The bulk update request #2220 is pending approval.

Reason: One common complaint with the intersex tags is the fact that futa/futanari is aliased to intersex, when the term is most commonly used to refer to gynomorph or sometimes herm characters.

This causes a problem if you try to use futa in a tag search. You’ll get the expected results combined with the unexpected andromorphs and maleherms. Since this is such a widely used tag, people keep using it without realizing it’s aliased to something else, get unexpected results, and then complain about it here on the forums/in the comments of random images/in the Discord server helpdesk channel/etc.

My initial solution was to alias it to gynomorph instead - that way, all search results will be as expected. However, this was shot down on the grounds that some people also use the term “futa” for herms, which will cause mistags if anyone tries to upload a post using that tag.

So, now I propose the following solution: alias futa and its variants to a new tag instead. The best name I could come up with is female-bodied_intersex. This is an umbrella tag that includes both gynomorphs and herms. It is exactly equivalent to futa, thus solving this problem once and for all.

This has the added benefit of allowing users to search for their preferred type of intersex without using the ~ operator (likewise for blacklisting). As it turns out, people insistent upon using futa as a tag don’t really care about the difference between gynomorph and herm. Understandably so, as the distinction between these two is rather small (the presence or lack of a pussy, which is often not visible on such characters anyway) compared to the rather drastic difference between gynomorph and andromorph (polar opposites, essentially).

The reason I chose male_bodied_intersex/female-bodied_intersex as opposed to masculine_intersex/feminine_intersex is because they may be confused with girly/tomboy. A maleherm, for example, can still qualify for the girly tag if the character has a feminine appearance, despite being a male-bodied intersex. The terms I’ve chosen are the least ambiguous names I could conceive of, but I’m open to any other suggestions as well.

I’ve also thought of coining a couple of portmanteaus just for these terms, akin to what we’ve already done with gynomorph/andromorph/maleherm. Something like interfem (intersex female)/intermale (intersex male), but I’m not too sure on those. They may be more vague than necessary.

Also note that what I’m proposing here is the full extent of this BUR. I do not think we should introduce these new tags into the (gender)/(gender) tags - that is, I don’t think we should have male/andromorph imply male/male-bodied_intersex imply male/intersex. That’s just far too many implications that would have to be changed, and for seemingly little to no benefit. You can just search male/intersex + male-bodied_intersex if you want both andromorphs and maleherms in your results.

Followup BUR:
alias futa -> female-bodied_intersex alias futanari -> female-bodied_intersex alias futa_solo -> female-bodied_intersex alias masculine_intersex -> male-bodied_intersex alias feminine_intersex -> female-bodied_intersex

It may also be a good idea at some point to remove some of the massive amount of aliases for gynomorph/andromorph and redistribute them across these new tags or the also more recently created trans_(lore) tags. That’ll take several BURs, though.

I agree with the changes in principle, but the necessary work to update the system completely goes way beyond this. There are gender/gender and gender_penetrating_gender and gender_on_form (and probably more that I do not recall at the moment) implication chains that would need to be recreated as well.

If anyone is able and willing to do so, they have my upvote, but I personally wouldn't want to put my time and effort into this.

gattonero2001 said:
I agree with the changes in principle, but the necessary work to update the system completely goes way beyond this. There are gender/gender and gender_penetrating_gender and gender_on_form (and probably more that I do not recall at the moment) implication chains that would need to be recreated as well.

If anyone is able and willing to do so, they have my upvote, but I personally wouldn't want to put my time and effort into this.

scaliespe said:
Also note that what I’m proposing here is the full extent of this BUR. I do not think we should introduce these new tags into the (gender)/(gender) tags - that is, I don’t think we should have male/andromorph imply male/male-bodied_intersex imply male/intersex. That’s just far too many implications that would have to be changed, and for seemingly little to no benefit. You can just search male/intersex + male-bodied_intersex if you want both andromorphs and maleherms in your results.

tl;dr - I actually don’t think that’s necessary.

scaliespe said:
tl;dr - I actually don’t think that’s necessary.

I don't know, it would feel somewhat inconsistent.

What to do about androgynous-bodied intersex? Or intersex where you see disembodied breasts and a penis, but not the body to tell whether it's masculine or feminine? If female-bodied/male-bodied_intersex is relevant enough to tag, then tags like male/male-bodied_intersex should be included as similarly relevant. Or if male/male-bodied_intersex is too much to tag, male-bodied_intersex is also too much, in my opinion.

If this is solely to "fix" the futa -> intersex alias, resulting in too many posts being tagged just intersex and not gynomorph or herm, then perhaps invalidating futa would be more effective at stopping people from using it instead of letting it get silently replaced with an imprecise tag.

gattonero2001 said:
I don't know, it would feel somewhat inconsistent.

Perhaps. If there’s enough people who want it that way, I’ll go for it. But even so, the current proposition seems like an improvement over the current system.

watsit said:
What to do about androgynous-bodied intersex? Or intersex where you see disembodied breasts and a penis, but not the body to tell whether it's masculine or feminine?

I see how the terms I’ve chosen can be a bit confusing, but I couldn’t come up with anything less ambiguous. I’m open to suggestions, though.

