Topic: non-binary

forest1985 said:
clothing as being feminine or masculine is culturally relative and personally subjective; why does wearing pants not get all "female" characters labelled crossdressing, while "male" characters do? why are high heels "feminine" and cowboy boots "masculine"?

body types as masculine and feminine are also subjective and culturally relative, for example a slim, skinny build is more feminine in western cultures, while in the east (specifically, japan, south korea, china and places where those countries are the main cultural imports) it's a beauty standard for all genders. Long hair is seen as more feminine, but in many cultures it is not. Most native american cultures see the hair as an extention of the soul/self, and it is a taboo to cut it, same with some pacific and african cultures. being strong, muscular and whatever is not always masculine; in some cultures it isn't tied to feminine or masculine presentations, and in others it's more feminine.

I mean, yes, at the end of the day all of this stuff is arbitrary social constructs with no objective basis, but we're trying to run an archive categorization system here. How we tag "man in dress" is in fact an important question, because people want to search for it. If you don't like calling that crossdressing, you're welcome to present an alternative, but do need some way of referring to the concept.

I will also note that the "how do we tag based on appearance" question is not a point against the proposed system because appearance based tagging is already done.
The new proposal does not change how we do that, only how often we do it.

And to be honest, we already do it a ton! Most SFW art and a large proportion of NSFW art has at least one character with no visible genitals or breasts which means by the current rules they are tagged based on their general appearance. For the most part the person who uploads a piece of art seems to have little trouble identifying the presentation of characters even across sociocultural boundaries. In the rare cases where someone takes issue with one they can propose a change to the tag and make an argument for it on a case by case basis.

It should also be noted that we do have lore variants for every gender tag, which do not need to follow TWYS and are defined as the "canon gender" of characters. These can fill in the edge cases mentioned where a character's overall appearance is the subject of heated debate or does not clearly reflect their canon gender. Under the new system these lore tags would indirectly gain more legitimacy, because they're no longer playing second fiddle to the "real" gender tags. There are also already some esoteric lore tags like busty_boy for weird situations where the appropriate combination of 'appearance, genitals, breasts' tags may leave out information that certain people find important.

listlesssky said:
What do you propose? Because the only ones i've seen so far are renaming them to shit like "biological sex", a psuedoscientific dogwhistle that's wayyyyy more offensive than labeling people's general presentation.

I also suggested "sexual_presentation" but you keep willfully ignoring that. That's just plain bad faith argument, and frankly insulting bordering on libelous. Instead of accusing me of being a terf, you could ask why one of my suggestions was "biological_sex". But you are clearly arguing in bad faith and assigning malice to anyone who even vaguely questions you.

lust_demon_laz said:
I also suggested "sexual_presentation" but you keep willfully ignoring that.

No, I didn't. I was being intentional when I said "shit like biological sex". All those terms are in the exact same vein, making general references to a character's sex as a distinct category, and all my criticisms of renaming gender to "biological sex" apply to the whole group.
I'll rehash the line of thought quickly:

• A person's sex is medically defined as a combination of dozens of different sexual characteristics which form a general bell curve, and HRT changes many of them.
• This is partially why many trans people identify not only as transgender but transsexual, we are physically changing our sex on a biological level.
• The current gender tags are reductively defined by the hierarchy of "genitals > breasts > appearance".
• Renaming the category to refer to any form of sex ('biological', 'presentation', or whatever other nonsense) without changing how it's defined at all means that now a character's "sex" is the thing being reductively defined by their genitals instead of gender.
• Again, this literally makes nobody happy. If you told the average trans woman she had a "sexual presentation" of male just because she had a dick you would not have a great time.
• Not only is it still psuedoscientific and disrespectful, it leads to absurdities. A trans woman would be categorized as one "sex" in art where a dick is visible and another sex in an alt of that same image where it's hidden by clothes or objects.
• It also keeps the gender (now 'sex') tags as dual-use, referring to genitals half the time and presentation the other half of the time, retaining the whole clusterfuck system that has been criticized to the ends of the earth and back for many reasons not even related to trans stuff.

lust_demon_laz said:
I also suggested "sexual_presentation" but you keep willfully ignoring that. That's just plain bad faith argument, and frankly insulting bordering on libelous. Instead of accusing me of being a terf, you could ask why one of my suggestions was "biological_sex". But you are clearly arguing in bad faith and assigning malice to anyone who even vaguely questions you.

