The herm and maleherm tags are an issue.
To start, 'herm' has multiple different usages within furry and porn that are inconsistent with e6's definition. When someone's personal definition is 'all altersex with boobs' and another person's is 'all altersex' and another person's is 'gynomorphs' that leads to inconsistent tagging that needs to be watched and cleaned up regularly. The term itself and the implications the tag has do not give clues how it is supposed to be used.
On top of that, herm/maleherm does not leave room for characters/species that are totally androgynous or their other sexual characteristics are unshown or ambiguous. A genitals-only image tells you a character has a vulva AND a penis, but does not tell you what their bodyshape is otherwise.
Finally, 'herm' has historically been used as a derogatory and hurtful term towards real-world intersex people.

So, a proposed alternative is bigenital. The one con is that it might be interpreted as 'two sets of any genitals', but context of use and implications should be able to enforce the correct use of the term. At the very least, it's more intuitive than 'herm' is.
'Bigenital' on its own doesn't have the same body type split as herm/maleherm, and this is fine for its own tag- it would serve as an umbrella term for both cases as well as being a valid tag for androgynous/ambiguous cases- but this split IS useful for searching and blacklisting. I'm not certain how best to split the tag, but I can think of a few options:
-male_bigenital and female_bigenital (con: potentially implies male/female should be added, however this con already exists with maleherm)
-masculine_bigenital and feminine_bigenital (con: maybe someone interprets it as manly vs girly?)
-bigenital_andromorph and bigenital_gynomorph (con: potentially implies andro/gynomorph should be added, similar issue exists with maleherm)

hermaphrodite already means something that has both sets of sexual organs, though? if people use the definition wrong it's not really our fault. I'm not sure changing the name to something else will really solve the problem. and, like, bigenital kinda already sounds like it could apply to multi_genitalia.

regsmutt said:
On top of that, herm/maleherm does not leave room for characters/species that are totally androgynous or their other sexual characteristics are unshown or ambiguous. A genitals-only image tells you a character has a vulva AND a penis, but does not tell you what their bodyshape is otherwise.

I mean, the same's true for male and female. we don't have a way to describe a character who has any genitalia and lacks any other gender pointers (biological or cultural).

I'm totally on board when it comes to renaming them. herm seems really derogatory to me. I once had an idea of renaming them to gynandromorph for herm and androgynomorph for maleherm. They're both a portmanteau of gynomoprh and andromorph, and gynandromorph comes from a real biological phenomenon. The only con that I can think of is that they're kinda long and a little hard to remember. Thoughts?

dba_afish said:
hermaphrodite already means something that has both sets of sexual organs, though? if people use the definition wrong it's not really our fault. I'm not sure changing the name to something else will really solve the problem. and, like, bigenital kinda already sounds like it could apply to multi_genitalia.

Hermaphrodite has had a variety of different specific definitions both historically and in modern use. "Produced both ova and sperm" or "has both sets of gonads" is a biological definition, but even there there is movement away from the term. "A female sculpture with a penis" is the original definition of the term as it arose to describe specific sculptural depicitions of Aphrodite. It has also been used, both medically and derogatorily, to refer to intersex people and intersex conditions which, in mammals, cannot involve having both (functional) male and female gonads. Porn usage of the term is all over the place.

Even if there was only one strict definition that got used, there is still the issue of 'herm' being a derogatory term for intersex people. If you want to debate the use of it in strictly biological contexts, then whatever, but e621 is NOT a biological context. Using derogatory terms as tags is offputting and should be avoided where possible. Here it feels very, very possible to use a different term.

I mean, the same's true for male and female. we don't have a way to describe a character who has any genitalia and lacks any other gender pointers (biological or cultural).

Sure, but there are at least guidelines for those cases, even if they fail in certain contexts (e.g. trans characters). Shortcomings of the male/female tags are a different topic entirely.

munchmallow-frosty said:
I'm totally on board when it comes to renaming them. herm seems really derogatory to me. I once had an idea of renaming them to gynandromorph for herm and androgynomorph for maleherm. They're both a portmanteau of gynomoprh and andromorph, and gynandromorph comes from a real biological phenomenon. The only con that I can think of is that they're kinda long and a little hard to remember. Thoughts?

I think those are a little bit hard to remember. I know I'd be checking the wiki for which is which each time I used them lol.

