The discussion in here concerns PHYSICAL, not STATED gender/sex. If you want to discuss the nuances of stated gender tags on e621, this is not the place to do it

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If you want to discuss tagging genders on posts with non-human anatomy tags like, cloaca, genital_slit, pseudo-penis etc:

• Please go to forum #190431 - Tagging Policy Discussion: Feral anatomy and tagging genders:[..] (Apr. 2016) instead

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It's kind of ridiculous that these tags weren't changed since forever ago

This is also related to some issues [see Other Discussion below in OP] that people are having with tags like cuntboy and dickgirl; it's not very professional, and puts e621 on the same level as less-organized sites such as paheal and [insertfurrythemehere]booru

Doing any of the above would effectively stem most complaints about tag inequality (though picking the first option would probably still raise offense to the terms used)

(Personally, my suggestion would be using the slightly more medical, less colloquial terms (penis, vagina etc.) since it's probably the easiest to implement and has the fewest options for complaint. Also, it feels more 'official')

Major proposed tags so far:

• forum #184506 (same forum, later on) for more info

• forum #199781 for a recent (Jul. 2016) summary of proposals, with pros and cons
• Note that some suggestions may be missing from discussions outside the aforementioned forum topic. See [here] for one of them

Forum link: forum #140749 - Physical Gender Name Standardization: aliases/discussion (Oct. 2014)

Other Discussion

• forum #216820 - Root Tag Suggestion: Binary_gender/sex (Dec. 2016)
• forum #202507 [locked] - Pussy/Vulva Penis/Cock (Jul. 2016)
• forum #201307 - Inconsistent sex tagging system (Jul. 2016)
• forum #195804 - Slur Tags (Jun. 2016)
• p forum #199781 - Summary by @GDelscribe about the various systems & terms suggested/discussed
• p forum #197260 - Proposed tag system which combines various characteristics (penis, breasts etc). See here for more detail
• - p forum #197261 - notes to the above
• - p forum #197271 observations by @Ko-san
• p forum #195912 - mention of altersex
• forum #194788 - Gender difference designs and tagging genders (Meowstic) (May 2016)
• forum #191308 - Gender tagging vent (Apr. 2016)
• forum #190431 - Tagging Policy Discussion: Feral anatomy and tagging genders:[..] (Apr. 2016)
• forum #186509 - Female hyenas and TWYS (Mar. 2016)
• forum #182407 - Twys - genders (Feb. 2016)

• forum #169276 - Cloaca vs. Genital slit vs. "It's a girl now" PSA (Aug. 2015)
• forum #176950 - Vagina > Pussy (Nov. 2015)

• forum #140749 - Physical Gender Tag aliases/discussion (Oct. 2014)
• p forum #198522 - mention of altersex by @Ada. Link to a Weasyl journal written by @SpottyJaguar

vagina means only the inner meat tube part of woman's junk. so the inner part should be visible so it could be tagged as vagina.

Language isn't offensive in itself.
Intent is what causes offensiveness.
As the intent here is not to offend in any way, it's not offensive language.
There is no real reason to change anything.

Almost everything is already tagged as *penis, and then there's cases where it'd make no sense to use slang. Such as hemicock instead of hemipenis. I think we should just make it uniform and move everything from *cock to *penis.

There's only a handful of *cock left anyway.

Mutisija said:
vagina means only the inner meat tube part of woman's junk. so the inner part should be visible so it could be tagged as vagina.

But vagina sounds more official and scientific!

In all seriousness, it is kind of the commonly accepted "proper society" term for lady parts. I mean, who uses the word vulva in relaxed conversation? I have to agree with titanmelon that it's a bit odd to be using a "proper" term for one set of genitals and a slang term for another, so I think it may be a good idea to use less slang terms for these kinds of things. Like boobs -> breasts, cock -> penis, pussy -> vagina, even if it's just for consistency's sake. That being said, it's not something I'm going to go on a crusade for.

Lastly, I'm personally fine with our current gender tagging system, though it did take me a little bit to learn it. I think it's obvious that almost everyone uses it when swearching as well, so doing away with gender tags would be both silly and detrimental.

Halite said:
Language isn't offensive in itself.
Intent is what causes offensiveness.
As the intent here is not to offend in any way, it's not offensive language.
There is no real reason to change anything.