The point of these tags is not to point out whether the character appears masculine or feminine or androgynous (although I do think those should be unaliased and made into valid tags for describing a character’s presentation rather than gender, since males, females, or any intersex may appear masculine or feminine or somewhere in the middle… also, I think these aliases are causing mistags, like post #2428287 was probably meant to be androgynous… but anyway, that’s a discussion for another thread).

What is meant by these tag names is to reference the gender that the intersex gender is based on. Gynomorph is a female with a penis. Andromorph is a male with a pussy. Herm and maleherm have both sets of genitalia, the distinction being whether they’re on a male body or a female body. Whether they present as masculine or feminine is not relevant to that. That’s why I opted for male-bodied_intersex over masculine_intersex, for example.

If female-bodied/male-bodied_intersex is relevant enough to tag, then tags like male/male-bodied_intersex should be included as similarly relevant. Or if male/male-bodied_intersex is too much to tag, male-bodied_intersex is also too much, in my opinion.

Alright, fair point. That’s two votes in favor of adding the combination tags, then?

If this is solely to "fix" the futa -> intersex alias, resulting in too many posts being tagged just intersex and not gynomorph or herm, then perhaps invalidating futa would be more effective at stopping people from using it instead of letting it get silently replaced with an imprecise tag.

That’s not the main point, no. It’s primarily because it’s such a commonly used term that people are going to insist on using it regardless of what it’s aliased to or whether or not it’s even valid. Then, when they don’t get the results they expect, they take to the forums or the Discord server to complain that their search/blacklist isn’t working.

The secondary reason is because gynomorph and herm are very similar, so I think most people looking for this type of content would rather search for both genders at once. That’s as opposed to the male-based intersex genders, which are very different from gynomorph and herm. Andromorph is essentially the perfect opposite of gynomorph. In that sense, I don’t think the intersex tag has much utility for searching. These new tags would break intersex up into two much more useful categories.

As others have said, in principle and early thought, it can be very decent, but in practice, it will take a lot of effort to update and maintain.

My biggest gripe with the current idea is the length of the tags. I do find it more comfortable to have interfem or intermasc, but they aren't as discernible as female/male-bodied_intersex. However, I can't suggest anything else either.

Plus, the maintenance part can be troublesome in the long run. You already have plenty of mistagging involving anything from intersex tags, and adding more into the mix can be as hectic when trying to clean things up. Specially when you have very adamant people that just insert one tag, adding another five tags, which requires manual removal in most cases.
And whether or not those tags can truly be considered as simple extensions instead of added complexities, it'll rest onto the current and followup implication/aliases.

Besides, from what I've learned from using e621, is that most of the things you know and understand aren't exactly applicable for certain reasons, and sometimes it's best to follow the already established "e6 line of thinking".
So in the end, I prefer to keep things as is, while having users learn how to use the tags first instead of proposing new additions to the group, as mistagging is the main issue with these tags. Unless there's a very good idea to accomodate new intersex tags without adding to the current problems.

problem that needs to be figured out is getting everyone who identifies with x body type to agree on what is acceptable. You can do that you got my vote.

versperus said:
problem that needs to be figured out is getting everyone who identifies with x body type to agree on what is acceptable. You can do that you got my vote.

I don’t really understand what you mean by that.

hairnoi said:
As others have said, in principle and early thought, it can be very decent, but in practice, it will take a lot of effort to update and maintain.

My biggest gripe with the current idea is the length of the tags. I do find it more comfortable to have interfem or intermasc, but they aren't as discernible as female/male-bodied_intersex. However, I can't suggest anything else either.

Plus, the maintenance part can be troublesome in the long run. You already have plenty of mistagging involving anything from intersex tags, and adding more into the mix can be as hectic when trying to clean things up. Specially when you have very adamant people that just insert one tag, adding another five tags, which requires manual removal in most cases.
And whether or not those tags can truly be considered as simple extensions instead of added complexities, it'll rest onto the current and followup implication/aliases.

Besides, from what I've learned from using e621, is that most of the things you know and understand aren't exactly applicable for certain reasons, and sometimes it's best to follow the already established "e6 line of thinking".
So in the end, I prefer to keep things as is, while having users learn how to use the tags first instead of proposing new additions to the group, as mistagging is the main issue with these tags. Unless there's a very good idea to accomodate new intersex tags without adding to the current problems.

My idea is that these tags won’t be applied on their own, only through the implications. They’re umbrella tags for better organizing the existing intersex tags. So, I don’t see how this will actually make the mistagging situation any worse. If there are mistags, they’re still most likely going to be at the level of the base tags (gynomorph/andromorph/herm/maleherm). It will, however, be very useful for searching and blacklisting by subdividing the existing intersex tags.

Not only is the desired result unenforcable, futanari as the term was coined is a female character who happens to have a full penis instead of a clitoris. Thats all it means.

Futa being alias'd to gynomorph isnt correct but its better than literally any other option we have and 90% of users dont even know that's what "Futanari" means, instead just using it as another random tag to apply to trans or intersex bodies slapdash.

This isnt helpful at all as far as I can tell.

demesejha said:
Not only is the desired result unenforcable, futanari as the term was coined is a female character who happens to have a full penis instead of a clitoris. Thats all it means.