Putting aside the present thread, this describes many of the past threads on this kind of topic. Whatever substance the propositions may have tends to be thoroughly undercut by hostility, paranoid assignment of motives, and in general unreasonable behaviour -- often mainly on the part of the person pushing the proposal.
Whatever reasons (eg. IRL experiences of persecution) they may have for that behaviour, it should be completely unsurprising if people regard this person, and their proposition, with suspicion as a result.

lust_demon_laz said:
I also suggested "sexual_presentation" but you keep willfully ignoring that. That's just plain bad faith argument, and frankly insulting bordering on libelous. Instead of accusing me of being a terf, you could ask why one of my suggestions was "biological_sex". But you are clearly arguing in bad faith and assigning malice to anyone who even vaguely questions you.

I also suggested changing policy to allow artists and/or character owners to request gender/sex tags be removed and locked/replaced with something neutral to prevent misgendering through tag wars. But you're so focused on your own proposal and picking the problematic term (which again, was one of three hat I suggested as possibilities), that you're blind to everything else.

You claim to speak for trans people, yet you're attacking me, an agender trans person (and I've already stated as such in this very thread) for disagreeing with you.

For the record, the reason one of my three suggestions was biological_sex is because I wanted to put multiple options on the table for discussion, and that term is more palatable to transphobes (which there are a lot of on here, and they like to derail conversations). If you actually read my proposal you would see that I only suggested them for the category name, and didn't refer to any of them specifically throughout the rest of my proposal. My preference would be to use sexual_presentation as the new category name.

I look forward to seeing how you'll twist my words this time :3

savageorange said:
Putting aside the present thread, this describes many of the past threads on this kind of topic. Whatever substance the propositions may have tends to be thoroughly undercut by hostility, paranoid assignment of motives, and in general unreasonable behaviour -- often mainly on the part of the person pushing the proposal.
Whatever reasons (eg. IRL experiences of persecution) they may have for that behaviour, it should be completely unsurprising if people regard this person, and their proposition, with suspicion as a result.

It is unfortunate, but very understandable, that these discussions get so heated. I can certainly acknowledge my role in it. It's why I generally avoid the discussions unless they are directly about my identity or culture(s)

lust_demon_laz said:
I also suggested changing policy to allow artists and/or character owners to request gender/sex tags be removed and locked/replaced with something neutral to prevent misgendering through tag wars. But you're so focused on your own proposal and picking the problematic term (which again, was one of three hat I suggested as possibilities), that you're blind to everything else.

You claim to speak for trans people, yet you're attacking me, an agender trans person (and I've already stated as such in this very thread) for disagreeing with you.

For the record, the reason one of my three suggestions was biological_sex is because I wanted to put multiple options on the table for discussion, and that term is more palatable to transphobes (which there are a lot of on here, and they like to derail conversations). If you actually read my proposal you would see that I only suggested them for the category name, and didn't refer to any of them specifically throughout the rest of my proposal. My preference would be to use sexual_presentation as the new category name.

I look forward to seeing how you'll twist my words this time :3

i have a feeling this person thinks they're the only trans person judging by the way they're speaking for all of us. i also think sexual presentation works better as it can include some non-gender categories like twink, feminine, masculine, androgynous, and stuff in a better way.

listlesssky said:
A trans woman would be categorized as one "sex" in art where a dick is visible and another sex in an alt of that same image where it's hidden by clothes or objects.

That goes for every character, not just trans women characters, and will always be a possibility due to TWYS regardless of how the tags are defined. Tags are used based on what we see in an image, and we don't see all of a character in every image, so different images will always have a potential to be tagged differently based on seeing different parts of a character.

A male character can be tagged male in one image because you can see their penis, and in another image be tagged andromorph or female because their penis is fully inside a genital slit that looks like a vulva, and in another image be tagged ambiguous_gender because you can't see their penis or the slit, and their body looks ambiguous. This is how it's always been, and suggestions to improve it introduce more problems than it solves. That doesn't mean it can't be discussed or you can't make suggestions, but taking it personally or as some attack toward trans people when the problems are pointed out doesn't help.

Nah this shit won't fly. Look back through my posts: Find a single time I attacked you personally here. If you can, i'll apologize. If you can't, then you're making baseless personal attacks and derailing the thread, the exact same thing you're baselessly claiming i'm doing.

I criticized your point, I said your accusation of trans terms being "genocidal" played into dangerous historical rhetoric.
I said "biological sex" is a terf dogwhistle, something you clearly agree with as you just admitted outright that you chose it because it's "more palatable to transphobes".
But I never accused you of being a terf or transphobe. Not once. It's wild to accuse me of "libel" while literally making up accusations I never said.

And the same thing just happened again:
You brought up a point, saying I ignored your argument. Did I attack you in response?
No, I clarified that my wording was criticizing your whole set of sex-based proposals, and reiterated my problem with them.