TM has some good points, but I agree with this, pretty much.

The main 2 gender tags right now, are *penis, and *pussy

I'm pretty sure the two main gender tags are male and female.

titanmelon said:

4. We can use no tags for genders at all. Everything is ambiguous gender regardless of what's depicted

I wholeheartedly support this idea.

null0010 said:
I wholeheartedly support this idea.

Really? Why? They're the most used tags on the site.

null0010 said:
I wholeheartedly support this idea.

I do not... Gender is pretty important to a lot of people when it comes to sex, me included. I like being able to search specifically for one gender and I don't see how one would do that if these changes were in place.

Tokaido said:
Really? Why? They're the most used tags on the site.

That was sarcasm....maybe

I'm for replacing all the tags with silly euphemisms.
Like pussy -> ham_wallet
breasts -> sweater_stuffers
dick -> disco_stick
balls -> family_jewels

Tokaido said:
Really? Why? They're the most used tags on the site.

TheHuskyK9 said:
That was sarcasm....maybe

you guys need to work on your humor detection…

This thread's giving me deja vu.

Durandal said:
you guys need to work on your humor detection…

There was no humor in it. I hinted sarcasm but not humor

Durandal said:
you guys need to work on your humor detection…

Tagging porn is a serious business. We don't have time for playing around like that here.

TheHuskyK9 said:
There was no humor in it. I hinted sarcasm but not humor

#4 in TM's suggestions was definitely a joke…

I guess I should get on topic now?
I think being consistent would be nice. But it works the way it is now, and that's what really matters, right?

I think cock and pussy would be acceptable. Other tags such as "hemipenis" are more technical anyway, so using a more technical term for them doesn't stick out too much.
I also think it would be fine to leave everything how it is. It seems like there's a lot of disagreement on what the tags should be replaced with, and no one seems too upset with the way they are now.

Moon_Moon said:
I'm for replacing all the tags with silly euphemisms.
Like pussy -> ham_wallet
breasts -> sweater_stuffers
dick -> disco_stick
balls -> family_jewels

I retract all my previous statements, these need to be the new tags that we follow from this point forward.

Just my 2 cents.

1. Besides everything else dickgirl tag is counter-intuitive and should have been renamed or removed long time ago. I mean girl has a pussy and breasts. So is person with pussy, breasts and penis a dickgirl? Apparently not - it's a herm.

2. Are all 3 separate tags for intersex character with a penis really necessary? I mean how many of you benefit for the fact that there are herm, dickgirl, and maleherm tag instead of just one like intersex_with_penis? (Besides the joy of reporting new people who will always get it wrong.) I've personally never found this 3 tags useful but I accept the fact that I may be biased.

3. 4 option (no gender tags) would be the best option when some kind of tag nesting (So, for example, post #545123 could be tagged with (pikachu female) (raichu male)) is implemented. Judging that currently site is having trouble with basic functionality I guess it's impossible in the nearest future.

4.

Halite:
Language isn't offensive in itself.
Intent is what causes offensiveness.
As the intent here is not to offend in any way, it's not offensive language.
There is no real reason to change anything.

No, intent is not magic that completely changes the meaning of words.

Gilda_The_Gryphon said:
Just my 2 cents.

1. Besides everything else dickgirl tag is counter-intuitive and should have been renamed or removed long time ago. I mean girl has a pussy and breasts. So is person with pussy, breasts and penis a dickgirl? Apparently not - it's a herm.

This is a perfectly reasonable critique, but it doesn't provide any suggestion of what a reasonable rename should be. Until then, people will continue to use the current term that distinguishes it adequately from herm.

2. Are all 3 separate tags for intersex character with a penis really necessary? I mean how many of you benefit for the fact that there are herm, dickgirl, and maleherm tag instead of just one like intersex_with_penis? (Besides the joy of reporting new people who will always get it wrong.) I've personally never found this 3 tags useful but I accept the fact that I may be biased.

YES. Personally I don't relate to it, but I know there are people here who like herms but blacklist dickgirl.
The real set of tags here is probably 4, BTW : (herm, dickgirl, cuntboy, maleherm), since this covers the spectrum of possible [organs * body type] for an intersex character.

