Disclaimer: I know that this has been brought up before. But it is my single biggest gripe with the tags on this site, and I think it deserves another discussion. I'll try to explain why.

As it stands, there is currently no way to search for (human/anthro)_on_feral such that you can specify the sex of the feral compared to the sex of the human or anthro. This is, to my mind, a major problem.

Most people who I've talked to about this have strong preferences one way or another. Someone who's looking for female human/anthro and male animal, for instance, is not the same sort of person who'd like female animal and male human/anthro.

Now, I know not everyone who has an interest in feral art is necessarily a zoophile. But, it's worth addressing from that angle, because it raises a rather strong point. The research I've seen seems to indicate that zoophilia is most similar to a sexual orientation. Which means I can draw you an analogy for why this tag distinction is important. Imagine, for a moment, that we didn't have male/male or female/female tags. Instead, we had the "homosexuality" tag, which encompassed them both, and furthermore, there was no way to distinguish between the two while searching or blacklisting. That would clearly be a problem with tags. I posit that it is just as big of a problem to not have gender-distinguishing tags for the (human/anthro)_on_feral tags (at least, for the people whose interests that is relevant to).

So, though it has been proposed before, I propose once more, three tags, which would, I think, mostly solve the issue:

male_on_feral (implies male, bestiality)
female_on_feral (implies female, bestiality)
intersex_on_feral (implies intersex, bestiality)

I think, combined with the existing orientation tags, this would work in most cases.

Two anticipated objections:

"We try to avoid gender-specific tags"

Yes, but that's why I drew the orientation analogy. I think this is a special case, in the same way as female/female, intersex/male, etc., are still valid tags.

"This would be a lot of work"

Yes it will. So I offer the only thing I can: If you want, I'll take up this project myself. I think I can get the entire bestiality tag converted eventually. Fairly quickly, relatively speaking, if anyone else decided to help, but that would, as I just said, not be necessary.

So there you go. My objections, arguments, and offer. Like I said, I know it's been discussed before, but to my mind, we haven't actually resolved it, so I think it should be discussed again.

Clawdragons said:
male_on_feral (implies male, bestiality)
female_on_feral (implies female, bestiality)
intersex_on_feral (implies intersex, bestiality)

Why stop there?
People might also be interested in the feral's sex => 9 tags

"We try to avoid gender-specific tags"

Well, a fair amount of users are utilizing smaller_male, larger_male, smaller_female, larger_female, smaller_intersex, and larger_intersex tags in conjunction with size_difference to find specific pairings.

Munkelzahn said:
Why stop there?
People might also be interested in the feral's sex => 9 tags

Used in conjunction with orientation tags, those should help find specific pairings.

male_on_feral + gay = male animal
male_on_feral + straight = female animal
female_on_feral + lesbian = female animal
female_on_feral + straight = male animal
intersex_on_feral + intersex_on_male = male animal
etc.

_
On the note of splitting the bestiality tag, I'm going to shamelessly plug my thread on a similar subject regarding the tag: https://e621.net/forum/show/166210

Munkelzahn said:
Why stop there?
People might also be interested in the feral's sex => 9 tags

Pretty much what chdgs said:

chdgs said:
Used in conjunction with orientation tags, those should help find specific pairings.

male_on_feral + gay = male animal
male_on_feral + straight = female animal
female_on_feral + lesbian = female animal
female_on_feral + straight = male animal
intersex_on_feral + intersex_on_male = male animal
etc.

It's possible to determine the feral's sex by using the various orientation tags. I thought it would be better to have a "minimal" solution, so that only a few tags would need to be added and remembered, and it would make searching easier and blacklisting easier.

Clawdragons said:
It's possible to determine the feral's sex by using the various orientation tags. I thought it would be better to have a "minimal" solution, so that only a few tags would need to be added and remembered, and it would make searching easier and blacklisting easier.

Clawdragons said:
male_on_feral (implies male, bestiality)
female_on_feral (implies female, bestiality)
intersex_on_feral (implies intersex, bestiality)

I agree with most of this. Though, I think leaving off the bestiality implication might be a good idea since it seems logical to tag things like "male [feral] on feral" with male_on_feral.

parasprite said:
I agree with most of this. Though, I think leaving off the bestiality implication might be a good idea since it seems logical to tag things like "male [feral] on feral" with male_on_feral.

I'm not sure. We already have a feral_on_feral tag, so having the male_on_feral tag apply to feral_on_feral pairings would seem pointless - you already could get much the same results with feral_on_feral + male. I think that including feral on feral would sort of dilute the purpose of the tag, but I also recognize that to do it the way I think would be best might be a little anti-intuitive and prone to mistagging.

please do this

i was actually thinking about something like this

chdgs said:
On the note of splitting the bestiality tag, I'm going to shamelessly plug my thread on a similar subject regarding the tag: https://e621.net/forum/show/166210

I sorta missed this at first but rereading this topic I saw it. That's a sensible. +1 to that.