Futa being alias'd to gynomorph isnt correct but its better than literally any other option we have and 90% of users dont even know that's what "Futanari" means, instead just using it as another random tag to apply to trans or intersex bodies slapdash.

This isnt helpful at all as far as I can tell.

futa isn't aliased to gyno it's aliased to intersex because it can be used, and has been used to both refer to a herm and a gyno.

scaliespe said:
I don’t really understand what you mean by that.

Disregard, I misinterpreted implications for aliases.

demesejha said:
Not only is the desired result unenforcable,

How is it unenforceable? These implications are literally all it needs to be enforceable. The site automatically applies these tags when the relevant subtags are applied. That’s all that needs to be done.

futanari as the term was coined is a female character who happens to have a full penis instead of a clitoris. Thats all it means.

Futa being alias'd to gynomorph isnt correct but its better than literally any other option we have and 90% of users dont even know that's what "Futanari" means, instead just using it as another random tag to apply to trans or intersex bodies slapdash.

I’m not against aliasing it to gynomorph, but many others were against that as the term is sometimes used in reference to herms. Leaving it aliased to intersex presents its own problems, though, as I described above.

This isnt helpful at all as far as I can tell.

You don’t think anybody tries to use “futa” as a search term who doesn’t want to find andromorph/maleherm? You don’t think anybody wants to search/blacklist intersex characters according to which regular gender they’re based on?

I still think invalidating it would be the best option. As it is, a post shouldn't ever be tagged with just intersex (it should always have one of gynomorph, herm, andromorph, or maleherm), so having a tag like futa that people try to use stand-alone aliased to intersex will cause that to happen. It can't be aliased to herm or gynomorph either, since people can and do apply it to both and there will be mistags no matter which is picked.

Adding yet more intersex body types is ground to create a mess of its own, since the number of tags involving body types (including the pairing tags, like x_on_y, x_penetrating_y, (x_fingering_y?,) etc, for both <sex>_on_<sex> and <sex>_on_<form> style) is going to explode the number of tags. More over, I don't think tags like "female-bodied_intersex" should be used stand-alone either (it should always have one of gynomorph or herm, etc, just like intersex), which brings it back to square one of it applying an incomplete tag. Then there'll be fights over whether some andromorphs are female-bodied_intersex instead of male-bodied_intersex, or whether some gynomorphs are male-bodied_intersex instead of female-bodied_intersex, meaning they couldn't be implied from existing intersex tags either, which doesn't speak well for their potential usability.

If invalidating the tag isn't an option, then it should be left as-is, IMO. It doesn't result in mistags (just incomplete tagging), and it's better than adding more body type tags to exponentially increase the number of pairing tags.

watsit said:
Then there'll be fights over whether some andromorphs are female-bodied_intersex instead of male-bodied_intersex, or whether some gynomorphs are male-bodied_intersex instead of female-bodied_intersex, meaning they couldn't be implied from existing intersex tags either, which doesn't speak well for their potential usability.

There shouldn’t be any fights over that. Andromorphs have male bodies by definition, as do gynomorphs female bodies. It says this on their respective wiki pages.

andromorph - An intersex character with a masculine body type, a pussy instead of a penis, and no breasts.

gynomorph - A gynomorph is a character who is entirely female in appearance but has a penis, balls, or both instead of a pussy.

An andromorph can’t be female-bodied, because that’s just a regular female (+ flat_chested), and a gynomorph can’t be male-bodied as that’s just a male, and the breasts would have to be tagged as moobs or huge_pecs depending on which they look more like. Likewise for herm and maleherm, whose sole distinction is whether the body is masculine or feminine. So the implications are always valid.

If invalidating the tag isn't an option, then it should be left as-is, IMO. It doesn't result in mistags (just incomplete tagging), and it's better than adding more body type tags to exponentially increase the number of pairing tags.

I still think that including these new tags in the pairing tags isn’t necessary. All possible use cases can be covered by existing tags. For example, female/male-bodied_intersex would be virtually identical to female/intersex + male-bodied_intersex. Even intersex/intersex can be used with both tags together if you want one of each, or one tag minus the other if you want both characters of the same type.

If there’s some consensus that adding the pairing tags would be beneficial, it could certainly be done. It would be a large BUR, yes, but such large BURs have been created before (like the recent fingering BUR). Still, the only argument in favor of that is that it would be mildly more convenient to use, but it’s certainly not essential for these tags to function. These are merely supplemental to the core intersex tags. Arguing against adding all the relevant pairing tags shouldn’t be taken as an argument against the existence of these tags as standalone implications.

I like the idea in principle.
But people will use futanari when tagging a post, and it will lead to at minimum a tagging project to "Add either gynomorph or herm to female-bodied_intersex".

Of course we have the same problem with intersex anyway, see the 28 pages of intersex -gynomorph -andromorph -herm -maleherm, and I'd say a very significant percentage of those 28 pages is people that don't notice the alias tagging futanari when posting.