4.
No, intent is not magic that completely changes the meaning of words.

Halite should have said 'context' (as in the thing that makes connotational meaning connotational rather than denotational) here. I agree intent is not it.

savageorange said:
This is a perfectly reasonable critique, but it doesn't provide any suggestion of what a reasonable rename should be.

Most boorus use newhalf, and it seems less offensive than dickgirl.
But the main problem with that one is that some users might not be familiar with the term..

savageorange said:
This is a perfectly reasonable critique, but it doesn't provide any suggestion of what a reasonable rename should be. Until then, people will continue to use the current term that distinguishes it adequately from herm.

To be honest I think that even herm_without_pussy or something like that would be better. I don't think that anyone would be arguing that their character with no visible pussy should not be tagged herm_without_pussy. Or maybe I have too much faith in people.

YES. Personally I don't relate to it, but I know there are people here who like herms but blacklist dickgirl.
The real set of tags here is probably 4, BTW : (herm, dickgirl, cuntboy, maleherm), since this covers the spectrum of possible [organs * body type] for an intersex character.

I omitted cuntboy because IMO it's more distinct from others three.
I still can't help but notice difference in tag count:
dickgirl - 13214 posts
herm - 5680 posts
maleherm - 230 posts

Male herm is really much less used. I'm not sure whether it's because of lack of art or do people don't distinguish between herm and maleherm.

Genjar said:
But the main problem with that one is that some users might not be familiar with the term.

Tag name that forces user to see its definition in wiki is still better than tag that suggests wrong usage.

Gilda_The_Gryphon said:
To be honest I think that even herm_without_pussy or something like that would be better. I don't think that anyone would be arguing that their character with no visible pussy should not be tagged herm_without_pussy. Or maybe I have too much faith in people.

That's similar to how Danbooru handles it:
They use futanari (Japanese word for hermaphrodite) as an tag for intersex, and use subtags for narrowing down the searches:

• newhalf: penis, but no vagina (same as dickgirl here)
• full-package futanari: penis, vagina and testicles

It's a simple system, and I often find myself envying them when I'm tagging those here.

Tag name that forces user to see its definition in wiki is still better than tag that suggests wrong usage.

I'm inclined to agree, and certainly wouldn't complain if the newhalf -> dickgirl alias was reversed...

Gilda_The_Gryphon said:

4.
No, intent is not magic that completely changes the meaning of words.

I never said it changed the meaning.
I said that the intent on the person using the word is what causes it to be offensive, or not.
If a gay guy calls another gay guy a queer, he intends it as a term of camaraderie and it isn't offensive.
If a Republican does the same and intends it to be a hateful slur, it is offensive.
Same with the N-word used between black people.

You can be just as offensive with "polite" terms as you can with "offensive" ones.
Because the words aren't what's offensive, it's the meaning behind the words, the intent, that informs how offensive they are.
I know this is counter-intuitive to our American politically correct society, but it's just the truth.
There are no bad words, only bad intentions.

savageorange said:
...
Halite should have said 'context' (as in the thing that makes connotational meaning connotational rather than denotational) here. I agree intent is not it.

No, I mean intent, and so I said intent.
Edit: Not to say that context is irrelevant, it generally informs intent.
i.e. Cunt in England vs. US
It's not what I was talking about though.
What you mean when you say something is more meaningful that the specific words you use.
When some asshole uses the word "thug" to refer to a black person, it's offensive even though it's not an "offensive" word.
It's all about how it's intended.

Halite said:
I never said it changed the meaning.
I said that the intent on the person using the word is what causes it to be offensive, or not.
If a gay guy calls another gay guy a queer, he intends it as a term of camaraderie and it isn't offensive.
If a Republican does the same and intends it to be a hateful slur, it is offensive.
Same with the N-word used between black people.

You can be just as offensive with "polite" terms as you can with "offensive" ones.
Because the words aren't what's offensive, it's the meaning behind the words, the intent, that informs how offensive they are.
I know this is counter-intuitive to our American politically correct society, but it's just the truth.
There are no bad words, only bad intentions.

No, I mean intent, and so I said intent.

So you suggest that you meant intent, something which is about what person doing something thinks, but you give examples of context - situation during person is doing something.