How do you respond? By ignoring everything I said in that response and making personal attacks against me.
There's no criticism of my point, hell you aren't even pointing out specific insults I said, just vaguely claiming that I made them.
Because I didn't, obviously.

Likewise, you accuse me of bad faith while you and savage are practically writing a fanfic making up insane speculations about my personal motives. Savage's reply by their own admission is a call to "regard me with suspicion" based on the actions of people who made previous threads that I have no relation to, the definition of bad faith. I never claimed to speak for all trans people either, and have repeatedly stated that my suggestion is literally just the important bit ripped from dozens of past suggestions from other trans people.
If you have a criticism of my proposal, criticize my damn proposal. Drop the personal attacks.

This is the last time i'm going to reply to personal attacks like this. Cite where I made an actual insult to your person instead of your point, or stop derailing the thread by baselessly accusing me of doing so.

Ok, if you guys can't keep this civil, I'd be more than happy to lock the thread & hand out records like candy. No more insults, no more ad hominems, no more malicious readings of other people's words, no more accusations of someone making malicious readings of other people's words. If you think someone's being intentionally malicious, report them for disruptive behavior & let staff handle it; do not try to handle it yourself. Otherwise, keep it to the substance of the matter at hand. If you don't think someone's response was substantive, then you don't need to respond to it, now do you?

I'd like for there to be some consensus or understanding to be reached here, & for this to be the last thread on this subject. Keep it civil.

listlesssky said:
Likewise, you accuse me of bad faith while you and savage are practically writing a fanfic making up insane speculations about my personal motives. Savage's reply by their own admission is a call to "regard me with suspicion" based on the actions of people who made previous threads that I have no relation to, the definition of bad faith.

It's literally the opposite. I explicitly put consideration of the current thread aside, because I consider questions of bad faith as analogous to invoking Godwin's Law. When I write something like that, I mean it completely literally.

You are simply accusing me of what you do, as you do it. You alternate between writing quite reasonably and logically, and.. writing things like your paragraph above.

I also note that I have not imputed motives to you (hence my explicit exclusion of the current thread). I don't know what your motives are.

watsit said:
A male character can be tagged male in one image because you can see their penis, and in another image be tagged andromorph or female because their penis is fully inside a genital slit that looks like a vulva

Recent example I found post #2593575, 39 changes back and forth
It's good compromise admins being able to lock the tags in disagreements

watsit said:
That goes for every character, not just trans women characters, and will always be a possibility due to TWYS regardless of how the tags are defined.

I agree, we can mitigate most of the problems this causes while retaining TWYS though. Under the new proposal, a feminine character with breasts whose dick is visible sometimes and not others will simply gain or lose a 'penis' tag depending on its visibility. This is perfectly appropriate, because all that tag claims is that there is a penis, it doesn't extrapolate anything else from that.

But under the current system, not only do they gain or lose a 'penis' tag, they also flip all the way from 'gynomorph' to 'female'. This also means any gender based combo_tags also must flip, resulting in a huge mess that could totally be avoided.

After the chaos above, I think it's worth it to reiterate and summarize the general proposals for clarity:

Instead of one 'gender' tag, we use genital / breast / general appearance tags, which together cover all possibilities of the current system without most of its limitations.

The argument for it is:

• Under TWYS we must classify purely based on visuals, which is inherently imperfect
• TWYS is never going away, as per the word of the admins
• Therefore we should use the least-flawed TWYS-compatible solution
• A trio of Genital/Breast/Appearance tags instead of gender is the least-flawed TWYS-compatible solution because:
• We already have two thirds of them, and gender is already tagged based on appearance in many cases, so there's far less work to do than some other proposals
• Because gender is already tagged purely based on appearance in many situations, we know we can classify based on appearance just fine
• It eliminates the double-use of current gender tags, being defined by genitals and breasts in some contexts vs. general appearance in others
• It eliminates the egregious amounts of gender + appearance combo-tags, which stem from limitations of that double-use
• All three tags are totally independent of each other and so every combo is valid, unlike the current system where 'gender' depends on redundant info that's also provided by genital and breast tags
• It allows for all the functionality of the current system, and much more
• Filtering for a specific category requires only three keywords instead of the current system where you must - five other gender categories
• It eliminates misgendering entirely because none of the three tags say anything about gender
• Misjudging appearance is far less bad and less frequent than misgendering based on genitals
• The gender lore tags still exist for situations that call for them or characters who are hotly debated, as do special use lore tags like busty_boy
• Variants of this have been proposed dozens of times in the past. Most of those were shot down due to unneeded devils in the details, so this version is stripped down to the bare minimum.

