual.

dinahmoe said:
I do like the grandma standard of what's safe or not. I don't get the difference between defined and not defined though. They both seem to have the same amount of detail (except in their muscle definition) and neither one looks very sexual.

wait actually they do seem to have same amount if definition. im using reduced samples and the jpg compression blurred the last one's sheath so much that it looked much less refined

dinahmoe said:
I do like the grandma standard of what's safe or not. I don't get the difference between defined and not defined though. They both seem to have the same amount of detail (except in their muscle definition) and neither one looks very sexual.

I don't. It's still pretty subjective. Hey, some grandmas are into this kind of stuff, kay?

ShylokVakarian said:
I don't. It's still pretty subjective. Hey, some grandmas are into this kind of stuff, kay?

Haha, ya got me there

Could we get an admin decision on our modern sheath/rating policy, along with a wiki update?

Sheath are explicit.

BTW, what wiki page? The Help page for ratings clearly lists sheath: https://e621.net/help/ratings

Took a brief look at it. Doesn't look like a big project, only a few hundred posts that need fixing. Here's a few examples of posts that had been rated questionable:

post #137798 post #202606 post #90919 post #166960 post #18046

That's pretty standard for old posts, actually... I've occasionally found blatantly explicit posts that were uploaded as safe, and left like that for years.

So let me get this straight, you people are basically saying that this is explicit:

post #1038338

I'm sorry, but that is just extremely prudish and silly.

This could be shown on daytime TV, I'm sure, but you lot consider it "not safe for work".

Bloody hell, you've never seen horse sculptures and paintings in Rome, have you?

Do I think that image is innocuous? Yes. I wouldn't mind getting a print of that, hanging it on my wall and letting my nieces and nephews run past it. But if I were to rate it on this site, it would still be explicit.

It's easier to organize a site for varied tastes and standards by having as few exceptions to a rule as possible.

If I recall correctly, images with sheaths used to be rated case-by-case, based on prominence of genitalia, state of arousal, etc (mostly subjective standards).

Now that the site has grown, rating them case-by-case is no longer practical. It's far easier and more accurate to apply a blanket rule: all genitalia are explicit, no exceptions.

Potes said:
So let me get this straight, you people are basically saying that this is explicit:

post #1038338

I'm sorry, but that is just extremely prudish and silly.

This could be shown on daytime TV, I'm sure, but you lot consider it "not safe for work".

Bloody hell, you've never seen horse sculptures and paintings in Rome, have you?

people do not generally view sheaths as weird and sexual because we are used to seeing them but sheaths are no different from human foreskin. the fact that people are used to seeing specific animal genitals dont mean that they are not explicitly visible genitals.

Mutisija said:
people do not generally view sheaths as weird and sexual because we are used to seeing them but sheaths are no different from human foreskin. the fact that people are used to seeing specific animal genitals dont mean that they are not explicitly visible genitals.

But comparing sheaths to human foreskin just opens a whole new can of worms.

Woman's breasts are considered lewd, and they easily warrant a "questionable" at least, right?
However, men can flaunt their nipply chests 'till the cows home home and that alone doesn't make it anything but "safe".
I mean, it's the same body part on the same species, but we still respond very differently to it.
And in the end, sexual dimorphism doesn't change the anatomy nearly as much as being a whole different species.

I've seen some of you argue that there should be an objective rule to tagging explicit, but really, how "objective" can you be about virtual art anyways?
In the end it's a sequence of bleepy little lights on a computer screen, so we have to rely on our interpretations to see a picture, which by itself makes it a subjective experience since it's not really a concrete thing, but more of an illusion of characters and events.
In this scary ocean on subjectivity, the tag system was created to tag the ideas and concepts that the pictures symbolize.
The explicit tag's job is to tag mature content, in other words content that are blatantly sexual or otherwise inappropriate for children.

I see absolutely no mature content in this picture.
To say that the aforementioned sheath in the picture warrants a mature content rating is foolish, regardless of its relations to human anatomy.

A system which enforces such a rating for the picture is clearly a broken system.

Potes said:
A system which enforces such a rating for the picture is clearly a broken system.

One tag involving genitalia, an always explicit aspect of the site, is being tagged explicit... and you decide to say it's broken. Let's start asking some questions:

Or, if you don't want to read those questions: genitals are always explicit. Animal genitalia is no different. A sheath is animal genitalia. It does not get special treatment. If a sheath is in the image, it gets rated explicit because it is animal genitalia. All cases of genitals are explicit, unless the wiki says otherwise. Please, catch the hint when I say genitals are explicit, and not compare to things that aren't genitals.

Potes said:
But comparing sheaths to human foreskin just opens a whole new can of worms.

Woman's breasts are considered lewd, and they easily warrant a "questionable" at least, right?
However, men can flaunt their nipply chests 'till the cows home home and that alone doesn't make it anything but "safe".
I mean, it's the same body part on the same species, but we still respond very differently to it.
And in the end, sexual dimorphism doesn't change the anatomy nearly as much as being a whole different species.

I've seen some of you argue that there should be an objective rule to tagging explicit, but really, how "objective" can you be about virtual art anyways?
In the end it's a sequence of bleepy little lights on a computer screen, so we have to rely on our interpretations to see a picture, which by itself makes it a subjective experience since it's not really a concrete thing, but more of an illusion of characters and events.
In this scary ocean on subjectivity, the tag system was created to tag the ideas and concepts that the pictures symbolize.
The explicit tag's job is to tag mature content, in other words content that are blatantly sexual or otherwise inappropriate for children.

I see absolutely no mature content in this picture.
To say that the aforementioned sheath in the picture warrants a mature content rating is foolish, regardless of its relations to human anatomy.