I initially thought bigenital_andromorph/gynomorph sounding like they should imply andromorph or gynomorph respectively was a con, but as I thought about it more I actually don't hate it. I know that getting rid of 'intersex' entirely has been floated when renaming that tag has come up. Making the category andromorph, gynomorph, bigenital, and combinations of them might work for that.

regsmutt said:
Sure, but there are at least guidelines for those cases, even if they fail in certain contexts (e.g. trans characters). Shortcomings of the male/female tags are a different topic entirely.

I mean, not really? or at least not anything more than for herm, they're all just:

herm is the default, so characters who present androgynously are tagged that, same as for androgynous presenting male and female characters. _{(and as such, nulls have the only bodytype that can be tagged on any part of the spectrum)}

I don't think the solution to this problem would be to create a tag split here, not only because it dosn't really solve the whole problem, but also because it'd be a massive undertaking to reclass so many posts. a better answer would just be to leave the current seven gender categories and just create androgynous_* subtags for the three gender categories that stuff can "default" into.

dba_afish said:
I mean, not really? or at least not anything more than for herm, they're all just:

	penis?	vagina?	both?
girl	gynomorph	female	herm
boy	male	andromorph	maleherm
androgynous	male	female	herm

herm is the default, so characters who present androgynously are tagged that, same as for androgynous presenting male and female characters. _{(and as such, nulls have the only bodytype that can be tagged on any part of the spectrum)}

I don't think the solution to this problem would be to create a tag split here, not only because it dosn't really solve the whole problem, but also because it'd be a massive undertaking to reclass so many posts. a better answer would just be to leave the current seven gender categories and just create androgynous_* subtags for the three gender categories that stuff can "default" into.

Herm/maleherm is already a split. Addressing androgynous/ambiguous cases isn't a main goal (the main goal is to move away from a term that culturally has blurry definitions and offensive connotations), it's just a secondary benefit. Androgynous/ambiguous images defaulting to the tag that has a female definition feels odd here. Having a specific 'maleherm' tag that by definition cannot imply the plain 'herm' tag is very odd.

The two alternatives to having female_bigenital and male_bigenital (or an equivalent) are a) eliminating the split entirely and aliasing both to bigenital, which is bad for searching and blacklisting, or b) making the tags bigenital and male_bigenital which again creates a weird situation where a tag with what looks like a modifier can't be implicated to the plain tag.

There are 183 pages of posts tagged herm. Sorting out ambiguous cases should not be impossible. Sorting out improperly tagged gynomorph images will be harder.

Mate I'll be honest my first thought was this was some hyper-related thing and was "big genitals". This is a more hideous and clunky thing to rename the tags to than the gynomorph/andromorph change was. I'm sure if you really, really want it changed, you can come up with a better term than "bigenital" or the overlong (and confusing to the casual user) gynandromorph/androgynomorph suggestion. Perhaps, if I had to toss out a theoretical solution, something like male and female, or "masculine and feminine" if thou must, permutations of a "dualsex" or "heteromorph"? I'd say to take a page from Gelbooru and use "full_package_*morph", given all features must be visible anyway, but that seems a bit long as well.

munchmallow-frosty said:
I'm totally on board when it comes to renaming them. herm seems really derogatory to me. I once had an idea of renaming them to gynandromorph for herm and androgynomorph for maleherm. They're both a portmanteau of gynomoprh and andromorph, and gynandromorph comes from a real biological phenomenon. The only con that I can think of is that they're kinda long and a little hard to remember. Thoughts?

Androgyny/androgynous (words made from a combination of the andro- and gyno- prefixes) refers to people/characters with an ambiguously male or female appearance. It's ambiguous_gender (and the former already aliased, the latter is defunct and should be aliased though currently empty). Tagging on -morph and the end and trying to use it as the basis for herm and maleherm replacements would create more confusion than it attempts to resolve.

votp said:
Mate I'll be honest my first thought was this was some hyper-related thing and was "big genitals". This is a more hideous and clunky thing to rename the tags to than the gynomorph/andromorph change was. I'm sure if you really, really want it changed, you can come up with a better term than "bigenital" or the overlong (and confusing to the casual user) gynandromorph/androgynomorph suggestion. Perhaps, if I had to toss out a theoretical solution, something like male and female, or "masculine and feminine" if thou must, permutations of a "dualsex" or "heteromorph"? I'd say to take a page from Gelbooru and use "full_package_*morph", given all features must be visible anyway, but that seems a bit long as well.