The arguments against other proposed solutions are:

• They are not TWYS-compatible (this is the most common issue!)
• They don't address the double-use problem of the current gender tags, causing confusion and mistagging, as well as the absurdity of trying to explain to people that "gender" tags often have nothing to do with actual gender
• Simply renaming the gender tags (whether to a 'sex' related phrase or any other unrelated term) would not address the double-use problem, the root of the issues. It would also still result in classifying trans people in bizarre and generally unwanted ways based on genitals (ex as "male sexed"), and cause contradictions like a single character's categorization changing wildly based on whether or not their genitals are visible in a specific post.
• Keeping the current system will cause complaints from trans people to continue forever, with an increasing number of artists DNPing as they learn about it. I personally know many artists who i'd love to archive but would not approve their works being posted here because of its current gender policy.
• Janitors and above have discussed potential future changes such as per-character tagging, which the proposed system is far more compatible with than the current one (which relies on an egregious number of combo_tags)

If there's any criticism or flaw with any of this i'd love to hear it. But after digging through pages and pages of old proposals I simply have not seen a more viable option that prevents misgendering, untangles the knot of the current gender system, and preserves TWYS all at the same time.

listlesssky said:
After the chaos above, I think it's worth it to reiterate and summarize the general proposals for clarity:
---

The concept is good, just have to spitball ideas searching multiple characters like you mentioned.
That the search queries don't become something burdensome like
[penis/no_breasts/femme] x [penis/no_breasts/masc]

Unless the search query was entirely reworked to check boxes and drop-down menus
That would also require per-character tagging

You again left out the other half of my proposal, which is to allow artists and/or character owners to request gender and/or sex tags be locked out and/or have specific ones locked on their characters

I feel that that would both prevent misgendering, as well as minimize the amount of friction for the majority of users, and decrease the amount of tags that will need to be aliased

I am not saying it's a perfect solution, but I believe it is at least a significant step in the right direction that minimizes technical strain on the site itself, and the sites physical infrastructure

tiena said:
The concept is good, just have to spitball ideas searching multiple characters like you mentioned.
That the search queries don't become something burdensome like
[penis/no_breasts/femme] x [penis/no_breasts/masc]

Unless the search query was entirely reworked to check boxes and drop-down menus
That would also require per-character tagging

Per-character tagging would be awesome, but it is not required to replicate the current functionality with this new system. That's the power of the tags being independent!
For example, the query you used there could be rewritten as "penis masc femme -vulva -breasts"
This works because masc/femme and breasts/'lack of a breasts tag' are mutually exclusive on a single character, which means you can search for duos with any combo as well. Any given character can only have one appearance tag, and either have breasts or they don't.
The only one that isn't exclusive is genitals since herms exist, but that can be solved by simply leaving a 'herm' tag intact which is not mutually exclusive with penis/vulva, and which is defined as "this character has both" with no implications about other qualities like breasts. And speaking of those, it'd be a good idea to redefine 'flat_chested' to not be limited to females etc, as this would simplify filtering out all characters with no breasts via a - operator.

Any duo combination can be searched for like this. If both characters share a trait, then include that trait and - the opposite trait. If they differ on a trait, include them both. That's all!
It's basically giving us three 'bits' worth of information to search with whereas the previous gender tag was providing only two.

As another example, you could search for art of only characters who would be "male" under the current system via "-vulva -breasts". Far far simpler than the current query of "male -female -gynomorph -andromorph -herm -maleherm"
And you could refine it even further than the current system allows by going "masc -vulva -breast", since the current system means gender tags tell you 0 appearance info if genitals are in the frame, meaning characters who look like women are included in "male" results just because they have a dick and no breasts.

lust_demon_laz said:
You again left out the other half of my proposal, which is to allow artists and/or character owners to request gender and/or sex tags be locked out and/or have specific ones locked on their characters

This would be a good change, potentially an even better one, and I saw similar proposals before while looking up past threads. The problem is that it's explicitly non-TWYS, and the admins have been incredibly stringent on insisting nothing that breaks TWYS will be allowed in the foreseeable future. Lore tags are the only exception we get, and they failed to solve most of the problems.

lust_demon_laz said:
allow artists and/or character owners to request gender and/or sex tags be locked out and/or have specific ones locked on their characters

Others could still draw the character gender bent, and gender/anatomy aren't always present in the image.
_(lore) tags maybe, but do they need to be locked?
You can already write _(lore) tags and no-one is allowed to change them to wrong ones.

listlesssky said:
...

