Okay, so, in the Pokemon games, sexual dimorphism has been a thing since Generation 1 introduced us to Nidoran♂ and Nidoran♀, however it got a HUGE shot in the arm in Generation 4, which made it so various Pokemon species, both new and already-existing, had sexual dimorphism traits- some of them hard to spot (see: Torchic), but some of them glaringly obvious. And it's far from the last generation to have them, either. They've been around for quite a while.

Thanks to Gen 4, we know that female Pikachu have heart-shaped cleft tails, that female Wobuffet have "lipstick", and that female Shinx have blue hind feet instead of black. And heck, later on we got introduced to Pokemon like Unfezant, Frillish, and Meowstic, who look remarkably different depending on gender.

• Male Unfezant have green "pants" and a mask, females have brown "pants" and no mask.
• Male Frillish and Jellicent are blue, and the Jellicent have a Pringles-Guy-style mustache. Females are pink, and the Jellicent have a "ruffled collar" and exposed mouth.
• Male Meowstic are blue with white accents, and have blue and green, open eyes, while females are white with blue accents, and have yellow and red, half-closed eyes.

For all of these Pokemon, we have sexual dimorphism. We have SECONDARY sexual characteristics to look for, evidence that should be far stronger than body shape and clothing. ...However, from what I've seen, TWYS apparently doesn't let us use that knowledge??

Hell, just look at this picture. It's of a Meowstic, and we can instantly see from the blue fur and the eyes that it's supposed to be a male Meowstic. You can't even have the "It might've been drawn before gender differences were a thing" as an excuse- Meowstic was introduced well after sexual dimorphism as a mechanic were established, and was designed around it, with males and females working differently in combat. (They learn different moves, with males having more status moves and females having more attack moves- and they have different hidden abilities, with males getting Prankster and females getting Competitive.)

However, that very post got locked tags from an admin, locking it to "Ambiguous", "Ambiguous/Male", and "-Male/Male".

Or what about this one? It's of a Pikachu, and a very specific one at that- Cosplay Pikachu, in her rather popular "Pikachu Libre" outfit. Now, I don't want to get into Cosplay Pikachu as a character being enough knowledge to tag- because this site has proven that it's not. Instead, I want to focus on her tail.

In that pic, we see that she has the heart-shaped tail that denotes that she's female. Hell, it's even tagged- a brief glance at the tags reveals "Cleft_Tail", a tag almost exclusive to female Pikachu (there are a few instances of the tag given to non-Pikachu characters, but they're few and far between, as a simple search of "cleft_tail -pikachu" can attest to.) But for some reason, it isn't enough to denote that the Pikachu in the picture is female- the post itself is currently tagged with ambiguous_gender instead.

TWYS needs to be consistent on this. If body shape, eyelashes, and clothing choice is all that needs to be visible for one type of mouse to be "female", then a heart-shaped tail should be all that needs to be visible for another type of mouse to be "female".

nah. fictional sexual dimorphism is still external knowledge, which is ignored in gender tagging completely.

male and female nidorans are treated as different species even in the games. fictional species sexual dimorphism is still considered outside information and this will continue to be the case in the future.

Ratte said:
male and female nidorans are treated as different species even in the games. fictional species sexual dimorphism is still considered outside information and this will continue to be the case in the future.

I'm honestly certain that that's the case simply because Nidoran are Gen 1 'mon, which predates even the basic concept of Pokemon having gender, much less gender differences- and thus, they already have separate dex entries, something Game Freak can't easily walk back. Hell, starting in Gen 5, Nidoran♂ (plus evolved variants thereof) and Nidoran♀, when bred, can produce eggs containing each other- proof that even if they're separate in the dex, they're of the same evolutionary group. Kinda. (Nidorina and Nidoqueen, of course, can't breed at all. And Bulbapedia for some reason doesn't mention Gen V when it talks about Nidoran♀. I'm not sure if that's an oversight or if it predated that gen?)

I still don't agree with the 'external knowledge' thing, but I guess I'll drop it.

Lunamann said:
I'm honestly certain that that's the case simply because Nidoran are Gen 1 'mon, which predates even the basic concept of Pokemon having gender, much less gender differences- and thus, they already have separate dex entries, something Game Freak can't easily walk back. Hell, starting in Gen 5, Nidoran♂ (plus evolved variants thereof) and Nidoran♀, when bred, can produce eggs containing each other- proof that even if they're separate in the dex, they're of the same evolutionary group. Kinda. (Nidorina and Nidoqueen, of course, can't breed at all. And Bulbapedia for some reason doesn't mention Gen V when it talks about Nidoran♀. I'm not sure if that's an oversight or if it predated that gen?)

I still don't agree with the 'external knowledge' thing, but I guess I'll drop it.

...it is external knowledge. we don't use that for determining gender of anything, we go by how something appears. the only sexual dimorphism we honor is that of real species, provided there is no conflicting information, because that is common knowledge. the only external information we allow for tagging are character names and, to some extent, species (provided it isn't just a dumb hybrid like 90% of them are).

I actually had no idea that female pikachus did have heart shaped tails, because I haven't consumed pokemon stuff since first games where all pikachus looked the same.

Especially pikachu is so well known characters that everyones mom most likely knows them but not what pokemon are. So I would imagine some artists drawing female pikachu without knowing there's some visual differences between them and we would them tag them as male only because artist made their tail disregarding all other features of the character.

Then there's also stuff like Renamon being canonically neither gender if venturing into other fictional species.

Blue fur and green eyes is not a guarantee that a Meowstic is male, see post #1605159. And Cosplay Pikachu can be male, see post #754379.

e6 policy (howto:tag_genders) is to tag a character's sex based on genitals and body type. For real species, this includes sexually dimorphic features that are common knowledge. Sexually dimorphic features of fictional species, however, is considered outside knowledge.

For further information see forum #239784 - Sexual Dimorphism and Tagging Sex

Ratte said:
the only sexual dimorphism we honor is that of real species, provided there is no conflicting information, because that is common knowledge.

I wouldn't say that, but they're definitely much closer to common knowledge than what Lunamann's talking about. I mean, I've been playing Pokemon since Red and Blue, and I don't even know what half of the sex differences are...

Jacob said:
I wouldn't say that, but they're definitely much closer to common knowledge than what Lunamann's talking about. I mean, I've been playing Pokemon since Red and Blue, and I don't even know what half of the sex differences are...

i guess the more correct term is "general knowledge" but yes, it is.

Hi. I haven't played pokemon since gold and silver, but think Rowlett's pretty cute.

I understand that pikachu with heart tails are girls... but that Meowsic, for example... I had no way of knowing that the boys are blue.. If I decided to upload that picture, I wouldn't have a way of knowing it.

Seriously, I already have enough trouble trying to figure out what species a pokemon is when I upload it. (post #1445530 basically murdered me) ... if the artist doesn't mention it.

I would get the tags wrong, because I jsut see a cat thing with blue fur.