I've seen 'bigenital' in use in other spaces. 'Full_package' feels a bit overly sexual, especially considering that it would be applied to things that aren't necessarily intended to be porn. However, it's better than 'herm' and if people truly prefer it, well I'm not going to object.

regsmutt said:
The herm and maleherm tags are an issue.
To start, 'herm' has multiple different usages within furry and porn that are inconsistent with e6's definition. When someone's personal definition is 'all altersex with boobs' and another person's is 'all altersex' and another person's is 'gynomorphs' that leads to inconsistent tagging that needs to be watched and cleaned up regularly. The term itself and the implications the tag has do not give clues how it is supposed to be used.
On top of that, herm/maleherm does not leave room for characters/species that are totally androgynous or their other sexual characteristics are unshown or ambiguous. A genitals-only image tells you a character has a vulva AND a penis, but does not tell you what their bodyshape is otherwise.
Finally, 'herm' has historically been used as a derogatory and hurtful term towards real-world intersex people.

There is already an intersex tag.

As someone who is intersex (47,XXY), I don't find the term hermaphrodite offensive. In my experience, the people who claim that 'herm' is a durogatory term are either not intersex or have strong attention-seeking disorders (like NPD).

In addition, 'hermaphrodite' is also a medical/scientific term for an organism that has both sperm and egg producing organs, as another poster mentioned.

Honestly this entire situation seems to me like it will only dilute the tags, making it more confusing for users who want to search for specific things.

It's an unnecessary tag. It's a solution looking for a problem that does not and never has existed.

votp said:
I'd say to take a page from Gelbooru and use "full_package_*morph", given all features must be visible anyway, but that seems a bit long as well.

I was under the impression that "full-package" just means a character has balls to go with their penis. it's essentially the inverse of our sackless (to which herm_half_package is aliased).

dba_afish said:
I was under the impression that "full-package" just means a character has balls to go with their penis. it's essentially the inverse of our sackless (to which herm_half_package is aliased).

Full package is used for "has everything", newhalf for just cock and balls, and the general futa tag for anything else (umbrella tag). It was more a muse on possible "solutions" than anything, that said.

votp said:
Full package is used for "has everything", newhalf for just cock and balls, and the general futa tag for anything else (umbrella tag). It was more a muse on possible "solutions" than anything, that said.

"full-package furanari" is penis+balls+vagina
"half-package futanari" is penis+vagina, no balls

"newhalf" is a Japanese slang term for a transsexual person _{(usually it's considered a pretty derogatory one, at that)}.
"futa" (or "futanari") is litterally just "hermaphrodite" in japanese, so it really should not include "newhalf".

either way, we've kinda tried to move away from using words that specifically make mention a character's genitals for the gender tags, so "full-package" would probably be not great, even if its definition did fit.

Saying "herm is a derogatory term" is a joke that you're either spreading because you think it's funny, or because you fell for it. So let's just move on from that embarrassing part of the argument.

Herm is clear in what it means even if other sites use it differently. Maleherm on the other hand was damn confusing to learn existed. It's like bumping into a straight-bisexual tag. Sure with time I worked out what it meant, but it is not a good name. Yet I can't think of any better solution. I only see there being a need for change in the off chance the site adds in new functionality where the tags can be marked as applying to just one character rather than the entire image, which would allow for some nice things like "Herm flat-chested renamon" to give us exactly what we want. Until that amazing but unlikely update happens, the tags right now work well. Bigenital is NOT a solution if it still gives us wacky tags like Malebigenital.

There's a real-life term for having both genitals (yes that's a real thing, penile-preserving vaginoplasty and vagina-preserving phalloplasty) called salmacian: https://salmacian.org/

wandering_spaniel said:
There's a real-life term for having both genitals (yes that's a real thing, penile-preserving vaginoplasty and vagina-preserving phalloplasty) called salmacian: https://salmacian.org/

According to that page:

Salmacian is a term for people who wish to have a mixed genital set.

Seems it's referring more to an identity than a state of being. It doesn't sound like a good fit for a tag for characters who do have both genitals, and either don't care that they have both (it's just natural to them and they never really think about wanting them both or not) or actively only want one set but have both regardless.

wandering_spaniel said:
There's a real-life term for having both genitals (yes that's a real thing, penile-preserving vaginoplasty and vagina-preserving phalloplasty) called salmacian: https://salmacian.org/

Salmacian is one of the alternatives I've seen. It's been shot down as an alternative for 'intersex', and while this seems like a better fit in terms of definition, it still might have a bit too much of a learning curve. Still, it's a better option than herm.

a_big_fat_fox said:
There is already an intersex tag.