On surface your proposed system lgtm.
Could make this into its own post. There still could be oversights, but nothing is unsolvable and edge-cases can be covered in wiki/help pages.

Even if there probably has been many similar posts, it just shows this is still an ongoing debate.

Then it's just a question whether the pros outweigh the amount of work to change the current system.
Also, it's easier to get small changes going, so think if the problem can be split into multiple stages

listlesssky said:
If there's any criticism or flaw with any of this i'd love to hear it.

I'm sure it's been pointed out already but without per-character tagging this would fully remove the ability to filter characters currently tagged andromorph/gynomorph out of group images containing a male and a female.

tiena said:
Others could still draw the character gender bent, and gender/anatomy aren't always present in the image.
_(lore) tags maybe, but do they need to be locked?
You can already write _(lore) tags and no-one is allowed to change them to wrong ones.

That is a good point, and honestly I don't really have a solution for those possibilities other than perhaps not requiring male/female/etc tags on posts. Though that's also not a perfect solution.

Another consideration for searching is the explicit combo tags ex male/male (typically searched by people who want to see gay sex (and many people still seem to be upset by the loss of the gay_sex and other like tags)) how would you search for that under the other proposal?

tiena said:
On surface your proposed system lgtm.
Could make this into its own post. There still could be oversights, but nothing is unsolvable and edge-cases can be covered in wiki/help pages.

Even if there probably has been many similar posts, it just shows this is still an ongoing debate.

Then it's just a question whether the pros outweigh the amount of work to change the current system.
Also, it's easier to get small changes going, so think if the problem can be split into multiple stages

Cool! Yeah one potential compromise that splits it into stages could be to first add those dedicated 'appearance' tags without removing anything else. This would render 'gender' vestigial, since all three of its components would be covered by another independent tag with none of the baggage. And then gender could be removed at a later date.

magnuseffect said:
I'm sure it's been pointed out already but without per-character tagging this would fully remove the ability to filter characters currently tagged andromorph/gynomorph out of group images containing a male and a female.

In its most simple form it would, yes. This could be fixed with the addition of a "normal" tag representing 'andromorph or gynomorph', i'm not sure what a good name would be though. Probably not just "morph"...

Some people might not be in favor of solving it though, ex. "why should trans men + trans women be filtered out of male + female sets when they are male and female"?
I'm not going to make a value-judgment, just point out that that this new system allows for 'solving' that issue with a new tag or intentionally leaving it unsolved, whatever the consensus may be.

One related 'pro' is that the new system would enable filtering based on appearance in a way that is literally impossible right now, which I consider that a worthy tradeoff in either case. Ex. as previously mentioned, right now "male" has tons of extremely feminine characters who happen to have a dick and no visible breasts. Vice versa with female, though to a lesser degree since transmascs are less common here. 'masc' and 'femme' lets you filter based on appearance in that situation where gender doesn't let you. And we could also add other currently impossible appearance categories like 'androgynous' for even more precision.

listlesssky said:
I agree, we can mitigate most of the problems this causes while retaining TWYS though. Under the new proposal, a feminine character with breasts whose dick is visible sometimes and not others will simply gain or lose a 'penis' tag depending on its visibility. This is perfectly appropriate, because all that tag claims is that there is a penis, it doesn't extrapolate anything else from that.

Unfortunately the penis tag doesn't say anything about who has a penis, as tags aren't associated with specific characters.
post #6278706 post #6294105 post #6219359
will all have penis tagged and be completely ambiguous about who it's referring to, that the current system easily distinguishes. When more than one character appears in a post, I'd argue it's more important to specify who these features (penis, vulva, breasts) apply to, more than the presence of the features themselves. If someone's straight and looking for male/female porn, it's best if they can distinguish
post #6290539
from
post #1952195
Or if someone that wants to see gay male stuff, the mere presence of breasts doesn't stop this
post #5634345
from being two males making out.

watsit said:
Unfortunately the penis tag doesn't say anything about who has a penis

lust_demon_laz said:
Another consideration for searching is the explicit combo tags ex male/male (typically searched by people who want to see gay sex (and many people still seem to be upset by the loss of the gay_sex and other like tags)) how would you search for that under the other proposal?

These questions are essentially the same question, so i'll answer them together.

This change would allow even more powerful duo searching/filtering than exists now. And duo gender combo tags also become totally unnecessary!
I actually consider this a huge benefit of the system, since many gender combo tags are very unwieldy and inconsistently tagged. I talked about this a bit above, but it got buried so i'll restate and summarize it here.

