munchmallow-frosty said:
Would intersex_genitalia work for this?

Imo ambiguous_genitalia might be better just because it also covers aliens, transformation, and other edge cases.

Anyway, I'm trying not to derail things too hard. Frankly I regret mentioning at all that intersex advocates consider it disrespectful. People are getting too hung up on that debate and ignoring that herm is just straight-up, unambiguously, a terrible tag.

It is extensively misused. The reason? Herm, outside of this site, has multiple conflicting meanings. You will see people apply it to trans people, intersex people, gynomorphs, andromorphs, AND bigenital. Most people don't check wikis for terms they see everyday and will assume the definition they see most is right.

Anywhere from a quarter to a third are mistags, this is not counting posts that have already had their tags corrected. Keeping posts in it tagged correctly is an active battle. Other tags, like futa, have been renamed, aliased, or invalidated for similar reasons.

I do still lean toward bigenital or dualgenital and then prefixed with something to designate masculine or feminine. I like 'genital' because 'dualsex' sounds like it might be a gender identity.

regsmutt said:
I do still lean toward bigenital or dualgenital and then prefixed with something to designate masculine or feminine. I like 'genital' because 'dualsex' sounds like it might be a gender identity.

Other users have already responded stating that these terms are also very ambiguous, such as bda afish in the first reply. Two genitals of what? Two different genitals? Two penises? Two vulva? If the user has to go to the wiki for clarification, then the Venn Diagram of people who are currently mistagging herm and those likely to mistag the proposed names resembles a circle. Sure, there are less multi-genital characters than there are characters of different genital configurations, but the lack of clarity is still present. Those users are also almost guaranteed not to see your clarifying reply to dba afish or this topic in general.

In my own experience, I have never seen any ambiguity about the definitions of the terms herm or hermaphrodite on modern imageboards or porn games. They have been exclusively used for characters with visibly both male and female genitalia. That contrasts with futa, which you mentioned, that was confusingly used to refer to both herm and gynomorph characters over the years. The average user is also just bad at tagging anything more complex than the basics, and I don't think a rename is going to salvage that. Users would still include the tag even if a character is visibly a gynomorph because they either tag what they know (despite vulva being hidden by balls) or just don't know or understand the term(s) well enough to use any version of it correctly.

song said:
Other users have already responded stating that these terms are also very ambiguous, such as bda afish in the first reply. Two genitals of what? Two different genitals? Two penises? Two vulva? If the user has to go to the wiki for clarification, then the Venn Diagram of people who are currently mistagging herm and those likely to mistag the proposed names resembles a circle. Sure, there are less multi-genital characters than there are characters of different genital configurations, but the lack of clarity is still present. Those users are also almost guaranteed not to see your clarifying reply to dba afish or this topic in general.

In my own experience, I have never seen any ambiguity about the definitions of the terms herm or hermaphrodite on modern imageboards or porn games. They have been exclusively used for characters with visibly both male and female genitalia. That contrasts with futa, which you mentioned, that was confusingly used to refer to both herm and gynomorph characters over the years. The average user is also just bad at tagging anything more complex than the basics, and I don't think a rename is going to salvage that. Users would still include the tag even if a character is visibly a gynomorph because they either tag what they know (despite vulva being hidden by balls) or just don't know or understand the term(s) well enough to use any version of it correctly.

So in the past three days 'herm' was added to posts 64 times. It was also removed 39 times. That's a 10:6 add:remove ratio.

In 24 hours 'female' was added 1158 times and removed 60 times. That's a 100:5 add:remove ratio.

That signals that there is significant disagreement among the userbase on how to use 'herm' compared to female.

regsmutt said:
So in the past three days 'herm' was added to posts 64 times. It was also removed 39 times. That's a 10:6 add:remove ratio.

In 24 hours 'female' was added 1158 times and removed 60 times. That's a 100:5 add:remove ratio.

That signals that there is significant disagreement among the userbase on how to use 'herm' compared to female.