I'd be more in favor of just invalidating the futanari tag, in a "use a better tag instead" way, though this wouldn't fix the already uploaded posts nor allow searching for ~gynomorph ~herm with a single tag

Meh from me, for now, but I'll keep reading.

scaliespe said:
An andromorph can’t be female-bodied, because that’s just a regular female (+ flat_chested)

Andromorph may not be able to be female-bodied, but that doesn't mean it's necessarily male-bodied. Characters with flat chested+pussy have people regularly fighting between andromorph and female+flat_chested as people disagree on whether it's more masculine- or feminine-looking, and in my experience, when a vagina is visible, flat chested characters need a really feminine-looking body to be tagged as female, whereas less feminine bodies err on the side of being andromorph. So you end up with andromorphs that are androgynous-bodied and not always male-bodied.

scaliespe said:
a gynomorph can’t be male-bodied as that’s just a male, and the breasts would have to be tagged as moobs or huge_pecs depending on which they look more like.

Moobs are specifically for male characters that are overweight enough to have enough fatty tissue on their chest that look like saggy breasts, but they're not. And huge pecs are for very muscular males with excessively large chest musculature. That still leaves plenty of room for a character to have a masculine body with a penis and perky breasts that are clearly not moobs or pecs. And you can see in the how to tag genders wiki, if a character has a penis, no pussy, and breasts, the body type doesn't factor into the result:

Genitals? ┬ non ─ [featureless_crotch] + (see unk)
          ├ mas ─ Breasts? ┬ y ─ [gynomorph]
          │                ├ n ─ [male]
          │                └ u ─ Body type? ┬  ...
         ...

So if you have a character with a penis, no visible vagina, and breasts, it's a gynomorph regardless of being male-bodied or female-bodied. All three flowcharts are consistent with that. So gynomorph cannot imply female-bodied_intersex.

scaliespe said:
I still think that including these new tags in the pairing tags isn’t necessary. All possible use cases can be covered by existing tags. For example, female/male-bodied_intersex would be virtually identical to female/intersex + male-bodied_intersex. Even intersex/intersex can be used with both tags together if you want one of each, or one tag minus the other if you want both characters of the same type.

That would only work for one-on-one situations. When you get to having three or more characters visible, being watched, parallel sex, orgy, etc, this breaks down. If you want such characters to be in a dom or sub position, if you want one to be larger or smaller (larger_*-bodied_intersex/smaller_*-bodied_intersex), if you want one that's overweight (chubby_*-bodied_intersex/overweight_*-bodied_intersex/etc) or muscular (muscular_*-bodied_intersex), if you want one that's bottomless or topless, if you want one that's pregnant. Then there's the crossgender and gender-transformation tags. There's a lot of missing tags here that would be relevant if female-bodied_intersex/male-bodied_intersex themselves are relevant.

scaliespe said:
It would be a large BUR, yes, but such large BURs have been created before (like the recent fingering BUR).

Which is still pending, and people are starting to question if the separation between fingering and penetration should be kept because it's ending up so large. And in this case it's worse, because female-bodied_intersex and male-bodied_intersex would be used alongside plain intersex, meaning every post with intersex would include them, increasing the size of the tag list on posts and making it harder to find things in it than it already is when intersex tags are involved. Not to mention, long tag names like these would create would a mess of the tag list.

Because of all this, the fact that it opens a hole for intersex characters that are not clearly male-bodied or female-bodied, that they can't always be implicated from existing intersex tags, and it doesn't fix the underlying issue brought up by this thread (posts lack the appropriate gynomorph or herm tag because futa was used; that's still true after this), I see no reason to do it. Posts that have intersex/female-bodied_intersex/male-bodied_intersex but lack the appropriate gynomorph/herm/andromorph/maleherm will still need someone to add the appropriate intersex tag. Posts will lack male-bodied_intersex and female-bodied_intersex because it can't always be assumed from the appropriate intersex tag, and people will sometimes fight over whether a given intersex is male-bodied or female-bodied. It bloats the tag list and explodes the number of tags. I only see downsides here.

watsit said:
Andromorph may not be able to be female-bodied, but that doesn't mean it's necessarily male-bodied. Characters with flat chested+pussy have people regularly fighting between andromorph and female+flat_chested as people disagree on whether it's more masculine- or feminine-looking, and in my experience, when a vagina is visible, flat chested characters need a really feminine-looking body to be tagged as female, whereas less feminine bodies err on the side of being andromorph. So you end up with andromorphs that are androgynous-bodied and not always male-bodied.

Androgynous characters have always been a gray area between gender tags. Like, what do you do with an androgynous herm/maleherm? That issue doesn’t really have any bearing on the currently proposed tags. The point is that andromorphs are supposed to lean masculine, as it’s one of the fundamental characteristics of the gender. Interestingly, they qualify for the girly tag in cases where they still have clearly male anatomy/proportions but feminine dress/behavior. The fact is that we don’t currently tag anything as androgynous - if this were to be the case, we’d have to have a new gender tag specifically for androgynous herms. Instead, we just have to treat those edge cases like we do any other edge case and make a judgement call towards either masculine or feminine.

Moobs are specifically for male characters that are overweight enough to have enough fatty tissue on their chest that look like saggy breasts, but they're not. And huge pecs are for very muscular males with excessively large chest musculature. That still leaves plenty of room for a character to have a masculine body with a penis and perky breasts that are clearly not moobs or pecs.

