So I've tried and tried to tag genders correctly, but I always seem to be in the wrong either way. Back on post #810095 a few months ago, I spent all day trying to justify the fact that Birdo should've been tagged as "ambiguous_gender", because no genitals were visible. Yet because it has "feminine features", the female tag automatically applies anyway. So in the pic, Birdo is apparently female based on it's femininity alone. Normally, I wouldn't have a problem with that. I lost the debate, whatever. I let it be. Now today, when I'm uploading Latios and Latias pics by Eruku, I tag their gender based on FACTUAL, CANONICAL information; it's common knowledge that Latias is female and Latios is male, unless otherwise specifically shown in a pic as a cunt-boy or dick-girl or whatever. Yet now, when I try to tag their genders based on their ACTUAL genders, I get yet another neutral rating that I have to wait another 6 months to remove. When I tagged something without a pussy or penis as ambiguous_gender, I was wrong. When I try to tag something without a pussy or penis as their genders when they're KNOWN to be those genders anyway based on sexual dimorphism (which is still a thing even in Pokémon), I'm still wrong. If a character doesn't have genitals, then let's make it unanimously ambiguous no matter how feminine or masculine it is. It would make things so much easier to tag. But when some feminine characters with no visible genitals are female and ACTUAL female characters are supposed to be ambiguous gender, that's where the tagging system gets ridiculous. When I got my new neutral rating, the reasoning was "Please don't tag gender based on external/canon-based information." CANON-based information. Canon. As in facts. As in "facts don't matter here". Basically, what I'm getting out of all of this is, "Please don't tag gender based on the character's actual gender".

Tag what you see, not what you know. Go by what appearances show in the image, not by what an established gender is supposed to be.

Read this.

The tags are used primarily for organizing images. If canon was allowed to determine tags, it would cause many unnecessary messes.

I wish tag disputes wouldn't spill out into comment sections. We have the forum and the IRC chat, yet the arguments seem to always stay in the area least likely to draw official attention until somebody gets reported.

It is possible to talk to admins before anything escalates.

Very related: forum #182543 (forum #182407)

I've been wondering if there's merit in creating a single tag for grouped humanoid secondary sex characteristics ('feminine'/'masculine' traits) that's separate from physical sex tags

These tags already technically do exist, but not as single, unified tag

@slyroon sorta suggested andromorph and gynomorph for such an umbrella tag, but it's not unianimously agreed-upon

Also related is girly and tomboy

But, and this is a very big 'butt', as others mentioned both in here and the forum I linked, what counts as masculine and feminine are based on cultural norms, not really anything biological, or consistent

-

It's a very ambiguous subject that's currently also a very touchy one [citation needed], so until some kind of consistent understanding is reached on the site about what exactly counts as 'feminine' or 'masculine', and that's translated to actual site rules/guidelines, then that ambiguity/inconsistency isn't likely going to go away

Qmannn said:
I haven't read the whole conversation, but I can say that I don't agree with this comment:

- Makeup isn't a biological trait.
- Pink is a stereotypically feminine color, not a sex specific trait.
- The body does not appear feminine at all.
- Feminine clothing is not a biological trait.

That leaves the eyelashes, which do tend to be used as a stereotypically feminine sexual trait, but I wouldn't consider that to be enough evidence on its own.

biological traits are not the only thing that counts. obviously biological traits have much more weight than other traits but it doesnt mean that the other traits are completely irrelevant.

yes, makeup alone is not enough evidence. feminine coloration alone is not enough evidence. long eyelashes alone is not enough evidence. traditionally feminine clothes alone is not enough evidence but when character has ambiguous body, no visible genitals AND eyelashes AND traditionally feminine clothing AND feminine coloration AND makeup, it is enough evidence for female tag.

heres an example image

the character on left would be tagged as ambiguous gender since it lacks evidence for gender tags. the character on right is exact same character but with long hair, long eyelashes, makeup and traditionally feminine apparel. there is no biological evidence but the other evidence is enough for female tag.

Knotty_Curls said:
The tags are used primarily for organizing images. If canon was allowed to determine tags, it would cause many unnecessary messes.

Ain't that the truth.

Just because a given MLP character is a certain species, that doesn't mean that every single image depicting them is so.

Mutisija said:
long eyelashes alone is not enough evidence.

Then how do you explain your female tag edits to post #876646 post #876644 and post #876647 ? The only thing feminine about those Latioses are the eyelashes. You're literally contradicting yourself. After reading the thread, I decided to play it safe and tag the Latioses and Latiases as ambiguous_gender , but NOPE! I was wrong again. I am so completely, utterly done.

DeltaFlame said:
Then how do you explain your female tag edits to post #876646 post #876644 and post #876647 ? The only thing feminine about those Latioses are the eyelashes. You're literally contradicting yourself. After reading the thread, I decided to play it safe and tag the Latioses and Latiases as ambiguous_gender , but NOPE! I was wrong again. I am so completely, utterly done.

Tag by the individual post, not by the species/character. This seems to be part of your problem.

DeltaFlame said:
Then how do you explain your female tag edits to post #876646 post #876644 and post #876647 ? The only thing feminine about those Latioses are the eyelashes. You're literally contradicting yourself. After reading the thread, I decided to play it safe and tag the Latioses and Latiases as ambiguous_gender , but NOPE! I was wrong again. I am so completely, utterly done.

feminine face. and i meant the "eyelashes alone is not enough" more like its not enough to override clearer physical traits.

Ratte said:
Tag by the individual post, not by the species/character. This seems to be part of your problem.