And context here, on this site, is that this is not private conversation of 2 minority groups. Using fag or other slur as a tag instead of gay would be inappropriate, and would make some people angry. Same goes for tags like dickgirl or cuntboy. Of course that doesn't mean that we must change it - maybe it's impossible without destroying clarity of tag system (or maybe not). However I don't like idea of completely dismissing such concerns.

Also, don't assume that all people here are Americans.

No need to argue over these small language discrepancies, I think we all get what's being said here.
About the tags, the different types of intersex definitely need to be listed out. For example, I really like herms, dickgirls are okay, and cuntboys and maleherms completely don't do it for me. A lot of my friends only like herms as far as intersexed characters go, and everything else is out.
I've also seen people commenting things like "cuntboys are amazing" and "That dickgirl was so hawt until I saw the vajeen," so those tags definitely need to stay.
I get what Genjar is saying about the newhalf / futanari tags, and that's fine in my book as long as you get the four distinct types of intersex in that way.
(Though I think it would also be fine to just leave them as is.)

Halite said:
I said that the intent on the person using the word is what causes it to be offensive, or not.

There are no bad words, only bad intentions.

It's all about how it's intended.

Right; and that's exactly why we need to at least have some kind of consistency with our tagging. The other furry sites aren't going to do it (maybe), and they already mirror our tags verbatim, so why not make use of it?
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Gilda_The_Gryphon said:
Tag name that forces user to see its definition in wiki is still better than tag that suggests wrong usage.

Exactly; We have a wiki for defining tag usage, so it shouldn't be to hard to find info about how it's used (maybe)
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Already established tags:

• Penis, no breasts, no vagina - male
• Breasts, vagina, no penis - female

The biggest grey area seems to be with cuntboy & female. i.e.

• Vagina, no breasts, no penis

Which can be either gender, depending on the art style and level of detail

--------

Note: I'm not going to pretend to be an expert on gender identity and social issues, so if anything in the above is incorrect, and you are a primary source of information about it or something equivalent, then feel free to point it out

It would make things a lot easier if people also did the same

Tokaido said:
But vagina sounds more official and scientific!

It doesn't because it's not.

The problem is, there is no English word for many of these specific genders that isn't sort of derogatory. Newhalf is a start, but tags like "Male_Newhalf" or "Female_Newhalf" just make it too complicated to be worth the trouble. It sounds kind of awkward, like a more refined version of "Girl_With_Man_Parts."
Like anything profane, the terms we have now may offend some, but can also make a setting feel more relaxed and informal. Besides, a little dirty language seems pretty minor when there are giant fuzzy cocks everywhere.

Halite said:
...I said that the intent on the person using the word is what causes it to be offensive, or not.
If a gay guy calls another gay guy a queer, he intends it as a term of camaraderie and it isn't offensive...

You're kind of right, but you're missing the point. The context of our tags aren't limit to just these forum discussions, or even the original tagger's intent, they're in the context of the entire site full of thousands of users.

Let's take the n-word for example. I can't speak about other countries, but in America it's a very controversial word, yet many people use it as a term of camaraderie. Eg "What's up my N?" That's a fairly common greeting between certain black people, but what if this site started tagging "humans with dark skin" with the n-word tag? Even if the owner/operators were black, it would be offensive because, in a large public setting like e6, that kind of terminology is considered offensive by most people. Same goes for the word faggot. What if we aliased gay to that? It wouldn't go well, because of the public context of this website. I could prove my point further, but I hope you get it. Things can be taken offensively even if they aren't meant to be offensive. Hell, some people LOOK for things to be offended by, and we don't need to invite that upon the website by using poorly worded tags that will probably offend people.

Anyway, I'm off topic.

My main character is a Herm, so I'll admit that I'm partial to the term, but I'm biased. I'd like to keep that one if possible, as I feel it's fairly different from a "dickgirl" but I don't particularly care for the dickgirl tag itself. Seems strangely vulgar and out of place among tags like hemipenis, cetacean, and other more literate terms. Same with cuntboy. But honestly they don't bother me all that much. But if we had to change things up, I like emulating the futanari tags option I suppose, as well as using newhalf.

aoru said:

It doesn't because it's not.

Did you read the rest if my post? That was fairly obviously sarcasm.

I like the terms we have right now, because being non-standard may actually be unavoidable, but at least these have what they are covering explicitly in the name.