The moobs wiki doesn’t say characters have to be overweight - it says they should usually be at least slightly chubby. Although even this is somewhat untrue as moobs can, in many IRL cases, be actual swollen breast tissue rather than fat, and in such cases is not related to the person’s weight. But even if we were to restrict moobs specifically to overweight characters, you’ll have to contend with 17 pages of moobs -overweight -slightly_chubby.

And you can see in the how to tag genders wiki, if a character has a penis, no pussy, and breasts, the body type doesn't factor into the result:

Genitals? ┬ non ─ [featureless_crotch] + (see unk)
          ├ mas ─ Breasts? ┬ y ─ [gynomorph]
          │                ├ n ─ [male]
          │                └ u ─ Body type? ┬  ...
         ...

So if you have a character with a penis, no visible vagina, and breasts, it's a gynomorph regardless of being male-bodied or female-bodied. All three flowcharts are consistent with that. So gynomorph cannot imply female-bodied_intersex.

Firstly, the gender tagging page provides this disclaimer right above the flowchart:

Note: The following diagrams/flowcharts are guides, not rules, and as with all guides—there will be some exceptions. So use your best judgement, along with the agreed opinions of other users as well.

The problem with this flowchart is that it goes against the description on the gynomorph wiki page, which says that they have to be female-bodied. I think we have to treat the flowchart as incorrect in this case. Allowing gynomorphs to have masculine bodies presents several problems:

• It would be the only gender that can be explicitly male-bodied or female-bodied - there’s some room for variation in effeminate males or masculine females, but beyond a certain point they’re more appropriately tagged as intersex regardless. I’ve even changed male girly moobs posts to gynomorph in some cases where the character’s anatomy is blatantly female. Anyway, I’m quite certain that male and female bodies alike are not what people are looking for in one tag, so it would make more sense at that point to divide the gynomorph tag into male-bodied and female-bodied gynomorphs, as the two hardly resemble one another except in androgynous cases. It seems very unlikely that most people want to find both when using that tag. At that point, we may as well just alias all intersex tags to intersex and just tag breasts/pussy/penis etc. instead, if we can’t distinguish intersex genders by body type. There was even a thread recently where someone was asking how to search for males with breasts. Not gynomorphs, they said, as those are usually female-bodied and that’s not what they wanted. If moobs can’t include more feminine breasts on otherwise plainly male characters (which people already commonly do, regardless of what the wiki says), then we simply have no way to search for “males with breasts.” It would be much more pragmatic to simply tag “male-bodied gynomorphs” as male + moobs rather than mixing them into an entirely separate gender tag which I’m sure most fans of one or the other wouldn’t want, or creating an entirely new subset of intersex tags which still further complicates the issue. We could even create a tag for especially feminine moobs, as long as the character’s body shape is otherwise patently male.

• it’s not consistent with how breasts are treated on female characters. They can either have breasts or not, and the distinction between females and andromorphs is not dependent upon them - it’s dependent upon whether they have a male or female body shape. Likewise, it doesn’t make sense for breasts to be the sole distinction between males and gynomorphs, especially considering the existence of flat_chested gynomorph solo (female body + male genitalia + no breasts). Some of those are mistags, sure, but many of them obviously have no male anatomy besides the genitalia. flat_chested even indicates that it can be used on gynomorphs and herms. Here’s a perfect example: post #3232045

• Elevating breasts to the level of genitals in being a sole point of distinction between genders actually complicates the tagging system quite a bit. It doesn’t take into account ferals, which almost never have breasts; or non-mammalian anthros, especially in cases where the artist drew anatomically_correct genitalia and so is also likely to avoid anatomically incorrect (for the species) traits like breasts, or in semi-anthro cases. Likewise, it demands that we create entirely new gender categories for male-bodied characters with breasts, as they are often so vastly different from the same gender but with a female body, and I don’t see why anyone would want to find characters with both male and female bodies under the same gender tag.

If I may hypothesize on the thought behind the overemphasis on breasts in that flowchart, I’d say the writer indicated them specifically as they are often the single most prominent sexually dimorphic characteristic in humans. However, doing so takes an inherently anthropocentric stance which might work just fine for a site focused on human or humanoid art, but not quite as well for a site with so much animal-based artwork where the rules are not so clear-cut. Especially in our case, the idea that “pussy + breasts = female is far too simplistic to be useful, even if it’s generally true.

With that in mind, I think there’s only one relatively simple (as simple as such complicated matters can be made, anyway) solution. That is to treat breasts fundamentally as a sexually dimorphic characteristic, albeit a prominent one, and to base genders only on the combination of genitals and sexually dimorphic characteristics. I believe this was what was already in mind when the andromorph and gynomorph wiki pages were written.