That's not what my complaint is about. I'm not talking about Latios as a general species anymore, I even cited those 3 specific posts. Mutisija literally said one thing and did the opposite. The species isn't what I have a problem with anymore. The INDIVIDUAL post #876646 has a single shiny Latios that ONLY has feminine eyelashes. No feminine clothing, no makeup, no female coloration (which according to Mutisija IS enough to add the female tagif all are present). Just the eyelashes. Which Mutisija said is NOT enough to add the female tag. Yet Mutisija himself added female tag to said post. It's not even a debate whether or not Mutisija was contradicting themself when that exactly what they did.

DeltaFlame said:
That's not what my complaint is about. I'm not talking about Latios as a general species anymore, I even cited those 3 specific posts. Mutisija literally said one thing and did the opposite. The species isn't what I have a problem with anymore. The INDIVIDUAL post #876646 has a single shiny Latios that ONLY has feminine eyelashes. No feminine clothing, no makeup, no female coloration (which according to Mutisija IS enough to add the female tagif all are present). Just the eyelashes. Which Mutisija said is NOT enough to add the female tag. Yet Mutisija himself added female tag to said post. It's not even a debate whether or not Mutisija was contradicting themself when that exactly what they did.

1. calm down.
2. dont call me he.
3. read what i said above.

Mutisija said:
feminine face. and i meant the "eyelashes alone is not enough" more like its not enough to override clearer physical traits.

Feminine face? First of all, nothing was ever mentioned about a "feminine face" until now, and exactly what part of Latios's face is more feminine than any other normal Latios BESIDES the eyelashes? It just seems you're pulling out reasons that don't even exist just to make yourself right when you know you're being a hypocrite.

DeltaFlame said:
That's not what my complaint is about. I'm not talking about Latios as a general species anymore, I even cited those 3 specific posts. Mutisija literally said one thing and did the opposite. The species isn't what I have a problem with anymore. The INDIVIDUAL post #876646 has a single shiny Latios that ONLY has feminine eyelashes. No feminine clothing, no makeup, no female coloration (which according to Mutisija IS enough to add the female tagif all are present). Just the eyelashes. Which Mutisija said is NOT enough to add the female tag. Yet Mutisija himself added female tag to said post. It's not even a debate whether or not Mutisija was contradicting themself when that exactly what they did.

Something like eyelashes on an ambiguous body actually usually is enough to override the ambiguous gender tag. If the body were instead masculine, then it wouldn't be.

There is typically a hierarchy for traits used when tagging: genitalia, bodyshape, other body traits (arms, face, chest, etc), stereotypical traits like eyelashes. These things to tend to overlap, however, such as a vulva seen on a male/masculine body lacking breasts resulting in a cuntboy.

DeltaFlame said:
Feminine face? First of all, nothing was ever mentioned about a "feminine face" until now, and exactly what part of Latios's face is more feminine than any other normal Latios BESIDES the eyelashes? It just seems you're pulling out reasons that don't even exist just to make yourself right when you know you're being a hypocrite.

did you read at all what i said?

i meant the "eyelashes alone is not enough" more like its not enough to override clearer physical traits.

but like regularly their face lean a bit towards feminine but not enough for female tag, but with the eyelashes it leans much more heavily towards feminine.

I looked at the three posts in question, compared them with posts in latios male and latios female.. and have to conclude that there is only any definite gender differentiation in cases where the artist chooses to give male latios faces that are much more blocky than standard.

I certainly do not agree that the three posts have any decisive evidence for femaleness, only slight elements that could also be put down to artist style. I'd tag them ambiguous_gender girly -- girly mainly because of the posing.

EDIT:OTOH I didn't really notice the eyelashes until Mutisja's post just now. With that, I could understand tagging them female, though I'm not sure I would instruct anyone to do so.

Ratte said:
Tag what you see, not what you know. Go by what appearances show in the image, not by what an established gender is supposed to be.

While I do understand and agree with the TWYS rule I have to side with DeltaFlame on this one.
The thing is Latias and Latios are each tagged as species NOT characters. From what I understand when it come to tagging gender in a unique species we do use the creators lore to determine what that would be if the species has sexual identifiers outside of visible genitals.
According to Pokemons lore the main identifiers of gender in this/these species would be the colouration of their body and the shape of their eyes.

OrangeLightning said:
While I do understand and agree with the TWYS rule I have to side with DeltaFlame on this one.
The thing is Latias and Latios are each tagged as species NOT characters. From what I understand when it come to tagging gender in a unique species we do use the creators lore to determine what that would be if the species has sexual identifiers outside of visible genitals.
According to Pokemons lore the main identifiers of gender in this/these species would be the colouration of their body and the shape of their eyes.

It's the same thing as nidorans, pikachu tails, etc. Lore is irrelevant with our tagging guidelines.

Ratte said:
It's the same thing as nidorans, pikachu tails, etc. Lore is irrelevant with our tagging guidelines.

I did search up Pikachu before I made my post and found the male/female tag based solely on the tail in quite a few pics so I assumed it was accurate.

OrangeLightning said:
I did search up Pikachu before I made my post and found the male/female tag based solely on the tail in quite a few pics so I assumed it was accurate.

Having the lore present is different than not--And a rare shape that a lot of people didn't know was a thing and that only gets used when people know about it is different than just changing colors around and using the ones you think are prettier. There's been plenty of female Latios with the standard blue coloration, anyways.

OrangeLightning said:
I did search up Pikachu before I made my post and found the male/female tag based solely on the tail in quite a few pics so I assumed it was accurate.

they are incorrectly tagged. the tail shape is completely irrelevant in gender tagging.

OrangeLightning said:
I did search up Pikachu before I made my post and found the male/female tag based solely on the tail in quite a few pics so I assumed it was accurate.

Then they are not tagged correctly and should be changed. If the people posting keep doing that, then they should be reported.