Song already kinda addressed this... you can't assume that a mistag is the result of a disagreement of definition and not TWYKing or something like that.

but also, that's not exactly a totally analogous situation, most notably because female dosn't require a character to have visible/apparent genitals in order to be valid where as herm requires both.

in any case, I'm not sure how a high mistag rate is really a good reason to change the tags name to something that's probably even more likely to get mistagged.

dba_afish said:
Song already kinda addressed this... you can't assume that a mistag is the result of a disagreement of definition and not TWYKing or something like that.

but also, that's not exactly a totally analogous situation, most notably because female dosn't require a character to have visible/apparent genitals in order to be valid where as herm requires both.

in any case, I'm not sure how a high mistag rate is really a good reason to change the tags name to something that's probably even more likely to get mistagged.

Idk, 'people won't know it/how to use it' was a common argument against gynomorph, but that tag gets used frequently and it also doesn't have nearly as high a rate (10 add:3 remove) of mistagging as 'herm' does despite a) having the same 'apparent genitalia' requirement and b) being a much, much more uncommon term. I think this shows that when the userbase is given a new term, they can and will learn to use it and use it accurately. I actually suspect that 'learning a new term' might be easier than 'learning an alternative definition of a term.'

I don't necessarily think that a high rate of mistags means a name needs to change, but if more than half the use is mistags that is, at least, worth considering and trying something else.

regsmutt said:
Idk, 'people won't know it/how to use it' was a common argument against gynomorph, but that tag gets used frequently and it also doesn't have nearly as high a rate (10 add:3 remove) of mistagging as 'herm' does despite a) having the same 'apparent genitalia' requirement and b) being a much, much more uncommon term. I think this shows that when the userbase is given a new term, they can and will learn to use it and use it accurately. I actually suspect that 'learning a new term' might be easier than 'learning an alternative definition of a term.'

I don't necessarily think that a high rate of mistags means a name needs to change, but if more than half the use is mistags that is, at least, worth considering and trying something else.

first of all, no, they don't have the same requirements they both require genitals to be apparent but gynomorph only requires the character to appear to have male genitalia and have either no female genitalia or no visible female genitalia, it is significantly "easier" for gynomorph to be correct on a post containing any given angle of a canonically herm chatacter than herm itself is, that's just the result of TWYS existing.

also, counterpoint: gynomorph might actually be less ambiguous than the old name. seeing as the term "dickgirl" could potentially be misconstrued to include herm already, "gynomorph" dosn't have that same issue really because it dosn't sound like anything that's currently in use... at the very least it would appear it gets mistagged less now than it did with its old name: in its last week of existence dickgirl got added 348 times and got removed 27 times, roughly 12.9:1; in the last 7 days (from near the time of posting) gynomorph was added 835 and removed 60, roughly 13.9:1.

I don't think the same could be true about herm -> bigenital because, unlike gynomorph, "bigenital" is a new term that kinda sounds like an existing term since it includes the word "genital".

People calling "herm" a slur in this context is sort of bizarre to me since generally what gets tagged as a herm on this site is a lot closer to the biological definition than anything that can actually happen to humans in real life. A human with a fully functional penis/testicles and vagina/uterus is something that only exists in fiction. The closest real-life analogue involves an individual having an underdeveloped penis/vulva, but at least one, sometimes both of them are entirely non-functional. Something like post #5287736 just does not have any real-life analogue in humans. The closest thing we have to this is… actual biological hermaphroditism as seen in some animals like mollusks. That’s how the term is being used here, not as a slur for transgender individuals or whatever the claim is. Context matters! It’s like… the British slang term for a cigarette is not a slur unless it’s used in the context that makes it one. Same situation here.

Just gonna toss the frisbee that says hermaphrodite is a perfectly legitimate word so I think herm should be that line in the sand of renaming things to appease a few crowds.
Maleherm on the other hand, that can toyed with

spe said:
Context matters! It’s like… the British slang term for a cigarette is not a slur unless it’s used in the context that makes it one. Same situation here.