Terms like "newhalf" (regardless of how commonly they may be used in anime/manga type communities) I personally find it to be a bit baffling as a word. "New half"? "new half" of what? I think of taurs where the top and bottom halves are different. I think of transformations where part of a body can change and become "new". I think of body modification. I even think of swapping body parts out for new ones (either futuristic artificial body parts with integrated technology, or mad scientist sewing-new-parts-or-even-sewing-people-together types of experiments). But I don't think of intersex. Now maybe I'm weird, and other people instantly can look at the term "newhalf" and know that it means a brand of intersex without having to do any research at all. But I doubt it, because the word isn't very intuitive or self-explanatory in english. And when tagging any gender outside of male/female is already something that often feels non-standard to a lot of people, I think it helps if the terms we use retain some kind of clear or self-explanatory and/or intuitive relationship between the words in the tag, and what the tag is meant to be used for. By at least making the tag names easy to understand and see what they relate to, it makes the system more accessible and friendly to a variety of backgrounds, easier to learn how to use the tags, easier to keep track of the differences between which is which. To me, "newhalf", as a word, doesn't meet that criteria. It's pretty vague and euphemistic.

But I do see the point: even though our current intersex tags do work and do have some of these tag name qualities going for them, they also feel make-shift and unpolished. It begs the question whether we can upgrade them to something more professional sounding without losing any of the other qualities these tag names have in the process.

Now I don't know if that is actually possible to do without losing practicality and utility in the process. The professional world isn't exactly on the cutting edge when it comes to even acknowledging some of these body types that we're trying to tag, so the professional terms we'd ideally want to use might not even exist yet (and might be too obscure even if they did exist, to be useful to us). Also, I know that most of the groups who have issues with the existing tag terms for intersex genders, are from divided groups that don't see eye-to-eye with each other even, so there is no singular set of terms they're going to equally agree on (too much social debate and change going on for this issue to be that easily neutralized).

So I have my doubts that there really is a better alternative to the tag names we have now. Yes they're made of slang terms, they're unofficial, and they are a lightning rod right in the middle of a controversial crossroads of social subjects. But they're also pioneering, making non-standard body types easily findable/blacklistable, utilitarian tag names that are easy to distinguish from each and made clear enough to remember what types of things are probably under each one once learned. They're completely politically incorrect but I don't think political correctness is something to actually strive for.

In a way the slang terms fit what we're doing, because we're not trying to proclaim any official identification in any way, we're just tagging basic anatomy combos. It's very UN-official and just for practicality of searching and blacklisting needs. So maybe the lack of polished terms for these gender-anatomy-bodytype tags could actually be a good thing. It's something worth considering.

I also see a lot of wide-spread assumption that everyone who belongs to the real life groups these tags are describing, is somehow offended and uncomfortable with these tags/terms. And that is not true. Some are offended. Some have actually embraced these terms and use them to self-identify in their real life. And some just don't give a shit about it, they're too busy living their life and don't feel a singular word holds any real power over them. The only thing "most" of these groups have in common, is that "most" of them don't agree about whether terms like these are "offensive", or "empowering" or "harmless"...and that's a wide range of opinion. It's just that offended people tend to be some of the most vocal people you will ever meet, making it seem like they represent more people than just their own selves in order to bolster their personal cause and force other people's hand. The real majority are actually all over the map on this issue.

furrypickle said:
I like the terms we have right now, because being non-standard may actually be unavoidable, but at least these have what they are covering explicitly in the name.

[etc, etc.]

This is sort of what I was trying to get at earlier but you said it way better, so thank you.

furrypickle said:
I like the terms we have right now, because being non-standard may actually be unavoidable, but at least these have what they are covering explicitly in the name.

I said:
1. Besides everything else dickgirl tag is counter-intuitive and should have been renamed or removed long time ago. I mean girl has a pussy and breasts. So is person with pussy, breasts and penis a dickgirl? Apparently not - it's a herm.

furrypickle said:
So I have my doubts that there really is a better alternative to the tag names we have now. Yes they're made of slang terms, they're unofficial, and they are a lightning rod right in the middle of a controversial crossroads of social subjects. But they're also pioneering, making non-standard body types easily findable/blacklistable, utilitarian tag names that are easy to distinguish from each and made clear enough to remember what types of things are probably under each one once learned.