Tail shapes (e.g. pikachu, raichu), body color (e.g. meowstic), lore-specific gender by species (e.g. latios, latias, nidoran lines) or other lore-based traits are not to be used with tagging genders. Typical, real-life traits (genitalia, body shape, or feral characteristics like manes, antlers, etc) are what we use and prefer. Lore is not considered common knowledge, even with things like Pokemon.

Ratte said:
[...]Typical, real-life traits (genitalia, body shape, or feral characteristics like manes, antlers, etc) are what we use and prefer. Lore is not considered common knowledge, even with things like Pokemon.

Have there been any past or recent discussions on this?

I've been curious if there's a way that we could implement a generalized easy-to-follow rule set for determining the official allowance of lore-based sexual dimorphism characteristics from certain fictional worlds/universes/works of fiction, into the same official e621 twys common-knowledge "consideration-space" with IRL traits like peacock plumage and lion manes.

Something starting off with guidelines like:

• Fictional Universe that 'owns' the traits must be a popular/known/or mainstream work within the public space, external to the furry fandom. (Would cover things like Pokemon, Guild Wars, etc, but exclude random furry race hybrid creations, one-offs, things people are unlikely to ever have heard of, etc)

• Traits from the Fictional Universe under review for admittance must be consistent, easily visible, physical things, such as IRL peacock plumage and lion manes. (Limiting any dimorphic trait to the same operating guidelines of IRL traits)

• Partial-admittance of only some traits not allowed, it's all or none.

• ??? etc.

Then each "accepted" fictional universe could include a section in it's copyright-tag wiki page under a "Sexual Dimorphism of Member Species/Races" heading that noted a bulleted list of any abnormal or unique traits.

Could potentially even include a new general tag along with the change: "fictional_sexual_dimorphism" so that we could mark any post that contains a character whose gender has been determined by such, and people could filter it out if they like.

Would be nice if something like that was able to be implemented; would solve a lot of the perpetual arguments/tag wars over things like GW2 Charr in an official manner and reduce the need for admin/mod intervention on those, especially with the wiki pages of traits users could point to. It seems like it should be viable; there are people currently who aren't aware of some cases of real-life animal sexual dimorphism and we still manage to function. This would extend that significantly, but hopefully it wouldn't be a big deal to just cite the relevant listed wiki traits to solve disputes.

Dunno about the ease of implementation though, nor have I given a lot of thought to potential side effects. Obviously it would be an issue if people unaware of the rules saw it being used in the "approved" cases and assumed it was free-reign to always employ any fictional dimorphic trait in any case, for example... but that already happens under the current rules anyway.

Pokemon are one example of why it's problematic. Gender differences were introduced in the fourth generation. So all pikachu drawn before that have the 'male' tail.

Genjar said:
Pokemon are one example of why it's problematic. Gender differences were introduced in the fourth generation. So all pikachu drawn before that have the 'male' tail.

Yeah, I could see that leading to some confusion. What typically happens now with pieces of art that are clearly depicting one sex, but also including an IRL dimorphic trait of the opposite sex? ie: a female peacock with genitalia in view, but also including male plumage? Do we just consider those to override to their visible genitalia's sex?

If it's not a big deal to consider those as such, I could see the Pokemon thing being mostly straightforward; for the Pikachu example it would basically cause any Pikachu with the 'old' tail to be "converted" to male, except in cases of visible genitalia, right?

On the other hand, if it were going to cause a whole bunch of "No, under the new rules that old-tail female Pikachu is clearly a cuntboy" type of problems, I could see it being a pretty obnoxious issue.

I suppose the Pokemon universe could be excluded under a system that contains universe-selectivity... but that would be a super tragic and major exclusion for a system that's trying to solve these sorts of issues. I'd say we could simply not-include that suggested "fictional_sexual_dimorphism" tag for pre-4th gen pokemon posts and just leave them under the "old rules", but that would be very difficult to moderate, and probably confusing to users.

Stupid complex issues, why you gotta be so complex.

We've been trying to figure out issues with canon dimorphisms for a while now, but I don't really know how far it's come since we've had other issues to worry about, too.

I kind of disagree on the whole tail thing. Yes, a normal tail is ambiguous, but a heart tail is totally feminine in Pikachus.

Furrin_Gok said:
I kind of disagree on the whole tail thing. Yes, a normal tail is ambiguous, but a heart tail is totally feminine in Pikachus.

Except that artists take creative license with even such distinctive things. Like female lions depicted with manes.

Granted that in a quick sweep of the site the pikachu art seems to stick with heart tail = female (or dickgirl), but there's no guarantee. And without having read forum posts on the subject I never would have known those tails were canon in pokemon lore. Which means I'd have been one of those people swapping it back to ambiguous in any case when there was lack of other gender traits.

Wodahseht said:
Except that artists take creative license with even such distinctive things. Like female lions depicted with manes.

Granted that in a quick sweep of the site the pikachu art seems to stick with heart tail = female (or dickgirl), but there's no guarantee. And without having read forum posts on the subject I never would have known those tails were canon in pokemon lore. Which means I'd have been one of those people swapping it back to ambiguous in any case when there was lack of other gender traits.

That's why I said feminine, not female. It's like long eyelashes.

Furrin_Gok said:
That's why I said feminine, not female. It's like long eyelashes.

If people know that's what it means. Like I said, I thought it was just some artistic quirk that caught on - not a canon feature.

Wodahseht said:
If people know that's what it means. Like I said, I thought it was just some artistic quirk that caught on - not a canon feature.

From Bulbapedia

A female will have a V-shaped notch at the end of its tail, which looks like the top of a heart.

The fourth gen of Sprites has the alternate female design, showing it to be canon.
Cosplay Pikachu has two very interesting tidbits about it: One, in the games, Cosplay Pikachu is always a female Pikachu complete with the heart shaped tail. Two, in the anime, there were five Cosplay Pikachus, with Belle, Pop Star, and Ph. D Pikachus being female.
You can't say this is some artistic quark and not canon, it's absolutely canon.