Under this system, the old male/male becomes "penis -vulva -breasts -solo"
Except we can do even better: We can filter out feminine 'male' characters who have a dick and breasts by adding 'masc', something that was impossible before!

So the new and improved male/male becomes "penis -vulva -breasts masc -fem -solo"
Male/female++ becomes "penis vulva breasts masc fem -solo".
Female/female++ becomes "vulva -penis breasts -masc fem -solo"
Gynomorph/male++ becomes "penis -vulva breasts masc fem -solo"

Any duo combination can be searched for like this. The general rule is this: If both characters share a trait, then include that trait in the query and - the traits neither of them have. If the duo differs on a trait, include both their traits. That's all!
This works because of mutual exclusivity: any single character can only have one appearance tag and either has breasts or doesn't.

There are three caveats I know so far where we might need the help of a "normal" tag to cleanly replicate old behavior:

• We will need a to keep a herm tag if we want to enable filtering/searching for characters with multiple genitals, since genitals aren't mutually exclusive. For this purpose it should just become a normal non-gender tag that says nothing except "this character has a dick and vagina".
• Flat_chested should probably become universally applicable, since there's no other way to - not having breasts.
• As Magnus pointed out we would need a normal tag for the general category of 'andromorph or gynomorph', since there's no other way to tell the difference between a trans man + woman couple vs a cis man + woman couple. They both have the exact same total combination of traits, just with different ones on different characters. I don't know if everyone will agree that this is a problem, but if they do then it does have a solution.

All of these caveats go away entirely if we do get a per-character tagging schema, but I am not holding my breath for that.
A new tag isn't a huge burden, especially since in all 3 cases these changes could be auto-applied via scripting:

• All maleherms get the redefined herm
• All current gender tags that are defined as having no breasts get the generalized flat_chested
• All gynomorphs and andromorphs can get the new [NAME TBD] non-gender tag

With trios this becomes less powerful, though not less than the current system. Even without this proposal there's no way to allow 'complete' search accuracy for trios without per-character tagging. Worst comes to worst we could simply keep a few 'shorthand' combo tags for commonly searched combinations (ex. two guys and a gal).

"penis -vulva -breasts -solo" is pretty clunky imho; plus it excludes any group shots that might have someone with breasts in them (like a public setting, or multi-gender orgy off the top of my head). Replacing a single established tag with a 4 tag combination is going to get a massive amount of complaints (and I personally think it will make the site more obtuse to use for novice users)

lust_demon_laz said:
"penis -vulva -breasts -solo" is pretty clunky imho; plus it excludes any group shots that might have someone with breasts in them (like a public setting, or multi-gender orgy off the top of my head). Replacing a single established tag with a 4 tag combination is going to get a massive amount of complaints (and I personally think it will make the site more obtuse to use for novice users)

I'd argue it's far less clunky than the real way to search for just male art right now, which is the ridiculous:
"male -female -gynomorph -andromorph -herm -maleherm -solo".

Male/male is not tagged on anywhere near all the works it's applicable to, so if you're searching for a somewhat niche query this is often mandatory to not miss half the results you're looking for.

Also, if we're being real 95% of users looking for gay art can just use "-fem" to get results that mostly all look like guys, which is the primary thing gay men tend to care about. It doesn't have to be complex unless people want it to be.

Male/male also inherently excludes 'andromorphs', many of which are trans dudes that many gay men want included in their results. There is no simple way to include them in a male/male search though except the even more ridiculous " ~male/male ~andromorph/male ~andromorph/andromorph", and even that effort won't get you a fraction of the real results because the latter two are so undertagged.

Nor is there a way for gay men to exclude the tons of feminine women who are tagged 'male' because of their anatomy...

listlesssky said:
Under this system, the old male/male becomes "penis -vulva -breasts -solo"

That would exclude stuff like
post #6294008 post #5634345
because they don't show a penis and/or shows breasts, despite the male/male pairing.

listlesssky said:
Except we can do even better: We can filter out feminine 'male' characters who have a dick and breasts by adding 'masc', something that was impossible before!

So the new and improved male/male becomes "penis -vulva -breasts masc -fem -solo"

Wouldn't that also filter out a number of femboys, who have a penis and no breasts/vulva?
post #6275566 post #5968693
is still relevant to male/male results despite one or more looking more 'fem' than 'masc'.

listlesssky said:
Male/female++ becomes "penis vulva breasts masc fem -solo".