A system which enforces such a rating for the picture is clearly a broken system.

in case you missed my reply:

Do I think that image is innocuous? Yes. I wouldn't mind getting a print of that, hanging it on my wall and letting my nieces and nephews run past it. But if I were to rate it on this site, it would still be explicit.

It's easier to organize a site for varied tastes and standards by having as few exceptions to a rule as possible.

If I recall correctly, images with sheaths used to be rated case-by-case, based on prominence of genitalia, state of arousal, etc (mostly subjective standards).

Now that the site has grown, rating them case-by-case is no longer practical. It's far easier and more accurate to apply a blanket rule: all genitalia are explicit, no exceptions.

i'll spare you having to read any other post on this thread

also you bumped an almost 5 year-old thread to complain about a horse sheath

just let that sink in

Knotty_Curls said:
also you bumped an almost 5 year-old thread to complain about a horse sheath

just let that sink in

I did read your comment, but didn't feel that it was worth complaining about.
It was mostly legit, but my one question is that is it easier to organize, or lazier to organize?

And yes, I am bumping an old thread to complain about a horse sheath.
As valid of a subject for debate as any, if you ask me.
I believe my complaint to be valid and well-reasoned, I see no problems here.

What Knotty said is correct, ease of use, consistency, and the desire to keep exceptions to rules as few as possible are the main reasons behind the decision to have all depictions of sheaths treated the same.

The other reasons are that you also got sheaths on anthro characters and it'd be annoying to have to decide whether or not a sheath is explicit based on the body type of the character.
Or the inconsistency that a horse's sheath is allowed to be safe but a mare's vulva isn't.

Simplicity is definitely worth more in this case.

I'm confused, in what way is a picture of a horse being rated explicit inconvenient to you in any way?
Plus I don't think anybody would actually consider that picture explicit at all but it's just easier to see a sheath and rate it explicit rather than decide if there is any sexual content or not. Also you have to realize we are nearing a million active posts and I don't even know how many new images get added every day looking for the few exceptions is just not feasible.

If the sheath appears on e621, it automatically becomes explicit because it has been sexualized. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

NotMeNotYou said:
What Knotty said is correct, ease of use, consistency, and the desire to keep exceptions to rules as few as possible are the main reasons behind the decision to have all depictions of sheaths treated the same.

The other reasons are that you also got sheaths on anthro characters and it'd be annoying to have to decide whether or not a sheath is explicit based on the body type of the character.
Or the inconsistency that a horse's sheath is allowed to be safe but a mare's vulva isn't.

Simplicity is definitely worth more in this case.

Fair enough.
I had my say and made my point.
If you still insist on tagging it as explicit content, not much I can do about that.
You have every right to tag pictures as you please in your own site, regardless of how little sense it makes to me.

I still find it prudish and silly, that is not going to change.

Lance_Armstrong said:
If the sheath appears on e621, it automatically becomes explicit because it has been sexualized. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

There isn't much that hasn't been sexualized yet.

How do I view images that have been tagged explicit only for the reason that they include a sheath?

If I don't consider sheaths objectionable, but all the other stuff that makes up "explicit" is objectionable to me, how do I deal with that?

sheath -gore -pussy -penis solo -cum, and I am specifying solo to avoid cases of implied explicit nature.

I believe that this should work. But why do you want to know? My argument about sheathes being explicit is because they are genitals, and genitals are always explicit... no ifs, no ands, no buts.

The reason I ask is because I think you'll try to change the ratings.

fully_sheathed should be tagged more often, when applicable.

penis_tip same thing

could probably get the results you want by searching sheath but excluding erection and penis

so your searches would look like sheath -erection -penis

Knotty_Curls said:
fully_sheathed should be tagged more often, when applicable.

penis_tip same thing

penis base is my favorite one I see missed. They don't tag penis on those posts either, they just rate explicit and bulge.

but they're asking for images which have sheaths but lack anything else that might be considered explicit.

Knotty_Curls said:
but they're asking for images which have sheaths but lack anything else that might be considered explicit.

That is why I removed tags that *also* make it explicit. Cum is auto-explicit, the genitals are also auto-explicit, I realized I missed anus and that is auto-explicit... I specified sheath in that search. And balls...

sheath -balls -penis -gore solo -cum should better the results, I'm assuming that sheath and anus aren't going to be easily visible in the same image.

If you don't want to view explicit posts, blacklist rating:explicit.

If you don't want to view explicit posts except those that contain sheaths, blacklist rating:explicit -sheath.

If you don't want to view explicit posts except those that are only explicit because they contain sheaths, blacklist the tags that lead to explicit rating: sex, masturbation, penis, pussy, etc. Make sure these are on separate lines so you block posts with any one of these tags not just all of them. The blacklist is a powerful tool for deciding which posts meet your viewing criteria.

If you want to find the posts that contain sheaths but you'd be willing to show your family, why not start up a set? Sets are great for finding a certain theme, though somebody still has to go through them all and see.

We have tags for nudity out of sexual context, but "feral characters shouldn't be tagged as nude" so...

O16 said:
We have tags for nudity out of sexual context, but "feral characters shouldn't be tagged as nude" so...

Yeah, which means that we can't even apply tags such as casual_nudity to those.

I'm still not a fan of that decision. Having to pause to think whether a nude character is non-feral enough to tag as nude is far slower than just tagging nudes as nudes.

That condition should be removed. I like things simple.

See nude? Tag nude. Nice and simple.

BlueDingo said:
That condition should be removed. I like things simple.

See nude? Tag nude. Nice and simple.

We do have featureless_crotch so we could keep it going.