Furrin_Gok said:
From Bulbapedia
The fourth gen of Sprites has the alternate female design, showing it to be canon.
Cosplay Pikachu has two very interesting tidbits about it: One, in the games, Cosplay Pikachu is always a female Pikachu complete with the heart shaped tail. Two, in the anime, there were five Cosplay Pikachus, with Belle, Pop Star, and Ph. D Pikachus being female.
You can't say this is some artistic quark and not canon, it's absolutely canon.

I get that. Seriously, I get it.

I'm saying that me, not knowing that about pokemon, made an ASSUMPTION because I didn't know it was canon. And that I only learned it was canon through these forums.

My point is that there are plenty of people out there that still don't know it and tagging by something most people are ignorant of, despite it being canon, is bound to result in tagging tug-of-wars here and there.

That was the entirety of the point I wanted to make from the start. Wow, I got more involved in this discussion than planned.

Wodahseht said:
I get that. Seriously, I get it.

I'm saying that me, not knowing that about pokemon, made an ASSUMPTION because I didn't know it was canon. And that I only learned it was canon through these forums.

My point is that there are plenty of people out there that still don't know it and tagging by something most people are ignorant of, despite it being canon, is bound to result in tagging tug-of-wars here and there.

That was the entirety of the point I wanted to make from the start. Wow, I got more involved in this discussion than planned.

Eh, I normally see people who use the heart tails being the people who know what they are. Or just using it to cutesify an already blatantly female Pikachu. Hearts are a feminine design in general.

Furrin_Gok said:
Hearts are a feminine design in general.

This is something that's constantly coming up, could we get an admin to either approve or deny this statement? Like these two:
post #899687 post #665857
To me, the first one looks ambiguous, but the second one, with the tails forming a heart, looks female. If the dresses weren't there, the first one probably wouldn't even have the female tag, but what about the other one? Does the heart sell femininity?
post #895337 post #943404
I get people removing the "Female" tags from images like these. The first one has a full on dipstick <3_tail (We should probably actually tag that), while the second one is just a generic cleft_tail (Also something we should tag), but is still seen as being heart shaped.

I get that we can't exactly use outside information in most cases, and understand if we can't use it here, but I would like to know if the heart shape legitimately counts as feminine or not?
post #925850
Potentially excluding the <3_tattoo.

That first picture is tagged female because one dude said those triangle shaped legs are feminine, then that second Meowstic got tagged with female because the same guy said the hips are large or something, completely omitting the foreshortening when the guy showed me some curve traced over it, even traced outside of the dress because why not, to prove how those hips have to be from a female and males having larger hips are out of the equation.Doesn't help that I keep hearing that clothes and other poses shouldn't count when tagging gender, but the same person kept insisting that these feminine dresses and sissy poses make them female, so I just stopped bothering with that and gave that dude some automatic stamp of "You're always right" whenever I get tags edited from that guy.I tried to follow that guy's logic for
post #911027
And tagged it female, even thought I would have tagged it ambiguous. I can see some breasts bumps on the uniform, so if unrefined feminine looking legs is enough to make a character female, this one very feminine detail should be more than enough to make it female

Might someone make a list of clear criteria used to define visual gender, might i add criteria that are taggable and arnt influenced significantly by artist style, because lets be honest some artists do have styles that pretty much make everything have things like feminine faces(emotional expression and bone structure) for example.

Also might i just point out that one of the tag suggestions in the 20 page long slur-tags thread "gynomorph and andromorph" would actually cover images in or are disputably(genitals hidden or covered) ambiguous_gender without conflicting with intersex as tagging by male or female does because gynomorph and andromorph are dictated by the actual body form not genitals...

R'D said:
Might someone make a list of clear criteria used to define visual gender, might i add criteria that are taggable and arnt influenced significantly by artist style, because lets be honest some artists do have styles that pretty much make everything have things like feminine faces(emotional expression and bone structure) for example.

Also might i just point out that one of the tag suggestions in the 20 page long slur-tags thread "gynomorph and andromorph" would actually cover images in or are disputably(genitals hidden or covered) ambiguous_gender without conflicting with intersex as tagging by male or female does because gynomorph and andromorph are dictated by the actual body form not genitals...

also adding that all disputably ambiguous-gender posts are anti-twys because you are tagging by what you assume to know, not what you see. you see a masculine(andromorphic) body but you cannot actually see if its male, c-boy or maleherm.

So I've tried and tried to tag genders correctly, but I always seem to be in the wrong either way. Back on post #810095 a few months ago, I spent all day trying to justify the fact that Birdo should've been tagged as "ambiguous_gender", because no genitals were visible. Yet because it has "feminine features", the female tag automatically applies anyway.

I'd just like to say that by this logic any picture of a woman wearing sufficient clothes would be tagged ambiguous gender because her genitals were not visible.

R'D said:
also adding that all disputably ambiguous-gender posts are anti-twys because you are tagging by what you assume to know, not what you see

Pretty much all gender tags are anti-TWYS because of external knowledge and implicit assumptions involved.

The most common assumption is that human visual cues should be used for characters which are part-human or non-human. Which is probably what you're trying to imply with your question. Case in point:

post #536561 post #855664

That's a lion version of Conchita Wurst and the primary fodder for ambiguous_gender tag. Lion:mane ~ human:beard.
And it's even worse with non-anthro characters:

post #921460 (clearly male per stated visual cues for its species)

Tags like "male" and "female" should be treated just like species tags, i.e. "the artist/story claims it's male/female/intersex/whatever". Otherwise it's going to be an endless shitstorm around the definition of gender.
You can't really tell gender from a picture.