So, in essence:
Male body/male genitalia - male
Female body/female genitalia - female
Male body/female genitalia - andromorph
Female body/male genitalia - gynomorph
Male body/hybrid genitalia - maleherm
Female body/hybrid genitalia - herm

Of course, there are still always edge cases. Male bodies with breasts, female bodies without breasts… or male bodies with wide hips and narrow shoulders, or female bodies with prominent pecs. Male bodies with a thigh_gap, female bodies with an Adam’s apple. There are plenty of these situations besides just breasts - breasts just happen to be one of the most common. What I’m proposing is that we consider all dimorphic characteristics in determining gender, not just breasts to the exclusion of all others. Indeed, I think this is how it’s already being done for the most part, regardless of what the gender tagging flowchart says. You’ll find plenty of very feminine-looking breasts on males in the moobs tag. And despite some mistags, there are many posts that do seem to be best described by flat_chested gynomorph. With all these dimorphic characteristics taken together, the best thing to do is to determine the gender that each character most closely resembles. If a character has a male or female body in all regards except for the breasts, or some other trait like shoulder-to-hip ratio, then they should be considered to have the body of what they most closely resemble and placed into the appropriate regular or intersex gender category. If they seem to have an even mix of both gender traits, these are gray areas and a judgement call will have to be made - but that’s already the case in many situations. I recall a recent case of a tag war over whether a certain character was a flat-chested female or a girly andromorph. The character was supposed to be female, according to the artist, but an admin ended up locking the tags as andromorph + girly as the character had pecs, fairly broad shoulders, narrow hips, and a bit of a wide jaw. I have mentioned before that I think unaliasing androgynous and using it as a supplemental gender tag would be useful so we can identify edge cases like this where a character doesn’t clearly fit into one or the other, male-bodied or female-bodied - very much akin to how semi-anthro is used to identify anthro-feral edge cases, but it still requires a judgement call towards one or the other. In this case the post would still be andromorph, but with androgynous in addition to indicate that the body traits are not purely masculine - the character also visibly lacked an Adam’s apple and had an arguably narrow waist for a male.

Additionally, what I’m proposing here (and what, again, I think is already in practice) is much more useful for ferals. We are already allowed to tag feral genders based on species-specific sexually dimorphic traits such as the antlers on a male moose or the unique tail feathers on a male peafowl. It doesn’t make sense to require them to have breasts to qualify for the gynomorph tag when breasts are so rare on ferals in the first place. This caveat is even mentioned in the gender-tagging flowchart:

Note that since this chart is tailored towards "anthro", certain parts of this chart may need to be interpreted slightly differently for feral and certain animal_genitalia (cloaca).

• Breasts may also be replaced with teats, udders, or equivalent.
• Masculine/feminine body type may need to be adapted for feral use (a masculine characteristic type for a peacock would include a complex colorful feather design).

That would only work for one-on-one situations. When you get to having three or more characters visible, being watched, parallel sex, orgy, etc, this breaks down. If you want such characters to be in a dom or sub position, if you want one to be larger or smaller (larger_*-bodied_intersex/smaller_*-bodied_intersex), if you want one that's overweight (chubby_*-bodied_intersex/overweight_*-bodied_intersex/etc) or muscular (muscular_*-bodied_intersex), if you want one that's bottomless or topless, if you want one that's pregnant. Then there's the crossgender and gender-transformation tags. There's a lot of missing tags here that would be relevant if female-bodied_intersex/male-bodied_intersex themselves are relevant.

Fair point, although this is a problem shared with many supplementary body-type tags. Breasts, for example. Let’s say you want to find females with breasts. This works great if it’s solo, or a duo pairing with a male/maleherm/andromorph, but it breaks down when searching in groups. female breasts could get you a flat_chested female with a breasted gynomorph, while female -flat_chested would exclude many results where there is a flat_chested female and a breasted female in the same image. You can do the same with hair or fur or thick_thighs or pretty much any body-related tag except the ones that have been deemed important enough to get a specific gender variant for each, for whatever reason. Thick thighs, but only on males? Again, anything that’s not solo can return unwanted results. However, this limitation doesn’t make these tags useless or invalid. If we treat these tags as supplemental to the existing intersex tags rather than as proper gender tags in their own right, we don’t actually have to create all these extra tags, and they can still be useful most of the time to people who are specifically looking for this type of thing. If this were to be approved and a lot of people seem to find these tags very useful, then we may want to consider creating all those variants for them. I don’t think we have to treat the variants as essential for the functioning of the tags themselves, though.

[/quote]
Which is still pending, and people are starting to question if the separation between fingering and penetration should be kept because it's ending up so large.[/quote]
Yes, I was one of the people questioning the distinction - but that’s not because of the size of the BUR, it’s because I thought the distinction was a bit arbitrary in the first place, considering things like tentacles and inanimate objects can qualify for penetration but fingers currently don’t. Anyway, I bring that up only to say that very large BURs can and do get made, so if it’s somehow deemed important in this case to do that, it can be done.

And in this case it's worse, because female-bodied_intersex and male-bodied_intersex would be used alongside plain intersex, meaning every post with intersex would include them, increasing the size of the tag list on posts and making it harder to find things in it than it already is when intersex tags are involved. Not to mention, long tag names like these would create would a mess of the tag list.

The names are still open to consideration - regardless of what you think of the tags themselves, would fem_intersex and masc_intersex be better? I thought they were more vague, but they would be shorter, and definitely easier to type.

Similarly, we could even use futa for this purpose, as it means the same thing and it’s the term that most users will be familiar with. However, it still leaves us with the problem of finding a male-intersex counterpart.

it doesn't fix the underlying issue brought up by this thread (posts lack the appropriate gynomorph or herm tag because futa was used; that's still true after this), I see no reason to do it. Posts that have intersex/female-bodied_intersex/male-bodied_intersex but lack the appropriate gynomorph/herm/andromorph/maleherm will still need someone to add the appropriate intersex tag.