Also, Parasprite, was that a "go ahead and start" for me? Or not yet? I'm not sure entirely if you're saying that it seems like a good idea, do it, or, it seems like a good idea, but let's talk it out more and decide.

chdgs said:
On the note of splitting the bestiality tag, I'm going to shamelessly plug my thread on a similar subject regarding the tag: https://e621.net/forum/show/166210

bestiality -> interspecies deleted
human_on_feral -> interspecies approved

Clawdragons said:

Also, Parasprite, was that a "go ahead and start" for me? Or not yet? I'm not sure entirely if you're saying that it seems like a good idea, do it, or, it seems like a good idea, but let's talk it out more and decide.

I just meant that I'd expect anybody trying to keep feral_on_feral out of these tags would be an uphill battle, and probably not worth the extra effort (particularly since x_on_feral -feral_on_feral would probably be just as reliable).

That being said, if you want to start, go for it. The project is pretty non-destructive (easy to undo) and I think we might be able to use it as a sort of trial run to see how well gender_on_form tags work in practice.

parasprite said:
bestiality -> interspecies deleted
human_on_feral -> interspecies approved

I just meant that I'd expect anybody trying to keep feral_on_feral out of these tags would be an uphill battle, and probably not worth the extra effort (particularly since x_on_feral -feral_on_feral would probably be just as reliable).

That being said, if you want to start, go for it. The project is pretty non-destructive (easy to undo) and I think we might be able to use it as a sort of trial run to see how well gender_on_form tags work in practice.

Multi-part arguments for tag implications and aliases, as well as metatags and modifier use (-male, ~male, etc.). This is what we need to solve a good number of mistagging on e6.

parasprite said:
bestiality -> interspecies deleted
human_on_feral -> interspecies approved

Cool beans. Thanks!

Do we even need the bestiality tag anymore, now that the various x_on_feral tags exist?

There's always user arguments about what exactly counts as bestiality. Some insist that bestiality should only be tagged for human_on_feral (not anthro), some think that human_on_anthro should count as bestiality, or that human_on_feral isn't always bestiality (in case of sapient ferals, such as MLP), etc. And then there's the arguments about how bestiality and zoophilia are different, which leads to users trying to remove the bestiality tag. Those require constant cleanup.

I just don't know what purpose it serves anymore. You can get the same search results with anthro_on_feral and human_on_feral, depending on your preference.

Genjar said:
Do we even need the bestiality tag anymore, now that the various x_on_feral tags exist?

There's always user arguments about what exactly counts as bestiality. Some insist that bestiality should only be tagged for human_on_feral (not anthro), some think that human_on_anthro should count as bestiality, or that human_on_feral isn't always bestiality (in case of sapient ferals, such as MLP), etc. And then there's the arguments about how bestiality and zoophilia are different, which leads to users trying to remove the bestiality tag. Those require constant cleanup.

I just don't know what purpose it serves anymore. You can get the same search results with anthro_on_feral and human_on_feral, depending on your preference.

I don't necessarily have a problem with the removal of the bestiality tag. But there would have to be some major cleanup of the bestiality tag first. There are a huge number of posts which are not tagged with anthro_on_feral or human_on_feral, which should be, and we wouldn't want to invalidate or alias it prior to that cleanup.

I'm trying to work on that cleanup as I go along with this project. Though I've missed a few, I'm sure.

Also, unrelated to that, these edits are taking way longer than I expected. Not discouraged, by any means. I just hope at some point in this project that I can get updated to privileged or something. Tag scripts would make certain sections of this go so, so, so much faster. Hah.

Genjar said:
Do we even need the bestiality tag anymore, now that the various x_on_feral tags exist?

Probably not. I think deprecating it might be a good idea at this point.

Clawdragons said:

Also, unrelated to that, these edits are taking way longer than I expected. Not discouraged, by any means. I just hope at some point in this project that I can get updated to privileged or something. Tag scripts would make certain sections of this go so, so, so much faster. Hah.

From experience, you can pseudo-tag script by using "edit" mode on the index page with copy, click, control/command+v (paste), enter. With some well-tailored searches you can get huge chunks of tagging done with little effort. For instance, vaginal penetration -anal -cunnilingus -vaginal_penetration would give a high hit rate for missing vaginal_penetration tags are easy to verify by thumbnail alone.

Just be sure to copy a space on either side of your pseudo-tag script (e.g., " vaginal_penetration " not "vaginal_penetration") to keep your paste from running into other tags.

parasprite said:
Probably not. I think deprecating it might be a good idea at this point.