Visible genitals, and maybe body shapes should be tagged per TWYS. Because that's something you can see.

Ratte said:
Use ambiguous_gender for both.

Official statement on post #955195. Does this mean hearts are not feminine, Ratte?

hslugs said:
post #921460 (clearly male per stated visual cues for its species)

Tags like "male" and "female" should be treated just like species tags, i.e. "the artist/story claims it's male/female/intersex/whatever". Otherwise it's going to be an endless shitstorm around the definition of gender.
You can't really tell gender from a picture.

Visible genitals, and maybe body shapes should be tagged per TWYS. Because that's something you can see.

I don't know what Out-of-placers or Yinglets are, and unlike Nevrean and Sergals, Yinglets are not a famous species. Gender lore should not be taken into account for these one-artist-webcomic species (Seriously, google is only directing me to the artist's two sites).

Furrin_Gok said:
I don't know what Out-of-placers or Yinglets are ... Gender lore should not be taken into account for these one-artist-webcomic species

That's kinda the point. This is a species you don't know. How would you tag gender here? And why?

Per TWYS, you'll need to invent some of that lore, for instance assuming that yinglets, whatever they are, generally follow human visual cues. Like, it looks kinda like human female, so it must be female. Why should something vaguely reptilian match human expectations of female looks? Well uh... cue retagging and shitstorms.

In reptiles (birds) it's often the male that's bright and fancy, while females are often drab.

At the same time, no-one seems to have any issues with "yinglet" tag, even though most probably see this word for the first time in their lives.

You know, body structure, cosmetic, and fashion really throw some people off their bike of knowledge. And because of those things, that tends to get an ambiguous gender tag unless those characters show their actual own genders.

(Keep in mind that this is metaphorical) See, the "tag-what-you-see" rule is actually opinionated. Its opinion is that it will not care what gender you claim to be even if someone else told it otherwise. Unless you show visual proof. It tries to be as unbiased as possible.

Tags are made based on what you see on a created product, regardless of spoken facts and spoken traits, supposedly.

ThatPeon said:
You know, body structure, cosmetic, and fashion really throw some people off their bike of knowledge. And because of those things, that tends to get an ambiguous gender tag unless those characters show their actual own genders.

(Keep in mind that this is metaphorical) See, the "tag-what-you-see" rule is actually opinionated. Its opinion is that it will not care what gender you claim to be even if someone else told it otherwise. Unless you show visual proof. It tries to be as unbiased as possible.

Tags are made based on what you see on a created product, regardless of spoken facts and spoken traits, supposedly.

none the less we tag things male or female that we cant actually see is male or female, that my whole point. common knowledge cannot really apply here because we also tag for intersex on this site

In general the Tag What You See rule is a flawed concept simply because everyone sees something different no matter how blatantly obvious the image is.

This is no more obvious than in gender, because furries are particularly prone to spiting convention, and play especially fast and loose with anatomical and other visual gender cues.

Tag What You See is a bad rule already but it absolutely does not function for gender unless the character's full genitals and anus are clearly visible.

R'D said:
none the less we tag things male or female that we cant actually see is male or female, that my whole point.

This again? We already went over this in forum #201208.

For tagging purposes, nothing exists outside of what's seen. It's just a drawn image, not an actual living creature. Therefore, don't assume anything about what might be, just tag what can be seen.

And if what little can be seen suggests that it's female, it's tagged as female.

Genjar said:
This again? We already went over this in forum #201208.

For tagging purposes, nothing exists outside of what's seen. It's just a drawn image, not an actual living creature. Therefore, don't assume anything about what might be, just tag what can be seen.

And if what little can be seen suggests that it's female, it's tagged as female.

That is a monstrously unhealthy art view & bad protocol

Genjar said:
This again? We already went over this in forum #201208.

For tagging purposes, nothing exists outside of what's seen. It's just a drawn image, not an actual living creature. Therefore, don't assume anything about what might be, just tag what can be seen.

And if what little can be seen suggests that it's female, it's tagged as female.

Yes again because of the persistence of breaking your own policy by tagging based off assumption rather then what you see. What little suggest female also equally suggests dickgirl or herm. unless we see genitalia or indication of genitalia like cameltoe or bulge tagging it ambiguous_gender and feminine is proper under twys not tagging as female.

To reiterate again if genitals or indications there of arnt visible then all we can see is a feminine body that can apply equally to female, herm, dickgirl. Tagging such as female is anti-twys based soly on bias and assumptions

R'D said:
unless we see genitalia or indication of genitalia like cameltoe or bulge tagging it ambiguous_gender and feminine is proper under twys not tagging as female.

Do you also apply that in real life, to things such as facebook photos? Everyone's ambiguous until you've seen their genitals?

Genjar said:
Do you also apply that in real life? Everyone's ambiguous until you've seen their genitals?

No, nether do we apply twys in real life are tag people in to a physical archive

We are talking about tagging policies on e621, not real life application

edit* genjar again we are talking policies and the breaking of them on e621, not real life or facebook applications which might i note is not ordered/hashtaged or whatever under a twys policy. And for your information in real life id call people what they prefer to identify as, and will check around if nessecary

R'D said:
To reiterate again if genitals or indications there of arnt visible then all we can see is a feminine body that can apply equally to female, herm, dickgirl. Tagging such as female is anti-twys based soly on bias and assumptions

Male and female are the standard genders. Unless required otherwise those two are the way to go. Dickgirl, herm, maleherm, neuter, and cuntboy are the exception and only to be used with visible evidence in the image itself.
Ambiguous_gender is the fallback if neither of the aforementioned is a plausible tag to adequately describe the pictured character, either because of absence of everything or the presence of vastly contradicting attributes.