If we alias tags to new names then users still will be able to blacklist and search for them - they just won't be displayed on public. That's how aliases work. Also these "pioneering" tags are one of the main source of records for incorrect tagging.

furrypickle said:
They're completely politically incorrect but I don't think political correctness is something to actually strive for.

If on this site there had been "politically incorrect" tags like "fags" instead of "gay" I don't know if I would have decided to become an active member on this site, or even would use this site more than occasionally. I can understand why some people might feel same way about tags like dickgirl. I don't think that losing potential users over something that can be easily changed is something to actually strive for. To be honest - if renamed "blacklist, or die" thread why can't we rename these tags?

Nah

Gilda_The_Gryphon said:
...
Also, don't assume that all people here are Americans.

I'm not.
The idea that words can be bad, and political correctness in general is, however, a very American idea.

Tokaido said:
You're kind of right, but you're missing the point. The context of our tags aren't limit to just these forum discussions, or even the original tagger's intent, they're in the context of the entire site full of thousands of users.

I considered using the actual word, but even typing it puts a bad taste in my mouth, and I'd probably get in trouble, so I pussied out and used 'n-word'

Let's take the n-word for example. I can't speak about other countries, but in America it's a very controversial word, yet many people use it as a term of camaraderie. Eg "What's up my N?" That's a fairly common greeting between certain black people, but what if this site started tagging "humans with dark skin" with the n-word tag? Even if the owner/operators were black, it would be offensive because, in a large public setting like e6, that kind of terminology is considered offensive by most people. Same goes for the word faggot. What if we aliased gay to that? It wouldn't go well, because of the public context of this website. I could prove my point further, but I hope you get it. Things can be taken offensively even if they aren't meant to be offensive. Hell, some people LOOK for things to be offended by, and we don't need to invite that upon the website by using poorly worded tags that will probably offend people.

...

And it's still not the word that bad.
It's the assumed intent of that word.
People who are offended by words are making assumptions, and frankly it's their own problem.
There is nothing inherently offensive about any word, ever.
The idea that a certain arrangement of syllables is somehow "bad" is absurd.
It is the intent behind the word that makes it offensive or not.
If there were "bad" words, then if you used that word in front of someone who didn't know your language they'd still be offended.
The word isn't bad, the intent behind it is.
There is nothing offensive about the word dickgirl.

Penn and Teller explain it better than me.
Well, Penn does.
Teller doesn't explain anything.

Gilda_The_Gryphon said:
If on this site there had been "politically incorrect" tags like "fags" instead of "gay" I don't know if I would have decided to become an active member on this site, or even would use this site more than occasionally. I can understand why some people might feel same way about tags like dickgirl. I don't think that losing potential users over something that can be easily changed is something to actually strive for. To be honest - if renamed "blacklist, or die" thread why can't we rename these tags?

It would be nice if there were some nice alternative tags that rolled of the tongue better, and I'm certainly open to suggestions, but the ones put forth so far haven't really grabbed me.
I think rashly changing the tags here has the potential to piss off a whole new group of people, so we need to be as much in agreement as possible about the final choice.
Besides, you can't make everyone happy all the time, and everyone has different tastes.

Political correctness is an exercise in giving offense through false inoffensiveness.

What of shemale and hefemale? They're real, already established words and don't use vulgar terms (which seems to me to be the real problem people have with the currently used tags). True, they're pejoratives, but so are the current ones.

furrypickle said:
It begs the question whether...

Begets the question, you mean?

It also occurred to me that one of the reasons we don't really hear people complain about the offensive tags, is probably because most of them don't stick around long enough to do so in the first place

titanmelon said:
It also occurred to me that one of the reasons we don't really hear people complain about the offensive tags, is probably because most of them don't stick around long enough to do so in the first place

Hah, that's probably true. I have a furry aquaintence who HATES e621 because of the gender tags. He refuses to visit the site or let his character be posted because the proper pronouns for it are xhe and xer.

I'm going to say it bluntly, I'm OK with that. I dont want e6 to be a place full of people who get so quickly enraged by physical genders being tagged because "you cant SEE gender." People who refuse to acknowledge that by gender, we mean physical gender, sometimes referred to as sex. I like the way its run right now, logically and downright scientifically.