I’m not claiming to be fixing the mistagging issue here. It would, however, be at least a slight improvement to narrow those posts down to either gynomorph or herm, both of which are very aesthetically similar, as opposed to leaving them lumped in with andromorphs and maleherms which are essentially the polar opposite. Posts mistagged via futa would still be relatively searchable, especially if the new tags gain traction. Still not ideal, no, but an improvement.

I don’t think invalidating futa would really be any better. I’m speculating that the strong majority of those thousands of intersex -gynomorph -andromorph -herm -maleherm posts are from the futa alias, but those would otherwise be lumped into another huge dump tag like bow_(disambiguation) that I doubt anyone will keep up with, especially with how much this tag is probably being used. At least the current situation still allows those posts to be discoverable and blacklistable under the intersex alias.

The main point for the fix, however was not for tagging, but for searching. For every person trying to tag futa on a post, there could be dozens or hundreds more trying to use it as a search term. There are constant complaints about getting andromorphs when searching for futa despite how long it’s been aliased away for (there was another complaint just a few days ago in the Discord server). It doesn’t seem like a problem that’s ever going to go away, but I think this is the best we can do.

As a side note, I thought that maybe a lot the reason for the continued usage of this term was due to the fact that Danbooru uses the term futanari, and we probably have some overlap in our user base. However, it occurred to me that I don’t know how they actually define it, which I thought could shed some light on the current situation.

As it turns out, they define futanari in precisely the same way that I’m defining female-bodied_intersex -

Danbooru - Futanari

A female character with male genitalia.

In the context of Danbooru, the image does not need to directly show whether or not they have female genitalia. If you can visually confirm the lack of a vagina, tag newhalf. If you can visually confirm a vagina, penis, and testicles, tag full-package futanari.

This, for one, might explain why people seem to be using this term for both gynomorphs and herms. This system seems to work fine for them, though, so I don’t see why it couldn’t work here.

Their system actually has an added degree of precision in the sense that there are three different female-based intersex genders compared to our two. Their wiki page mentions newhalf (which is precisely equivalent to our gynomorph) and full-package_futanari, which is roughly equivalent to our herm. However, they also have a tag called intravaginal_futanari which equates to something that it seems we don’t actually have a specific tag for, but would be tagged as herm. All three of these imply futanari, essentially treating it as an umbrella tag for any female-based intersex. The difference in this case is that, as the above wiki says, full-package_futanari has a full set of both male and female genitalia, whereas an intravaginal_futanari has, essentially, a penis in place of the clitoris on otherwise typical female anatomy. Now, I’m not suggesting we add yet another intersex gender tag… though perhaps a supplemental tag describing that specific herm/maleherm genital configuration, on the rare occasion it appears, could be useful for distinguishing them from the typical herm setup. I’ll leave that alone for now, though, as it’s not quite relevant to this discussion.

Beyond that, the main difference in our gender tagging system is that they have no umbrella tag for all intersex like we do - futanari is the umbrella tag for all female-bodied intersex, while male-bodied intersex are divided between cuntboy (equivalent to our andromorph) and male_futanari (equivalent to our maleherm), neither of which imply anything. Interestingly, there does not appear to be a male equivalent to intravaginal_futanari. I think the lack of structure on the male-bodied side of the intersex tagging system is likely due to the fact that Danbooru’s content is overwhelmingly female, and similarly their intersex content is overwhelmingly female-based, leaving male-bodied intersex as a rare niche that simply hasn’t been given the same degree of attention. (For context, their cuntboy tag has 47 posts, while their male_futanari tag has only 30… compared to 17,600+ futanari.)

I don’t want to insinuate that we should copy whatever Danbooru does with their tags (much of it wouldn’t work well here, I’m sure), but insofar as we have a problem, it may be useful to look at how other similar sites handle the same issue. Though, it is mere coincidence that their intersex tagging (on the female side, anyway) roughly coincides with what I proposed here, as I really had no knowledge of their tagging system prior to now.

Another side note: my apologies if this is too long to adequately reply to. That seems to happen with the more complex topics. Even this took me a while to finish writing (has it really been 11 days? Wow).

scaliespe said:
The moobs wiki doesn’t say characters have to be overweight - it says they should usually be at least slightly chubby. Although even this is somewhat untrue as moobs can, in many IRL cases, be actual swollen breast tissue rather than fat, and in such cases is not related to the person’s weight. But even if we were to restrict moobs specifically to overweight characters, you’ll have to contend with 17 pages of moobs -overweight -slightly_chubby.

Well, a look at the first page shows plenty of examples that should be pecs, huge_pecs, overweight, slight_chubby, female+breasts, gynomorph+breasts, etc. Something like this would either be pregnant_gynomorph+breasts or obese+moobs. I see nothing in the first two pages of results that aren't some kind of mistag/missing tag along these lines, so I'm willing to bet the other pages are too. There's these examples that, according to the gender tagging wiki should be gynomorph, but are still male-bodied_intersex.