That would include stuff like
post #1952195
which is not male/female and likely not what people looking for male/female want to see. It would also exclude stuff like
post #6294613
because a vulva isn't visible (male/female -vulva has a lot of results).

listlesssky said:
Female/female++ becomes "vulva -penis breasts -masc fem -solo"

Would exclude
post #6291441 (female/female -vulva also has a lot of results)
post #4886764 (female/female tomboy the reverse of the femboy issue)

listlesssky said:
Gynomorph/male++ becomes "penis -vulva breasts masc fem -solo"

Would erroneously include
post #6294166 (male/female -vulva)
post #6150688 (gynomorph/female tomboy)

listlesssky said:
Any duo combination can be searched for like this. The general rule is this: If both characters share a trait, then include that trait in the query and - the traits neither of them have. If the duo differs on a trait, include both their traits. That's all!
This works because of mutual exclusivity: any single character can only have one appearance tag and either has breasts or doesn't.

That only works if you can guarantee all parts are visible on every character. But as shown, there's many instances where body parts can be hidden and thus not apply, throwing off the results. Male characters looking more 'fem' (femboy) and female characters looking more 'masc' (tomboy) throws another wrench into this since you can't know who is 'masc' or who is 'fem'. Or androgynous, young, or feral characters, who may not look particularly 'masc' or 'fem'. Adding a third character introduces further problems where body parts or body types exist but are separate from the desired character combination. Then you get into the issue of bisexual sexual activity:
post #6205141 (MMF)
post #6151950 (FFM)
as separate from threesomes more generally
post #6293153 (MFM)
post #6294202 (FMF)

As it is, we lack tags for M/F/M and F/M/F groupings that people have asked for, and while we do have mmf_threesome and ffm_threesome, it's questionable if they're going to stay. male/male and female/female, as they currently are, are very important to help sort this stuff out.

And finally, I'll leave off with orgy:
post #6233810
post #6227454
post #6047900
post #4278446
I can't even begin to think how you could separate out male/female, male/male, female/female, and the others existing in a given post when everything's on the table (sometimes literally).

honestly I feel like the best way to show the issues would be to try to play speed621.xyz without any of the gendered tags.

specifically with end posts you get from this search.

forest1985 said:
The bulk update request #13678 is pending approval.

create alias nonbinary_penetrated (41) -> nonbinary_(lore) (23339)
create alias male/nonbinary (25) -> invalid_tag (0)
create alias nonbinary_death (9) -> nonbinary_(lore) (23339)
create alias muscular_nonbinary (6) -> nonbinary_(lore) (23339)
create alias female/nonbinary (5) -> invalid_tag (0)
create alias dominant_nonbinary (5) -> nonbinary_(lore) (23339)
create alias pregnant_nonbinary (4) -> nonbinary_(lore) (23339)
create alias pantsless_nonbinary (3) -> nonbinary_(lore) (23339)
create alias smaller_nonbinary (3) -> nonbinary_(lore) (23339)
create alias shirtless_nonbinary (3) -> nonbinary_(lore) (23339)
create alias gynomorph/nonbinary (1) -> invalid_tag (0)
create alias intersex_penetrating_nonbinary (1) -> invalid_tag (0)
create alias gynomorph_penetrating_nonbinary (1) -> gynomorph_penetrating (39867)
create alias intersex/nonbinary (1) -> invalid_tag (0)
create alias mostly_nude_nonbinary (1) -> nonbinary_(lore) (23339)
create implication nonbinary_scarf (1) -> nonbinary_pride_colors (719)
create implication nonbinary_man_pride_colors (1) -> nonbinary_pride_colors (719)

Reason: nonbinary tags because i love nonbinary people

Watsit already said it but I don't see them changed yet so just to make sure...

create alias male/nonbinary (25) -> invalid_tag (0) create alias female/nonbinary (5) -> invalid_tag (0) create alias gynomorph/nonbinary (1) -> invalid_tag (0) create alias intersex/nonbinary (1) -> invalid_tag (0)

These should be aliased to the first gender of each tag. For example, alias male/nonbinary -> male
Except for intersex tags (intersex_penetrating_nonbinary, intersex/nonbinary) since they would interfere with Donovan's BUR

If I were you, I'd rather remove those 2 tags manually and exclude from your BUR.

watsit said:
That would exclude stuff like
post #6294008 post #5634345
because they don't show a penis and/or shows breasts, despite the male/male pairing.

Wouldn't that also filter out a number of femboys, who have a penis and no breasts/vulva?

Nope! In the first case, sfw stuff like that could be filtered for by just searching for 'masc' instead of 'penis'. And if a femboy would be tagged male under the current system, they would be masc under the new one as well. The queries I gave are just examples, you can easily tweak them to find any specific combo of genitals, breasts, and appearance you're looking for.