As someone who is intersex (47,XXY), I don't find the term hermaphrodite offensive. In my experience, the people who claim that 'herm' is a durogatory term are either not intersex or have strong attention-seeking disorders (like NPD).

In addition, 'hermaphrodite' is also a medical/scientific term for an organism that has both sperm and egg producing organs, as another poster mentioned.

Honestly this entire situation seems to me like it will only dilute the tags, making it more confusing for users who want to search for specific things.

It's an unnecessary tag. It's a solution looking for a problem that does not and never has existed.

minus said:
Saying "herm is a derogatory term" is a joke that you're either spreading because you think it's funny, or because you fell for it. So let's just move on from that embarrassing part of the argument.

Herm is clear in what it means even if other sites use it differently. Maleherm on the other hand was damn confusing to learn existed. It's like bumping into a straight-bisexual tag. Sure with time I worked out what it meant, but it is not a good name. Yet I can't think of any better solution. I only see there being a need for change in the off chance the site adds in new functionality where the tags can be marked as applying to just one character rather than the entire image, which would allow for some nice things like "Herm flat-chested renamon" to give us exactly what we want. Until that amazing but unlikely update happens, the tags right now work well. Bigenital is NOT a solution if it still gives us wacky tags like Malebigenital.

Both of you pretty much hit the nail on the head here. Maleherm is really the only valid problem stated here as it is slightly confusing at first, but even then it's very minor. I can't think of a good name for it other than 'breastless_herm' but that's very clunky, especially if it has to be combined in related tags. I would rather keep 'maleherm' than use that.

regsmutt said:
The herm and maleherm tags are an issue.
To start, 'herm' has multiple different usages within furry and porn that are inconsistent with e6's definition. When someone's personal definition is 'all altersex with boobs' and another person's is 'all altersex' and another person's is 'gynomorphs' that leads to inconsistent tagging that needs to be watched and cleaned up regularly. The term itself and the implications the tag has do not give clues how it is supposed to be used.
On top of that, herm/maleherm does not leave room for characters/species that are totally androgynous or their other sexual characteristics are unshown or ambiguous. A genitals-only image tells you a character has a vulva AND a penis, but does not tell you what their bodyshape is otherwise.
Finally, 'herm' has historically been used as a derogatory and hurtful term towards real-world intersex people.

So, a proposed alternative is bigenital. The one con is that it might be interpreted as 'two sets of any genitals', but context of use and implications should be able to enforce the correct use of the term. At the very least, it's more intuitive than 'herm' is.
'Bigenital' on its own doesn't have the same body type split as herm/maleherm, and this is fine for its own tag- it would serve as an umbrella term for both cases as well as being a valid tag for androgynous/ambiguous cases- but this split IS useful for searching and blacklisting. I'm not certain how best to split the tag, but I can think of a few options:
-male_bigenital and female_bigenital (con: potentially implies male/female should be added, however this con already exists with maleherm)
-masculine_bigenital and feminine_bigenital (con: maybe someone interprets it as manly vs girly?)
-bigenital_andromorph and bigenital_gynomorph (con: potentially implies andro/gynomorph should be added, similar issue exists with maleherm)

I'll just provide a warning that this is a bad idea, very clunky and honestly running along the same problematic lines as the dreaded c-boy and d-girl slurs that were thankfully phased out.... Aside from the fact that it would be incorrect terminology as breasts are not genitalia which are a consideration when applying the present herm or maleherm tags.

kyiiel said:
Both of you pretty much hit the nail on the head here. Maleherm is really the only valid problem stated here as it is slightly confusing at first, but even then it's very minor. I can't think of a good name for it other than 'breastless_herm' but that's very clunky, especially if it has to be combined in related tags. I would rather keep 'maleherm' than use that.

"breastless" wouldn't work anyway because ferals and whatnot. also, even for normal adult anthros, breasts aren't the be-all end-all differentiation between the feminine and masculine gender categories; breasts==feminine, not breasts=/=not feminine.

ryu_deacon said:
I'll just provide a warning that this is a bad idea, very clunky and honestly running along the same problematic lines as the dreaded c-boy and d-girl slurs that were thankfully phased out.... Aside from the fact that it would be incorrect terminology as breasts are not genitalia which are a consideration when applying the present herm or maleherm tags.