Then there's the consideration that people searching for or blacklisting moobs are going to expect them being on overweight males resulting in a flabby chest. And the expectation for pecs being a protrusion of the pectoral muscles on very muscular males. Things like this (even if he was otherwise fully male) aren't what people are going to want to find or blacklist with "moobs" or "pecs".

scaliespe said:
The problem with this flowchart is that it goes against the description on the gynomorph wiki page, which says that they have to be female-bodied. I think we have to treat the flowchart as incorrect in this case.

Considering the gender tagging flowchart has been one of the bigger issues on the site needing the most clarification, I'd prefer to treat the gynomorph wiki as being in error (and also because the gynomorph tag was a replacement for the dickgirl tag, and the term "dickgirl" does lead one to think the character would be female-bodied).

scaliespe said:
Allowing gynomorphs to have masculine bodies presents several problems:

• It would be the only gender that can be explicitly male-bodied or female-bodied

Maybe, but restricting it to be female-only leaves a missing category of intersex for male-bodied, male-genitalia, and female-like breasts. A herm that you can see breasts and a penis, but not a pussy, is a gynomorph. So a maleherm that you can see breasts and a penis, but not a pussy, is a ....? Having that be male and the "breasts" tag magically change to "moobs" or something just because the pussy tag doesn't apply doesn't seem good. A would agree with having gynomorph be female-bodied, as long as there's an intersex tag for a character with the same set of genitalia/breasts but is male-bodied.

scaliespe said:
Male body/female genitalia - andromorph
Female body/male genitalia - gynomorph

can also be a masculine female, and Female body/male genitalia can be a girly male. Whether they're instead andromorph and gynomorph depends on the presence or lack of breasts. There's currently a mess with the masculine/feminine/girly/manly tags that we're hoping to be able to clean up and have proper ways to tag feminine males and masculine females, so these are a bit too simplistic.

scaliespe said:
And despite some mistags, there are many posts that do seem to be best described by flat_chested gynomorph.

From what I see, they're better described by girly male. Though I'd argue some of them are small breasts, not flat_chested, but the majority is definitely girly male material.

scaliespe said:
If a character has a male or female body in all regards except for the breasts, or some other trait like shoulder-to-hip ratio, then they should be considered to have the body of what they most closely resemble and placed into the appropriate regular or intersex gender category.

I don't really like that idea. A character that's otherwise ambiguous, sure, having a feminine or masculine body or trait can tip the scale toward the female or male tag. For a character that has breasts, penis, and pussy, having a feminine or masculine body or trait can dictate between herm or maleherm. And for a character that has breasts, penis, and no pussy, having a feminine or masculine body or trait can dictate between gynomorph or some_other_intersex_tag_we_haven't_named_yet. But if a character has a penis, and no breasts or pussy, having a feminine or masculine body or trait should only dictate whether girly applies, not change it from male. Or if a character has a pussy and breasts but no penis, having a feminine or masculine body or trait should only dictate whether masculine applies (once those tags are fixed), not change it from female.

scaliespe said:
Fair point, although this is a problem shared with many supplementary body-type tags. Breasts, for example.

Sure, but intersex already sets the precedent here. Unless you want to suggest we get rid of tags like overweight_intersex, intersex_penetrated, etc, in favor of just intersex and only the herm/maleherm/gynomorph/andromorph get the full suite of tags¹, it feels wrong to treat female-bodied_intersex and male-bodied_intersex different.

¹ Which, honestly given my aforemention problems with the way intersex tags are currently done and what they do to the tag list, I might actually be amenable to. Though I doubt it'd go over well with others. Maybe having some, a very limited number, stay. But that should be a separate discussion.

scaliespe said:
The names are still open to consideration - regardless of what you think of the tags themselves, would fem_intersex and masc_intersex be better? I thought they were more vague, but they would be shorter, and definitely easier to type.

I'm not the best when it comes to naming things. fb_intersex and mb_intersex is what I thought of for shortening them, but I wouldn't say they're great options.

scaliespe said:
Similarly, we could even use futa for this purpose, as it means the same thing and it’s the term that most users will be familiar with.

Although I think it's considered more offensive these days, like the other intersex tags that have been replaced. But even if not, having a term like that for the feminine intersex side of things while masculine intersex gets a more generic masc_intersex or something makes me feel sad.

scaliespe said:
As a side note, I thought that maybe a lot the reason for the continued usage of this term was due to the fact that Danbooru uses the term futanari, and we probably have some overlap in our user base.

I'd say it's because it's been a widely used Japanese term relating to intersex (I'm not sure of it's original meaning exactly). It started as the Japanese word futanari, sometimes shorted to futa, and was used in Japanese media. And like the word "hentai", has been brought over and used in English and other languages.

scaliespe said:
Their system actually has an added degree of precision in the sense that there are three different female-based intersex genders compared to our two.

There are definitely ways you could further split up "herm". A character with breasts+penis+balls+vagina, or breasts+penis+vagina (no balls), and a distinction between the penis being an additional organ separate from the vagina, or connecting to the clitoris/urinary tract. Whether it comes from in the labia, or not.

But eventually there's a point where the distinctions between subtler and subtler differences aren't worth worrying about. E6 stops at "herm", while they take a couple more steps.

scaliespe said:
Another side note: my apologies if this is too long to adequately reply to. That seems to happen with the more complex topics. Even this took me a while to finish writing (has it really been 11 days? Wow).

No worries, it happens to me sometimes too.