From experience, you can pseudo-tag script by using "edit" mode on the index page with copy, click, control/command+v (paste), enter. With some well-tailored searches you can get huge chunks of tagging done with little effort. For instance, vaginal penetration -anal -cunnilingus -vaginal_penetration would give a high hit rate for missing vaginal_penetration tags are easy to verify by thumbnail alone.

Just be sure to copy a space on either side of your pseudo-tag script (e.g., " vaginal_penetration " not "vaginal_penetration") to keep your paste from running into other tags.

I wouldn't be against that, but we'll see how you do with tagging first. :P

I always forget that there's an edit mode in the index page. Otherwise I've been doing pretty much what you said, except, obviously, tailored for my own project. male/male duo bestiality -male_on_feral is pretty much guaranteed to return something which needs the male_on_feral tag, except in the case of the picture being mistagged or a picture with multiple scenes or images.

Qmannn said:
I never thought I'd be posting in one of these types of topics again.

Anyway, while I'm happy that this issue has finally been sorted out, I feel the need to ask why something like this hasn't happened for the human_on_anthro tag.

I get that there is far greater diversity amongst images of this kind than those involving bestiality and this may be getting a bit too close to those gender specific species tags that were cleaned up a few years back, but human/humanoid centric images (sometimes including lone elf characters with a realistic skin tones) are very common on this predominantly furry booru and there's no way to even attempt to determine the sex of a human outside of the use of the animal_genitalia, anatomically_correct, and humanoid_penis tags nor guarantee it without using the duo and a same sex tag simultaneously.

Speaking of humanoids, where would they fit if something were done about this? There are a lot of images that involve them and there seems to be a lot of underutilized variants of the humanoid_on_* tags. Would they receive similar treatment or would searches for humanoids use the same tags as those for humans in this instance so things don't become overcomplicated, particularly when distinguishing between their human partners and anthro partners?

Also, I apologize if starting a new topic would have been more appropriate.

I think you're fine, actually, because this is something I've been meaning to bring up. You see up earlier where I said that I wanted "male on feral" and "female on feral" to exist solely for bestiality pictures? There were two reasons for that. One, the tags are pointless for feral/feral pictures (there is no need to distinguish between who the male is and who the female is when a picture is feral_on_feral, since it's an equal level relationship). But the other reason was, that opens up the playing court for the male_on_anthro and female_on_anthro tags to exist without redundancy, for pictures involving a human (and humanoid maybe) and an anthro character.

So really if we can keep these tags to bestiality images, it would be entirely possible to do a male_on_anthro and female_on_anthro thing fairly easily. It would probably become a huge mess if we added tags like that without that restriction though.

Qmannn said:

Speaking of humanoids, where would they fit if something were done about this? There are a lot of images that involve them and there seems to be a lot of underutilized variants of the humanoid_on_* tags. Would they receive similar treatment or would searches for humanoids use the same tags as those for humans in this instance so things don't become overcomplicated, particularly when distinguishing between their human partners and anthro partners?

The humanoid_on_* tags are something that I created mid-tagging project when I was sorting through the old animal_ears/kemonomimi tags. I noticed there were a lot of mistagged humans, partially due to the human_on_* implications being the closest match for these characters. They were never actually mentioned on the forums (at least, I don't think they were) so I'm not surprised that they are undertagged.

Honestly from a management point of view I'd still like to merge those with human somehow, but at the same time understand the reasoning for keeping them separate.

*catches up on this thread* mmm, please do this. As someone who's into ferals, the problem presented by the OP is super frustrating to me. Male ferals domming non-feral vs non-ferals doing female ferals are two completely different fetishes and focuses, yet share the same tags.

On a side note, I've wondered "where to from here?" regarding image boards like e621. How can we improve searching, take it to the next level? On the internet, things don't stay the same forever. I've considered that gender tagging might be inevitable, despite how much work it would take. Personally, I'd use it frequently.

Based on experience, the most often used phrase for anthro/human male with animal sex is "male bestiality" and anthro/human female with animal is "female bestiality."

As in, bestiality refers to the sex act, hence [gender]_bestiality logically implies that gender is engaging in sexual acts with an animal of either gender.

Fum said:
Based on experience, the most often used phrase for anthro/human male with animal sex is "male bestiality" and anthro/human female with animal is "female bestiality."

As in, bestiality refers to the sex act, hence [gender]_bestiality logically implies that gender is engaging in sexual acts with an animal of either gender.

Those are ambiguous terms though, because [gender]_bestiality seems like it could be referring to either the gender of the human or anthro, or to the gender of the feral. In other words, [gender]_bestiality it could just as easily mean that that gender is engaging with a human or anthro.