I am a bit confused as to where breasts being criteria is coming from. They're not criteria and weren't mentioned anywhere in the quoted post.
I'm also not seeing how it's similar to c-boy/d-girl. There isn't a history of bigenital being used as a slur. If it's that it explicitly references genitals, 'genital' isn't a crude term.

regsmutt said:
I am a bit confused as to where breasts being criteria is coming from. They're not criteria and weren't mentioned anywhere in the quoted post.
I'm also not seeing how it's similar to c-boy/d-girl. There isn't a history of bigenital being used as a slur. If it's that it explicitly references genitals, 'genital' isn't a crude term.

I've rewritten this comment 3 4 times before posting it.

First and foremost, I feel weird and dirty using 'bigenital'.

Secondly, a hermaphrodite, typically called 'intersex', simply means someone posesses features that are both typically masculine and feminine. The most common example is people who present feminine but have masculine genitals.

Hermaphrodites do not necessarily have visible examples of both masculine and feminine reproductive organs. For example, some intersex humans have one or both ovaries. IIRC, one of the hosts of Boy Boy on YouTube had an ovary despite being AMAB, but that was it. At the risk of TMI, I suffer from something similar in addition to having KS.

Because of this, "bigenital" does not apply to a large portion of the hermaphroditic content on this site.

Breasts are relevant because a lot of furry hermaphrodites are feminine presenting, with feminine bodies and faces, including breasts, but posessing masculine sexual anatomy.

If anything, 'maleherm' should be removed from the site. You cannot be both a male and a hermaphrodite. It's contradictory.

If you want to search for 'maleherm' content, use the tags intersex and masculine, optionally with other masculine-affirming tags/terms.

The takeaway is that 'bigenital' is inaccurate to describe a lot of intersex artwork and characters. Not all hermaphrodites have both outward genitals. Sometimes it's what's inside that counts.

a_big_fat_fox said:
I've rewritten this comment 3 4 times before posting it.

First and foremost, I feel weird and dirty using 'bigenital'.

Secondly, a hermaphrodite, typically called 'intersex', simply means someone posesses features that are both typically masculine and feminine. The most common example is people who present feminine but have masculine genitals.

Hermaphrodites do not necessarily have visible examples of both masculine and feminine reproductive organs. For example, some intersex humans have one or both ovaries. IIRC, one of the hosts of Boy Boy on YouTube had an ovary despite being AMAB, but that was it. At the risk of TMI, I suffer from something similar in addition to having KS.

Because of this, "bigenital" does not apply to a large portion of the hermaphroditic content on this site.

Breasts are relevant because a lot of furry hermaphrodites are feminine presenting, with feminine bodies and faces, including breasts, but posessing masculine sexual anatomy.

If anything, 'maleherm' should be removed from the site. You cannot be both a male and a hermaphrodite. It's contradictory.

If you want to search for 'maleherm' content, use the tags intersex and masculine, optionally with other masculine-affirming tags/terms.

The takeaway is that 'bigenital' is inaccurate to describe a lot of intersex artwork and characters. Not all hermaphrodites have both outward genitals. Sometimes it's what's inside that counts.

Herm is not a synonym or umbrella term for intersex. On e6 herm is defined specifically and only as a feminine body with both a penis and a vagina. All other uses of the tag on e6 are incorrect and mistagging. So yes, bigenital does describe all (correctly tagged) herm content on e6.

If you do not like the use of 'genital' does another alternative feel better?

regsmutt said:
Herm is not a synonym or umbrella term for intersex. On e6 herm is defined specifically and only as a feminine body with both a penis and a vagina. All other uses of the tag on e6 are incorrect and mistagging. So yes, bigenital does describe all (correctly tagged) herm content on e6.

If you do not like the use of 'genital' does another alternative feel better?

I think leaving the tags alone is a good idea unless they are provably problematic. As it stands none of the inter/herm/morph tags are particularly problematic.

*links to the 5 other threads with the same topic*

a_big_fat_fox said:
I think leaving the tags alone is a good idea unless they are provably problematic. As it stands none of the inter/herm/morph tags are particularly problematic.

"Provably" isn't super possible with something that can be subjective depending on life experience and language. However, there IS plenty of existing writing showing that 'herm' is a controversial term that is considered by many in English-speaking communities to be offensive.