Ambiguous can mean something that is undetermined, and it can also mean having many possibile meanings.
The "ambiguous gender" tag isn't a problem. This place doesn't house the ultimate judgement of any images, only what is acceptable according to its guidelines.
Do you honestly believe it doesn't work well enough?
It ticks me off that some people don't know the difference between a dickgirl and a herm, but that's not the TWYS rule's fault, is it?
No, it's their fault because they lack the knowledge about it.
Here's another, different example some people do when not usuing the blacklist correctly:
"male rating:e solo_focus" can often blacklist a female solo focus, to fix that, write down "male rating:e solo_focus -female" in any order. The same goes for the opposite gender, if you will.
Some people don't get this, but there are instructions helpfully provided for that!
Moving on, if there is any character which you are certain of its gender based on your eyes, then make it so. Leave it to other people to change the tag until it's no longer bothered with, that's how it works.
Otherwise, use the "ambiguous gender" tag if it's that hard to describe for yourself (if it hasn't been determined before, or has REALLY been obviously mistaken).

NotMeNotYou said:
Male and female are the standard genders. Unless required otherwise those two are the way to go. Dickgirl, herm, maleherm, neuter, and cuntboy are the exception and only to be used with visible evidence in the image itself.
Ambiguous_gender is the fallback if neither of the aforementioned is a plausible tag to adequately describe the pictured character, either because of absence of everything or the presence of vastly contradicting attributes.

i dont see why you would make them standard in violation to your twys policy, whats the point of the twys if your going make exceptions where ever you feel like it.

R'D said:
i dont see why you would make them standard in violation to your twys policy, whats the point of the twys if your going make exceptions where ever you feel like it.

It's not an exception, it's a guideline on how to deal with and avoid Fringe cases. Tagging everything as ambiguous_gender would simply be completely pointless, so we have created simple guidelines on how to tag gender more efficiently and uniform for everybody. The goal is, above all, to have a working search system that is easy to understand and to follow, and this is simply part of it to accomplish that goal.

It's also perfectly in line with TWYS, because dickgirls and herms look female unless you can see their sex, and cuntboys and maleherms look male unless you can see their sex. So in the spirit of TWYS they are female or male unless you can tell their non-matching sex from inside the image.
The same goes for neuter, the only way to see that someone is a neuter is by being able to see the absence of any sex.

R'D said:
i dont see why you would make them standard in violation to your twys policy, whats the point of the twys if your going make exceptions where ever you feel like it.

I don't really understand where you're bringing this out from. "What you see" literally means "What is visible." There's no exceptions here. The only exceptions would be saying "Oh, there's no dick bulge? Tag it hermaphrodite or dickgirl!" The lack of a dick bulge (or dick itself) means that you are not seeing a dick or dick bulge, in which case, it must be female due to seeing traits of being such. (If there are no traits of either gender, like was said before, then it's Ambiguous)

NotMeNotYou said:
It's not an exception, it's a guideline on how to deal with and avoid Fringe cases. Tagging everything as ambiguous_gender would simply be completely pointless, so we have created simple guidelines on how to tag gender more efficiently and uniform for everybody. The goal is, above all, to have a working search system that is easy to understand and to follow, and this is simply part of it to accomplish that goal.

It's also perfectly in line with TWYS, because dickgirls and herms look female unless you can see their sex, and cuntboys and maleherms look male unless you can see their sex. So in the spirit of TWYS they are female or male unless you can tell their non-matching see from inside the image.
The same goes for neuter, the only way to see that someone is a neuter is by being able to see the absence of any sex.

Considering the source of this argument , no this standard that violates twys hasnt helped avoid or fully deal with disputable cases.
I did point out above the use of feminine(gynomorph) and masculine(andromorph) that would avoid the issue of ambiguous tagging being made pointless.
A herm or dickgirl also does not look female, they look feminine; and a male herm or c-boy dont look male, they look masculine. Dont know why you insist on tagging by genitals that arnt there or hidden rather then correctly tagging the body type that is actually visible. I dont see that making searches anymore problematic then they already are.

Furrin_Gok said:
I don't really understand where you're bringing this out from. "What you see" literally means "What is visible." There's no exceptions here. The only exceptions would be saying "Oh, there's no dick bulge? Tag it hermaphrodite or dickgirl!" The lack of a dick bulge (or dick itself) means that you are not seeing a dick or dick bulge, in which case, it must be female due to seeing traits of being such. (If there are no traits of either gender, like was said before, then it's Ambiguous)

again what i would see under twys is a feminine body, not a female. How many times do i need to describe in the most simplest terms that even a 5 year old could understand, without visible boy or girl parts or bulges or creases from the two there are no traits at all that can tell you what sex it is, all thats visible is a feminine, masculine or androgynous body.

PS: I guess in the case of dickgirls where the underside of their crotch isnt visible it is to be assumed that they are all herms and tagged as such because they otherwise all exhibit all the feminine traits that you are using to call all characters that are feminine but dont have genitalia shown as female when it can equaly be anything other...

Because you can have masculine females and feminine males. Maybe I should have specified "look like a female/male" instead of "look female/male", but the point still stands that, if it looks like a female or male it will get tagged as such, unless other evidence inside the image suggests that it is actually one of the intersex genders.

And no, we're not missing your point, you simply don't understand what tag what you see means. If you're unfamiliar with the concept "death of the author" I greatly recommend reading up on it because we use the same principles for our tags.

I also greatly recommend that you don't belittle other users if you wish to stick around.

Furrin_Gok said:
Official statement on post #955195. Does this mean hearts are not feminine, Ratte?

Hearts are not feminine.

hslugs said:
That's kinda the point. This is a species you don't know. How would you tag gender here? And why?