Tokaido said:
I'm going to say it bluntly, I'm OK with that. I dont want e6 to be a place full of people who get so quickly enraged by physical genders being tagged because "you cant SEE gender." People who refuse to acknowledge that by gender, we mean physical gender, sometimes referred to as sex. I like the way its run right now, logically and downright scientifically.

(ノಠ益ಠ)ノ

Tokaido said:
Hah, that's probably true. I have a furry aquaintence who HATES e621 because of the gender tags. He refuses to visit the site or let his character be posted because the proper pronouns for it are xhe and xer.

I'm going to say it bluntly, I'm OK with that. I dont want e6 to be a place full of people who get so quickly enraged by physical genders being tagged because "you cant SEE gender." People who refuse to acknowledge that by gender, we mean physical gender, sometimes referred to as sex. I like the way its run right now, logically and downright scientifically.

Scientifically, it should be 'sex'. I don't see why anyone would be either confused or outraged by that -- the association is clear.

The idea that 'physical' is an adjective that can be correctly applied to 'gender' is a result of people using sex and gender interchangeably.

We don't have gender tags, because TWYS. If we'd call sex tags sex tags, it would be much clearer that we do not have gender tags. I regard the refusal as mostly ours -- to acknowledge that we are using a nonstandard definition of gender, and will be misunderstood as a result.

savageorange said:
Scientifically, it should be 'sex'. I don't see why anyone would be either confused or outraged by that -- the association is clear.

The idea that 'physical' is an adjective that can be correctly applied to 'gender' is a result of people using sex and gender interchangeably.

We don't have gender tags, because TWYS. If we'd call sex tags sex tags, it would be much clearer that we do not have gender tags. I regard the refusal as mostly ours -- to acknowledge that we are using a nonstandard definition of gender, and will be misunderstood as a result.

I agree, but that ship sailed so many decades ago, I don't think anyone can pull those two words back to mean what they used to be. Unless you're in an academic environment, "sex" means doing the deed and "gender" means everything else. Only academia, hardcore science and old-school agricultural use "sex" to mean physical gender anymore. It's become so archaic that it would actually confuse people who'd think a tag like "male_sex" would = "gay sex" instead of "male anatomical presentation of primary and secondary sex characteristics". Like I said, I think that ship sailed ages ago and is beyond help on a scale that goes far beyond e621's habits alone. Those older definitions for "gender" vs "sex" have become the nonstandard definitions or specialized vocabulary for certain fields of current use now. Language evolves (as always) but sometimes that's frustrating to watch if it's not being improved by it.

Almost anyone seeing or using the word "sex" in a tag (on a site like this) is going to be thinking of horizontal mambo and nothing else. A few might think of "sexuality" (gay, straight, etc) which would be just as far removed. Almost no one is going to be searching for "anatomical primary and secondary sex characteristics of x" using the word "sex" on here. I mean, there's swimming upstream, and then there's trying to scale an avalanche while it's still in progress. In the fifties it could have been rolled back. But today it's too far gone to undo. So it's not an e621 habit; it's the widespread American evolution of these two words over the last five decades (at the very least).

titanmelon said:
It also occurred to me that one of the reasons we don't really hear people complain about the offensive tags, is probably because most of them don't stick around long enough to do so in the first place

I'm fine with that; I like how our community is now. Some people just bring in more drama than they're worth.

titanmelon said:
It also occurred to me that one of the reasons we don't really hear people complain about the offensive tags, is probably because most of them don't stick around long enough to do so in the first place

And they make fools of themselves during their brief visits.

...

titanmelon said:
...

You pose three very valid points there, sir. I concur.

Here I wanted to comment on the original message, only to find it has fallen back into the whole herm discussion again . . .

But wow this is "politically correct: the thread".

I imagine the words used were the most common one for either at the time. Seriously, a girl being angry at the word pussy would be like me getting upset at the word cock . . .

I've thought of something Futanari and Shemale separation of the Dickgirl tag.

newlydead said:
I've thought of something Futanari and Shemale separation of the Dickgirl tag.