I also feel the need to reemphasize: The 'male' tag is already applied based on appearance for sfw drawings, so nothing would change there. Femboys are currently tagged just fine, even without genitals or 'lack of breasts' visible. Taggers have no issue telling the difference between someone with a masc overall appearance who is simply wearing feminine clothes vs someone with a feminine overall appearance.

Many questions are essentially of the form "How would appearance-based tagging handle [case that is already often handled by appearance-based gender tagging]", and my response to all of them is that nothing is changing about how we tag based on appearance, we're just changing it from half the time to all the time. So if there are criticisms or concerns about the way we tag based on appearance, those are unrelated to this proposal and should probably be their own thread.

watsit said:
[Includes/Excludes comparisons]

Most of these are the caveats I already discussed (in specific most stem from -flat_chested not being generally applicable, or from lack of a tag defined as 'masc dude with a pussy'/'fem person with a dick').
Those are fixable, they just require the updates I mentioned.

There are a few edge cases that would shift categories slightly. However, that's intentional: Most of those shifts are important corrections such as extremely feminine trans women showing up in 'male' because they don't have breasts, who would now properly be tagged 'fem' 'penis' 'flat_chested'. I really cannot emphasize how often those cases happen, or how burdensome it is to need to - or ~ five different huge gender categories all the time because so many critical labels like male/male are massively undertagged.

watsit said:
[Trio issues]

I agree, trio searching right now is hacky and painful, and this new system would not fix that. It's not designed to fix every single problem on the whole site though, nor could it ever do so. Fixing precise combination searches for trio and larger, whether gender combinations or any other tag combinations, will require more significant changes even if we left gender tagging as-is.

As I said before, I see no issue with leaving some 'vestigial' trio tags around in the meantime to help bridge the gap to a real solution like per-character tagging. Hell, some of them could even just get renamed to masc/masc/fem or whatever other equivalent.

listlesssky said:

Christ, this is somehow even worse. Not only does this not solve the double-use issue, these dogwhistle term choices are definitely edging over from ignorance to malice. Despite what terfs might say, "biological" or "physical sex" is not a coherent category whatsoever. Your endocrine system is the mechanism by which nearly all sex characteristics are controlled, and going on HRT changes it which changes them. The few exceptions can be changed by surgery.

This also has the extremely funny result of classifying a trans woman pre-bottom surgery as "biologically male" which would piss off trans people, but then classifying her as "biologically female" after bottom surgery (and in any picture where her dick isn't visible) which would piss off transphobes. We love "compromise" that just pisses off and fucks over absolutely everyone.

You're in a public forum where people are sharing their opinions and we expect a certain level of decorum, even if they might not be aware of terminology issues. People come from all over and can go their whole lives without understanding certain situations. Don't assume the worst about others; instead, inform and correct them without belittling.

listlesssky said:
Nope! In the first case, sfw stuff like that could be filtered for by just searching for 'masc' instead of 'penis'. And if a femboy would be tagged male under the current system, they would be masc under the new one as well.

So it's just renaming male to "masc" (and female to "fem")? One of the points of femboys is that they don't present masculine, they are males that present feminine. This would make "masc" and "fem" very prone to confusion and misuse, to say stuff like
post #6292982 post #6293080 post #6294950
should be tagged "masc" and not "fem", and
post #6001622
should be tagged "fem" and not "masc".

And if I'm understanding right, a trans woman character with a gynomorph body that works at presenting feminine, who has their breasts/chest out of view or obscured and only their penis/bulge visible (visually indistinguishable from a male-bodied character):
post #5954886 post #4531414 post #2427837
would also be tagged "masc"? On top of the added confusion, I have a hard time believing that would be better for people who already feel their trans characters are being misgendered. They are free to correct me on that point, though.

listlesssky said:
Many questions are essentially of the form "How would appearance-based tagging handle [case that is already often handled by appearance-based gender tagging]"

No, the questions are essentially how tagging individual features (penis, vulva, etc) can be a functional substitute for the information conveyed by the current pairing tags. And how it will improve tagging for trans characters who have gynomorph, andromorph, etc, bodies that have parts out of view (or they're otherwise indistinguishable from what's currently tagged as male-bodied or female-bodied against their identity).

listlesssky said:
I agree, trio searching right now is hacky and painful, and this new system would not fix that. It's not designed to fix every single problem on the whole site though, nor could it ever do so.

It's not an issue that the proposed system isn't fixing it, it's an issue that it seems to be making it significantly worse. I gave examples where your replacement searches fail to capture expected pairings and includes pairings that's not expected, due to the individual feature tags missing key information about what belongs to who, that adding a third character or more makes these new ambiguities more pervasive.