Per TWYS, you'll need to invent some of that lore, for instance assuming that yinglets, whatever they are, generally follow human visual cues. Like, it looks kinda like human female, so it must be female. Why should something vaguely reptilian match human expectations of female looks? Well uh... cue retagging and shitstorms.

In reptiles (birds) it's often the male that's bright and fancy, while females are often drab.

At the same time, no-one seems to have any issues with "yinglet" tag, even though most probably see this word for the first time in their lives.

Learning a species' name is trivial at best, which is why nobody is contesting them. Gender is tagged purely so people can find matching bodies for their preferences, as such it follows existing standards most people are familiar with, eg human.

We have fought about allowing in-universe lore to affect gender tagging for fantasy species, but that would require that we have an easily reference letter guidelines for every fantasy species in question, preferable on the species' wiki page. Until we can set up a system like that it mainly follows human cues.

Death of the Author.

This, to me, appears to be an ultimate statement to decipher what is and isn't judge-able art, by saying "an author shouldn't explain their book". It's basically a statement about the projection of being, from artist to art. You cannot just take yourself out of your book, from minor to major details they're a reflection of idealisms and concepts. If you have to say what something is,to your reader, instead of letting the reader interpret what they think it's about, then it's not a book for them, it's a book for you. Because they (couldn't / wasn't allowed to) judge.

Compare this to drawn art: if you have to explain something, instead of letting them guess or etc., then you basically only drew this for yourself, and not for them. As such, the TWYS rule is for users to find the image, and the artist, instead of having to be told what the image is in order to find it. This has been said until blue in the face, the tags are purely for finding images and organizing them, they are not a statement on what the image is, just what the image is seen as. Mind you, the second part of the argument does not apply, TWYS is just for finding images, not judging them.

This is speculation based off what I read, by all regards I could be wrong on what Notme's referencing. It just makes sense to me.

*post written edit* I'll try to say this better, without my "opinion" in it: TYWS and Death of the Artist are concepts that both remove an artist's idealisms (etc.) in favor of the users/readers. They both help mitigate the fatal flaw I specify, that is not obvious until it happens in the image or book: it's not art if it's only for you.

Siral_Exan said:
Death of the Author.

This, to me, appears to be an ultimate statement to decipher what is and isn't judge-able art, by saying "an author shouldn't explain their book". It's basically a statement about the projection of being, from artist to art. You cannot just take yourself out of your book, from minor to major details they're a reflection of idealisms and concepts. If you have to say what something is,to your reader, instead of letting the reader interpret what they think it's about, then it's not a book for them, it's a book for you. Because they (couldn't / wasn't allowed to) judge.

Compare this to drawn art: if you have to explain something, instead of letting them guess or etc., then you basically only drew this for yourself, and not for them. As such, the TWYS rule is for users to find the image, and the artist, instead of having to be told what the image is in order to find it. This has been said until blue in the face, the tags are purely for finding images and organizing them, they are not a statement on what the image is, just what the image is seen as. Mind you, the second part of the argument does not apply, TWYS is just for finding images, not judging them.

This is speculation based off what I read, by all regards I could be wrong on what Notme's referencing. It just makes sense to me.

*post written edit* I'll try to say this better, without my "opinion" in it: TYWS and Death of the Artist are concepts that both remove an artist's idealisms (etc.) in favor of the users/readers. They both help mitigate the fatal flaw I specify, that is not obvious until it happens in the image or book: it's not art if it's only for you.

A little off-topic I guess but death of the author isn't an absolute. The author's views can provide certain insight... some pieces of the puzzle just get left out sometimes... especially in visual media.

NotMeNotYou said:
Because you can have masculine females and feminine males. Maybe I should have specified "look like a female/male" instead of "look female/male", but the point still stands that, if it looks like a female or male it will get tagged as such, unless other evidence inside the image suggests that it is actually one of the intersex genders.

And no, we're not missing your point, you simply don't understand what tag what you see means. If you're unfamiliar with the concept "death of the author" I greatly recommend reading up on it because we use the same principles for our tags.

I also greatly recommend that you don't belittle other users if you wish to stick around.

Might suggest linking to that concept in the twys as the twys is so far pretty clear about tagging what is visible and verifiable and it is not verifiable that anything is male or female in the conditions i stated above in my multiple replies, on this site that also tags intersex based on what genitals are visible and verifiable, that is why your male/female standard is not correct. And i again dont see the issue you have with applying the above cases to ambiguous_gender and tagging them additionally as feminine or masculine for what can actually be seen and verified and how that would negatively effect searches other then just being new but not actually effecting the accessibility to what one is searching for.

Fenrick said:
A little off-topic I guess but death of the author isn't an absolute. The author's views can provide certain insight... some pieces of the puzzle just get left out sometimes... especially in visual media.

Indeed, I did say concept, TWYS and Death of the Author are not perfect, but imagine if you could "turn on" your ability to constantly judge books, and think of potential plot holes and etc., the same way TWYS is always on to fill in issues in what is not immediately seen.

This will be the last out of me, I'll make a thread about comparing books and art by this method.

If its not verifiable or visible do not tag it as suchm that seems to be the rule of twys. There is either room for inference and author input, or pure objectivism. No in betweens.

NotMeNotYou said:
Gender is tagged purely so people can find matching bodies for their preferences, as such it follows existing standards most people are familiar with, eg human.

Yeah nah, post #647901 right from the wiki page for female.
It's also a gross redifinition of the word, compare this wiki and That Other Wiki.

We have fought about allowing in-universe lore to affect gender tagging for fantasy species, but that would require that we have an easily reference letter guidelines for every fantasy species in question

It would be enough to give creator's tags precedence over TWYS for gender, just like it's done with species already.
If gender is stated, so be it, otherwise tag what you see.

Also, all species on e6 are fantasy species. No definition of "species" applies to images.

Learning a species' name is trivial at best, which is why nobody is contesting them.

