Here we go again with known characters, genders, tagging what you see, and outside knowledge.

Jazzpaintball mentioned in https://www.e621.net/forum/show/32290 that they were reprimanded for putting male on a number of images. I'm not here to start beef with mods, but to point out that this raises some issues.

The images in question are:
post #180755, post #179767, post #181091 post #159390

As far as I'm concerned, those are all male. No dickgirls or herms in sight. Just a bunch of equines with penises. I thought that to be labeled dickgirl, a character had to display secondary female sexual organs, such as titties. None of those horses seem especially female. Feminine, maybe, so they'd warrant the girly tag. But they look like males. The only way you can call them dickgirls is if you violate TWYS and bring in outside knowledge that those characters ought to be female. Even so, it's irrelevant, because they're already a different gender than their canon gender, so the only way to know if they're a dickgirl rather than just a canonically female character depicted as a male is if there are other defining characteristics. Here it's just a bunch of ponies with penises, making them male.

I note also that the female tag has been added to (and left on) the first two images, where there is no obviously female character. There is, in each instance, one (1) pony with a penis (ruling out "female"), and then one character of ambiguous_gender.

So there seem to be some inconsistencies in our TWYS ruling when it comes to characters with known canon genders.

post #181091 could be argued to be a herm, as she is called "Futashy" in the picture, but it's impossible to know whether she's getting pegged in the ass, or in a vagina. I would be willing to concede hermdom for that image.

Given that Futashy is a main character in what is basically a running comic on tumblr, and how we tag genders of characters in comics, I think it would be fair to tag Futashy pictures from the tumblr they originated from as herm... but in the fourth example given, I would definitely consider Applejack to be male.

But wouldn't that be 'prior knowledge' and not using 'What you see is ....."

The rule isnt perfect, and most of the time we rely purely on "What you see, not what you know" sometimes theirs a bit of a grey area, in cases such as arctica sparkle, futashy, well known herm characters, because theirs always going to be fighting between the people who know the characters, and the people who follow the rules

{Technically those who follow the rules are in the right, despite how "some" artists and character owners seem to think otherwise.

In order the gender tags for those pictures would probably go something like.

{Dick girl, female} {Dick Girl, Ambiguous Gender} {Dick Girl, Female} and {Dick Girl} officially.

I think we should stick completely to the "what you see" rule regardless of prior knowledge. As an image board, if I searched for penis I would want pics that had penis and didn't just imply penis.

My two cents anyways *shrug*

CamKitty said:
I think we should stick completely to the "what you see" rule regardless of prior knowledge. As an image board, if I searched for penis I would want pics that had penis and didn't just imply penis.

My two cents anyways *shrug*

I agree with this.

Then I would like a moderator to give me a green light to do so. I have been scorned for using the "what you see" rule before. I would like to help out tagging more, but I need to make sure that I will not get in trouble for using this rule.

jazzpaintball said:
Then I would like a moderator to give me a green light to do so. I have been scorned for using the "what you see" rule before. I would like to help out tagging more, but I need to make sure that I will not get in trouble for using this rule.

This issue needs more discussion before we can greenlight anything.

Just let me know then. It is not something that I want retribution for and will go after everything in the history of e621, but as I see new posts that are lacking in tags I want to be sure that I can help out and tag without getting reprimanded for it.

Riversyde said:
Given that Futashy is a main character in what is basically a running comic on tumblr, and how we tag genders of characters in comics, I think it would be fair to tag Futashy pictures from the tumblr they originated from as herm

Fair enough.

Princess_Celestia said:
The rule isnt perfect, and most of the time we rely purely on "What you see, not what you know" sometimes theirs a bit of a grey area, in cases such as arctica sparkle, futashy, well known herm characters, because theirs always going to be fighting between the people who know the characters, and the people who follow the rules

{Technically those who follow the rules are in the right, despite how "some" artists and character owners seem to think otherwise.

In order the gender tags for those pictures would probably go something like.

{Dick girl, female} {Dick Girl, Ambiguous Gender} {Dick Girl, Female} and {Dick Girl} officially.

Artica Sparkle has been the poster child for TWYS on the forums. Char has used Artica as the example for: if all you see is tits, don't friggin tag herm. Similarly, if all you see is dick, don't tag other genders.

As for the tags on those pics, I disagree.

I would tag them thusly:
male,ambiguous_gender, because there is a character with a penis and balls but no/none/zero female traits (the "Fluttershy" genderbender) and a character whose face is visible only. There's the hint of maybe some boobs on the rainbow-haired character, so I probably wouldn't argue too hard against female.

male is what I would instinctively put on both of the next two, seeing nothing but a pony with a big ole fuckin horsecock and balls. Seeing "futashy" at the top...fine. It's an in-image reference to the character, and so dickgirl is ok.

But as for the last image? male. That pony is a male. There is a penis. There are testes. There are no breasts, there is not the typical waist-hips ratio of female biology. I know, I know, that's the style, and often ponies drawn to style don't have tits, even if a pussy and anus are added. But the point is, when I see that picture of Applejack, I see a male pony. Male. That's no dickgirl, it's a dude.

the fourth image is herm becauseof facial structure. MLP stallions always have squared facial features, denoting masculinity.

Thiefenz said:
the fourth image is herm becauseof facial structure. MLP stallions always have squared facial features, denoting masculinity.

I think that requires too much specialized knowledge. Not to mention that, as someone who enjoys the show and has done a lot of ponypic tagging here on e621, I also see 'a dude' as RedOctober put it.

Not to mention the fact that 'her' penis is torso-sized... Probably ought to be tagged hyper, but I'm not confident enough to put that tag on myself. That's tangential though.

Thiefenz said:
the fourth image is herm becauseof facial structure. MLP stallions always have squared facial features, denoting masculinity.

But herm doesn't refer to facial structure, only the presence of both sex organs (unlike cuntboy and dickgirl which requires the respective body structures). Also see maleherm, which does define a particular body type.

31h253 said:
I think that requires too much specialized knowledge. Not to mention that, as someone who enjoys the show and has done a lot of ponypic tagging here on e621, I also see 'a dude' as RedOctober put it.

Specialized knowledge isn't applicable, what matters is, does the definition of the tag fit what is visible in the image? This can include secondary sex characteristics, even if they vary from species to species.

ThenIThought said:
Specialized knowledge isn't applicable, what matters is, does the definition of the tag fit what is visible in the image? This can include secondary sex characteristics, even if they vary from species to species.

In this case, the only indication is as Thief said. In the show, males are indicated with a more square face. However, as 31 said, that requires knowledge of the show, not anything that's obvious in that image. It's not a completely invalid argument that the facial structure is in fact a secondary sex characteristic, but I would argue that it's only a characteristic in context of the show, not one that's part of that species.

I've gotten in a few scraps over tagging before. TWYS just makes sense to me. If I search something, I want to see it, not see a character with that specific attribute not visible or otherwise strongly implied.
Ambiguous_gender should reaaaally be used more. IMO, most MLP-character pics all look of same gender to me, yet people still tag male and female. And then bitch about the rule.
I think the TWYS rule should be more advertised so fags will learn to use it. Maybe perma-paste it in the news? Or maybe put a threatening notice over the tag edit box >;3

if this is the case. i would like to see my comment be removed and i will start tagging more of TWYS. It seems to be what most people want and it also seems most appropriate. Thank you everyone for your help and discussion on this subject.