Sex acts are generally acts done between two or more individuals, not acts done by one individual to another.

So yeah. I don't agree with that terminology.

In addition to what Clawdragons said, it's likely that bestiality will be deprecated at some point anyways partially due to confused meaning (namely human x any anthro).

Terraraptor said:
*catches up on this thread* mmm, please do this. As someone who's into ferals, the problem presented by the OP is super frustrating to me. Male ferals domming non-feral vs non-ferals doing female ferals are two completely different fetishes and focuses, yet share the same tags.

On a side note, I've wondered "where to from here?" regarding image boards like e621. How can we improve searching, take it to the next level? On the internet, things don't stay the same forever. I've considered that gender tagging might be inevitable, despite how much work it would take. Personally, I'd use it frequently.

feral_on_top/anthro_on_top?

Clawdragons said:
So yeah. I don't agree with that terminology.

Fair enough. It isn't ambiguous to those that are in the scene, but I can imagine those not familiar with the subject being confused.

There is a question I've been meaning to ask, that sort of confuses the bestiality tag in general.

How exactly should I tag images with a disembodied animal penis and a human?

Often, it seems, such images are tagged with bestiality, which implies feral, but you can't actually tell from the image the body shape or style of the character.

This does not tend to happen for images with an anthro and a disembodied animal penis. So there is some tag inconsistency here.

Should the bestiality tag be removed? Should it be added with more regularity? How does this affect images involving anthros?

parasprite said:
bestiality -> interspecies deleted
human_on_feral -> interspecies approved

I just meant that I'd expect anybody trying to keep feral_on_feral out of these tags would be an uphill battle, and probably not worth the extra effort (particularly since x_on_feral -feral_on_feral would probably be just as reliable).

That being said, if you want to start, go for it. The project is pretty non-destructive (easy to undo) and I think we might be able to use it as a sort of trial run to see how well gender_on_form tags work in practice.

Can we drop same_species -> invalid_tag? It's not really redundant with -interspecies and it'll help keeping bestiality -interspecies clean.

I've seen similar topics like this brought up and I totally agree with it in order to implement it successfully we kind of need a a major change or more likely a complete overhaul of the current tag system.

Say I search for female Eevee's. The only way I can get guaranteed female Eevee's is if I throw in the solo tag. If I don't throw that in the Eevee could be any gender and just be with a female of any other species. This is the same problem that you have.

The new tag system would need to be crazy specific but I think it's possible, a lot of work, but possible.

Clawdragons said:
There is a question I've been meaning to ask, that sort of confuses the bestiality tag in general.

How exactly should I tag images with a disembodied animal penis and a human?

Often, it seems, such images are tagged with bestiality, which implies feral, but you can't actually tell from the image the body shape or style of the character.

This does not tend to happen for images with an anthro and a disembodied animal penis. So there is some tag inconsistency here.

Should the bestiality tag be removed? Should it be added with more regularity? How does this affect images involving anthros?

Real quickly, an addendum to this: My earlier idea of making "bestiality" the general term for sex between different forms (or aliasing it to whatever term we would come up with) would actually solve this problem, because feral or anthro, the disembodied penis would clearly belong to a nonhuman.

It seems like things are going well. Other people have picked up on the tag and I've seen a few comments expressing happiness that the male_on_feral and female_on_feral tags are back.

Reviving this though because I had a couple of questions - when it comes to intersex_on_feral, should I specify what sort of intersex? That is to say, should I specify herm_on_feral or cuntboy_on_feral as long as I'm doing all this work?

Also if we're going to keep these tags (and I really hope we do) it might be worth doing some changes to implications and aliases.

For instance, animal_on_woman and man_on_animal alias to bestiality. Seems like it would make sense to move those over to female_on_feral and male_on_feral respectively. Also probably we can make the obvious male, female, intersex, and feral implications (though, to this point, I've been using these tags exclusively for images tagged with bestiality, and I think they should remain that way, so I'd say they should implicate bestiality rather than implicating feral directly).

Got some two/three months of images tagged between today and yesterday. Woo.

Wait, is bestiality still being phased out? If so, what do we use to search for all *_on_feral tags?

Where are the feral_on_* tags? Ferals aren't always bottoms. Edit: I should read the Wiki more closely.

mrox said:
Wait, is bestiality still being phased out? If so, what do we use to search for all *_on_feral tags?

Where are the feral_on_* tags? Ferals aren't always bottoms.

I don't think the tag is being fazed out. I don't see why it would be. I'm just adding tags which make it easier to search for specific pairings.

Also the tags aren't meant to imply bottom or top. Male_on_feral just means a male interacting sexually with a feral. It doesn't matter if the male is giving or receiving.

I don't even think "bottom" and "top" is really a meaningful way to describe sexual activity, personally.