Huh? Brb, I'm on to retag this:

post #712302

a succubus, because it looks kinda like Morrigan from Darkstalkers and bats have flying membrane between fingers of their forelimbs so it's clearly not a bat.

In fact, screw it, I'm on to retag half the bat posts 'cause really have any of them people ever seen a bat in their lives?

hslugs said:
It would be enough to give creator's tags precedence over TWYS for gender, just like it's done with species already--

That's... not actually a thing. If you see someone tagging species contrary to twys, report them.

The MLP species are a common example of that. Characters who are pegasi in the show are not tagged as pegasus here if the wings aren't visible, etc.

Genjar said:
That's... not actually a thing.

I think it was the last time I checked the rules, like several years ago or so. Character name and species, now it's only name. Pity really, because there are good reasons to keep that exception.

If you see someone tagging species contrary to twys, report them

Lots. Rouge the Bat right above. What I see there is a humanoid w/leathery wings attached, so a demon (post #187324) or a succubus (post #954753, post #927124). Not a bat, which have four limbs and look kinda like this: post #878521, post #955726. It's only tagged "bat" based on her background info.

Yinglets and Avalis are creator's tags as well, per TWYS e6 lore both would be raptors. No idea how to call them per TWYS, there's no common word for uncommon creatures. But "raptor" is not a species, and neither are any species tags here if you think of it. So the whole deal is about replacing creator's original tags with e6 original tags for... I dunno, great justice?

hslugs said:

Yinglets and Avalis are creator's tags as well, per TWYS e6 lore both would be raptors. No idea how to call them per TWYS, there's no common word for uncommon creatures. But "raptor" is not a species, and neither are any species tags here if you think of it. So the whole deal is about replacing creator's original tags with e6 original tags for... I dunno, great justice?

In universe species tags are allowed to be used alongside the more common ones. As an example the warcraft worgen should have the worgen tag and the werewolf tag. In the case of the Yinglet they should probably have both the yinglet tag and the raptor tag. Or at least the scalie tag.

hslugs said:
Yeah nah, post #647901 right from the wiki page for female.
It's also a gross redifinition of the word, compare this wiki and That Other Wiki.

A flatchested female is cited as an example on the female wiki page. The humanity.

hslugs said:
It would be enough to give creator's tags precedence over TWYS for gender, just like it's done with species already.
If gender is stated, so be it, otherwise tag what you see.

That is absolutely not going to happen because then you have people like purplekecleon demanding that a character with a penis and no female features is tagged as female.

hslugs said:
Also, all species on e6 are fantasy species. No definition of "species" applies to images.

Based on the lore of that particular species' universe or story.
Imagine a description of the orcs based on Tolkien's description of them in his books. That kind of 'species definition'.

hslugs said:
Huh? Brb, I'm on to retag this:

post #712302

a succubus, because it looks kinda like Morrigan from Darkstalkers and bats have flying membrane between fingers of their forelimbs so it's clearly not a bat.

In fact, screw it, I'm on to retag half the bat posts 'cause really have any of them people ever seen a bat in their lives?

Oh no, an anthropomorphic human with some bat features has the bat tag so people can find anthropomorphic humans with bat features.
Nevermind that the demons from the christian church have their wings based on bats. So if you want to tag it based on that definition of a demon you'd just go full circle back to bats. Morrigan is also based on the western beliefs of demons, thus has bat wings.

NotMeNotYou said:
Hearts are not feminine.

I already preëmptively regret reviving this thread, but somebody created a wiki page for cleft_tail that says:

In-game this tail shape is only given to female Pikachu, therefore a Pikachu with a cleft tail with a penis also should be given the intersex tag.

That's wrong, right? Right??

Kogith said:
I already preëmptively regret reviving this thread, but somebody created a wiki page for cleft_tail that says:
That's wrong, right? Right??

That is completely wrong, yes. Pikachu are feral, and are innately an ambiguous gender because of no breasts, pussy, penis, balls, or human body details. The tail means nothing. The addition of body details or genitalia makes them male or female, and I believe that the only intersexes that apply is Herm (maybe not even Maleherm, since breasts are optional to them).

Kogith said:
I already preëmptively regret reviving this thread, but somebody created a wiki page for cleft_tail that says:
That's wrong, right? Right??

Ugh, should have gone and made the page myself, as the person who started that tag. As it is now, I guess I'll have to PM Ratte about it, since it's been locked.

Furrin_Gok said:
Ugh, should have gone and made the page myself, as the person who started that tag. As it is now, I guess I'll have to PM Ratte about it, since it's been locked.

Before you do that, you might want to check the current description.

Genjar said:
Before you do that, you might want to check the current description.

I did, and I've had it updated. Cleft tail was never meant to be a purely Pikachu tag, it's just Pikachus are the most common characters to get them.

With the whole pikachu tail thing, I tbink no cleft = ambiguous and cleft = Probably definitely a female or dickgirl. Why would an artist go out of their way to include that gender dimorphism? It would only be drawn for the express purpose of expressing gender, while no cleft is indicitave of regular pikachu, and means anything as there was no dimorphism once upon a time.

Pendraggon said:
With the whole pikachu tail thing, I tbink no cleft = ambiguous and cleft = Probably definitely a female or dickgirl. Why would an artist go out of their way to include that gender dimorphism? It would only be drawn for the express purpose of expressing gender, while no cleft is indicitave of regular pikachu, and means anything as there was no dimorphism once upon a time.

We currently disregard specific lore knowledge like that for gender tagging purposes.

NotMeNotYou said:
We currently disregard specific lore knowledge like that for gender tagging purposes.

With exceptions, most notably charr.

Chessax said:
With exceptions, most notably charr.

Which bothers me, because if we give content exceptions to that then why not other things?