Preach bruthah
Unfortunately site policy does not reflect this lol
But that's the price we pay for society

In an alternate universe, they used pecs and breasts, and wonder when the tags will get updated to masculine_chest and feminine_chest. Also there is no male/female/herm/maleherm/gynomorph/andromorph/cloaca/clitoris/penis/etc. tags, only external_genitals/internal_genitals/glans and orchids. They constantly get orchids mistagged orchid_(flower). ;)

alphamule said:
In an alternate universe, they used pecs and breasts, and wonder when the tags will get updated to masculine_chest and feminine_chest. Also there is no male/female/herm/maleherm/gynomorph/andromorph/cloaca/clitoris/penis/etc. tags, only external_genitals/internal_genitals/glans and orchids. They constantly get orchids mistagged orchid_(flower). ;)

Man did you get stoned and decide to explore the deeper recesses of the universe?

alphamule said:
In an alternate universe, they used pecs and breasts, and wonder when the tags will get updated to masculine_chest and feminine_chest. Also there is no male/female/herm/maleherm/gynomorph/andromorph/cloaca/clitoris/penis/etc. tags, only external_genitals/internal_genitals/glans and orchids. They constantly get orchids mistagged orchid_(flower). ;)

I can't imagine a system with no gender categories would be very user friendly in any universe where the concept of gender existed in society generally. it might work fine if we only had characters with human adjacent body layouts and gender markers, but it'd get really fucky when you go beyond that.

the most conceptually basic system I could see kinda working would require us to classify species' individual dimorphic features as masculine or feminine and reproductive "importance" as primary, secondary, tertiary.

• primary would be the genitals: anything responsible in the transfer/reception of genetic code from individual animals.
• secondary would be stuff that deals with care of the young/unborn: mostly be mammaries, maybe ovipositors.
• tertiary would be stuff related to sexual selection: plumage, antlers, stuff like that.

kinda just the gender categories broken down to their constituents.

Not to mention the fact that most other languages have gendered descriptors for everything

Was more of a joke as to what possible other ways people could have come up with as tags for their image classifying. I mean, it's technically right, but mutually (well, mostly) incompatible with what we do use. It would probably lead to some tag explosion for the combinations on combo tags, as well.

nin10dope said:
Man did you get stoned and decide to explore the deeper recesses of the universe?

Don't be ridiculous! I am like this, normally!

No, that would just get even more mixed results (I keep getting cboys in my futa searches since the awful gynomorph/andromorph change)
If I want to search futa stuff I don't want maleherms mixed in due to these awful aliases and changes.

Tags are for specificity, the more tags you fuse together to make them ambiguous the worse the site gets.

lunacy2 said:
No, that would just get even more mixed results (I keep getting cboys in my futa searches since the awful gynomorph/andromorph change)
If I want to search futa stuff I don't want maleherms mixed in due to these awful aliases and changes.

Tags are for specificity, the more tags you fuse together to make them ambiguous the worse the site gets.

Have you considered that you're... searching the wrong tags?
futa is aliased to intersex, which comprises of gynomorph, andromorph, herm, and maleherm
You should pick out what you're actually looking for here (likely herm, gynomorph, or both), and search those instead

Nothing has really been "fused together" or made "more ambiguous", quite the opposite

Maybe futa should be aliased to gynomorph
I think it's most common that that's the intended target for people, maybe just slightly more than herm

nin10dope said:
Maybe futa should be aliased to gynomorph
I think it's most common that that's the intended target for people, maybe just slightly more than herm

That tag absolutely sucks. I'm on some other Booru where that and sackless are pretty much the only tags you have to filter with. It often means something very different on different sites so it leads to tag errors on imports.

nin10dope said:
Maybe futa should be aliased to gynomorph
I think it's most common that that's the intended target for people, maybe just slightly more than herm

might lead to more mistags. I'm of half a mind to just disambig it.

Yeah there really isn't a winning solution for this one, huh?
I think it's a case of "people just need to learn other terms"

dba_afish said:
might lead to more mistags. I'm of half a mind to just disambig it.

I'd rather us either leave it where it is (I don't think any definition of it should conflict with intersex?), or disambiguate it, the latter of which would both disrupt tagging and searching, but I think that's for the best to make it clear the tag has no true meaning here

donovan_dmc said:
I'd rather us either leave it where it is (I don't think any definition of it should conflict with intersex?), or disambiguate it, the latter of which would both disrupt tagging and searching, but I think that's for the best to make it clear the tag has no true meaning here

yeah, apparently the futa → intersex in the quick complete isn't enough...

dba_afish said:
yeah, apparently the futa → intersex in the quick complete isn't enough...

It probably is for 99% of users