InterAct:
https://interactadvocates.org/faq/
https://www.dcu.ie/intersex-faqs/words

Intersex Society of North America:
https://isna.org/node/16/
https://web.archive.org/web/20130701061246/http://www.isna.org/faq/hermaphrodite
(As an aside, these writings are from before 2008 showing that this opinion is not new and has existed for decades.)

Reddit (informal but shows nuance and how views vary):
https://www.reddit.com/r/intersex/comments/i7ftnn/is_hermaphrodite_an_offense_term/?rdt=49023
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskLGBT/comments/1dx4ufu/is_hermaphrodite_a_slur_against_intersex_people/

regsmutt said:
(a lot of things)

This sounds exactly like when some people were trying to claim femboy is offensive and we should use roseboy instead (which ironically sounds more like a slur)

regsmutt said:
Intersex Society of North America:
https://isna.org/node/16/
https://web.archive.org/web/20130701061246/http://www.isna.org/faq/hermaphrodite
(As an aside, these writings are from before 2008 showing that this opinion is not new and has existed for decades.)

Quoting this one:

The word "hermaphrodite" implies that a person is born with
two sets of genitals -- one male and one female -- and this is something
that cannot occur.

A key point here is that true hermaphroditism doesn't exist in humans, referring to people with a chromosomal disorder as a word used to describe animals that have both sets of genitalia is obviously both misleading and dehumanising. It's offensive to call a trans woman a "femboy" (because she's obviously not a boy) but that doesn't mean it's offensive to call somebody who identifies as male a femboy.

However, it's also be obvious that characters on e621 are fictional and aren't bound by the laws of reality. The herm tag presents numerous characters that have true hermaphroditism, the kind that isn't possible in real life humans. They could be slugs, they could be aliens, they might have obtained the second set of genitalia through science or magic, or it could just be the personal choice of the character designer. Why would it be offensive to describe a true hermaphrodite character as a herm?

I really feel like most the confusion in the first place comes from the intersex tag, which doesn't really make much sense compared to the real life definition. People with both sets of genitalia just don't exist in real life - so hermaphrodites aren't intersex people. Anybody who would come under the classification of andromorph or gynomorph in real life is most likely going to be transgender - HRT or surgery does not make you intersex either, so intersex wouldn't apply here either.

Most accurate depictions of individuals with a chromosomal disorder would still very likely fit in the male or female classification according to TWYS.

faucet said:
I really feel like most the confusion in the first place comes from the intersex tag, which doesn't really make much sense compared to the real life definition.

I'd be in favor of just getting rid of the intersex tag. It's odd to me to have an umbrella tag for herm, maleherm, andromorph, and gynomorph, when andromorph and gynomorph have the complete opposite set of genitals/breasts of each other, and maleherm and gynomorph are also quite different, and where every single tag incorporating one of those 4 sexes has at least one duplicate tag with intersex in its place. There's no umbrella tag for things like this with male, female, and ambiguous_gender.

regsmutt said:
"Provably" isn't super possible with something that can be subjective depending on life experience and language. However, there IS plenty of existing writing showing that 'herm' is a controversial term that is considered by many in English-speaking communities to be offensive.

InterAct:

Intersex Society of North America:

(As an aside, these writings are from before 2008 showing that this opinion is not new and has existed for decades.)

Reddit (informal but shows nuance and how views vary):

"Provably" can be proven with how people are complaining about the tags in the forums.

InterAct says that some people are reclaiming the term.

Those reddit posts are dubious at best.

The confusion about the herm tags is almost exclusively because the people using it don't know what it means and don't know how to use tags.

It's implied into intersex. Herm should just be removed/invalidated along with maleherm, and just use intersex instead.

watsit said:
I'd be in favor of just getting rid of the intersex tag. It's odd to me to have an umbrella tag for herm, maleherm, andromorph, and gynomorph, when andromorph and gynomorph have the complete opposite set of genitals/breasts of each other, and maleherm and gynomorph are also quite different, and where every single tag incorporating one of those 4 sexes has at least one duplicate tag with intersex in its place. There's no umbrella tag for things like this with male, female, and ambiguous_gender.

Umbrella terms are fine. Like I said, if you want to look for masculine intersex on this site, just use those tags. intersex and masculine works great in conjunction with solo. This entire issue can be solved just by using existing tags.

ah yes let's remove the little representation intersex people get. Fantastic idea to an already isolated and marginalized group of people.

a_big_fat_fox said:
Umbrella terms are fine. Like I said, if you want to look for masculine intersex on this site, just use those tags. intersex and masculine works great in conjunction with solo. This entire issue can be solved just by using existing tags.

masculine isn't a populated tag and intersex exclusively covers 4 gender presentation categories girl with penis, boy with vagina, girl with both, boy with both) all of which are on different ends of a spectrum with andromorph and gynomorph also being kind of askew from each other as well. not only does this not necessarily jive with the real-world definition, this also means that the intersex tag applies to characters who were canonically born with these traits, as well as trans characters.

a_big_fat_fox said:
ah yes let's remove the little representation intersex people get. Fantastic idea to an already isolated and marginalized group of people.

intersex_(lore) will still exist, which is a tag for characters who are actually intersex rather than just one of those 4 body configurations.

dba_afish said:
masculine isn't a populated tag and intersex exclusively covers 4 gender presentation categories girl with penis, boy with vagina, girl with both, boy with both) all of which are on different ends of a spectrum with andromorph and gynomorph also being kind of askew from each other as well. not only does this not necessarily jive with the real-world definition, this also means that the intersex tag applies to characters who were canonically born with these traits, as well as trans characters.

intersex_(lore) will still exist, which is a tag for characters who are actually intersex rather than just one of those 4 body configurations.

Transgender people are intersex. Just not by natural means.

The tags aren't defined enough to cover the real world examples where applicable and that is the source of most tag related issues.

I don't know. I still feel like the removal of the tag would be disrespectful. I'd personally feel invalidated, but I only speak for myself.

a_big_fat_fox said:
Transgender people are intersex. Just not by natural means.

The tags aren't defined enough to cover the real world examples where applicable and that is the source of most tag related issues.

I don't know. I still feel like the removal of the tag would be disrespectful. I'd personally feel invalidated, but I only speak for myself.

we've had people bring up issuses with the usage of "intersex" as the tagname a couple of times in the past half-dozen months, so all of us around here've heard a lot of arguments pulling in multiple different directions on this one subject.

personally, I really do not know what the best solution would be, here because... like, if we were in an alternate universe where everything was identical except we just didn't have a tag with the fiction that intersex serves, I don't think it'd possible to convince me that creating one would really serve much purpose...

like-- I don't really know if it has much functional utility, it's a blanket tag for what, in my mind at least, are a few extremely disparate categories. but also, at this point it's just kinda engrained in the website. we've never invalidated a tag anywhere near its scale, and it'd inevitably have an impact on a tonne of users. the amount of blacklists affected alone would be pretty massive _{^{(and while a part of me says that I'm not sure I care about the effect on the type of person to blacklist intersex, it's still probably best for everyone to try to have a good user experience regardless)}}.

a_big_fat_fox said:
I don't know. I still feel like the removal of the tag would be disrespectful. I'd personally feel invalidated, but I only speak for myself.

I dunno, trans_(lore) and nonbinary_(lore) are both tags that have only ever existed in the lore category, and I've never really felt like those being there really meant characters/people weren't being represented properly or anything.

although I can't say I don't at least see where you're coming from, feeling this way. I mean, I have probably gotten a little more heated than necessary when discussing tags/categories I'm attached to/identity with.

dba_afish said:
we've never invalidated a tag anywhere near its scale

video_games was at least 4, probably 5 times the size of what intersex currently is
_{I'm aware the two tags are wildly different and video games likely was not widely used in blacklists, but it was still a tag that had over 1 million posts which we invalidated}

a_big_fat_fox said:
Transgender people are intersex. Just not by natural means.

The tags aren't defined enough to cover the real world examples where applicable and that is the source of most tag related issues.

I don't know. I still feel like the removal of the tag would be disrespectful. I'd personally feel invalidated, but I only speak for myself.

Transgender people are not typically considered intersex unless they have an intersex condition. Even if you would like to argue that hrt creates an intersex condition, not all trans people go on hrt.

The intersex tag on e6 already excludes many, if not most, real-world intersex conditions. Pregnant men are not tagged intersex, micropenises and enlarged clitorises are not tagged intersex, chromosomal differences are not tagged intersex, and so on. The tag is explicitly only for genital configurations.

The intersex_(lore) tag can cover all intersex conditions.

I'm empathetic to your concerns of erasure, and it is important to make sure that doesn't happen. Currently though, it does look like there are systems in place that will hopefully be able to prevent intersex characters from becoming unsearchable.