.. Since dickgirls by E6's definition have a penis and no vagina, I'm not sure if this post is serious -- AFAICS you cannot perform such a separation because futanari is not a subset of dickgirl (rather, it's an overlapping set containing some with a vagina and some without)

IMO we should strictly avoid translated tags such as futanari, as it makes tagging and searching more difficult for all users who don't speak the original language.

furrypickle said:
Those older definitions for "gender" vs "sex" have become the nonstandard definitions or specialized vocabulary for certain fields of current use now.

While gender and sex have been muddied, the definition of sex is still much more clearly physical than gender, which has become a many-headed PC hydra.

Yes, this definition of sex is getting more niche. But that doesn't yet make it nonstandard. I believe that people who I would trust to tag things have enough language skills to distinguish sex as a verb from sex as a noun .

Phantom Janitor said:
I'm fine with that; I like how our community is now. Some people just bring in more drama than they're worth.

Okay I want to be clear: This (and its other iteration, in Tokaido's post) is a terrible argument. Yes, some people do bring in more drama than they are worth. No, this in no way justifies offensive use of language. Other people behaving shittily never justifies you doing so.

A good argument would demonstrate that the current tags actually effectively balance the need for accurate tag names with the need for simple and memorable tag names, without ever bringing spiteful motivation into it. IOW that we have done all that we reasonably could to achieve good tag names, and any remaining possibility of offense is something that we can reasonably accept as inevitable.
Not choosing categories of people to offend in advance because we don't want them here.

A few people so far have asserted this, but no one has yet tried to demonstrate that it is actually the case.

savageorange said:
.. Since dickgirls by E6's definition have a penis and no vagina, I'm not sure if this post is serious -- AFAICS you cannot perform such a separation because futanari is not a subset of dickgirl (rather, it's an overlapping set containing some with a vagina and some without)

IMO we should strictly avoid translated tags such as futanari, as it makes tagging and searching more difficult for all users who don't speak the original language.

While gender and sex have been muddied, the definition of sex is still much more clearly physical than gender, which has become a many-headed PC hydra.

Yes, this definition of sex is getting more niche. But that doesn't yet make it nonstandard. I believe that people who I would trust to tag things have enough language skills to distinguish sex as a verb from sex as a noun .

Okay I want to be clear: This (and its other iteration, in Tokaido's post) is a terrible argument. Yes, some people do bring in more drama than they are worth. No, this in no way justifies offensive use of language. Other people behaving shittily never justifies you doing so.

A good argument would demonstrate that the current tags actually effectively balance the need for accurate tag names with the need for simple and memorable tag names, without ever bringing spiteful motivation into it. IOW that we have done all that we reasonably could to achieve good tag names, and any remaining possibility of offense is something that we can reasonably accept. Not choosing categories of people to offend in advance because we don't want them here.

A few people so far have asserted this, but no one has yet tried to demonstrate that it is actually the case.

You make good arguments in both cases, so kudos (and we could always just use herm in place of futa)

Clawstripe said:
What of shemale and hefemale? They're real, already established words -snip-

Shemale has established credentials. "hefemale" does not. Wiktionary, given Wikipedia's radical-feminist-biased slant, is not a good example to use esp. when you are referencing a term that has no etymological roots other than as a makeshift mirror to "shemale", which itself is a perjorative for a butch woman/lesbian, still.

Seriously, Dick+female = dickgirl. It's rationally sound, has no perjorative context or historical use other than that ascribed by intent of the user, and has long-reaching history within nerd culture thanks to anime and manga. Further, it's a literalization of two words put together that factually define what it's describing without pulling gender context into it, which shemale and hefemale do by their very nature as gender terms rather than sex terms.

savageorange said:
Scientifically, it should be 'sex'. I don't see why anyone would be either confused or outraged by that -- the association is clear.

The idea that 'physical' is an adjective that can be correctly applied to 'gender' is a result of people using sex and gender interchangeably.

We don't have gender tags, because TWYS. If we'd call sex tags sex tags, it would be much clearer that we do not have gender tags. I regard the refusal as mostly ours -- to acknowledge that we are using a nonstandard definition of gender, and will be misunderstood as a result.

The problems with having to deal with anti-empiricists?

123easy said:
The problems with having to deal with anti-empiricists?

Dunno what you mean here. Tokaido was commenting that the use of the word gender was scientifically justifiable, I pointed out that it was not. How much value to assign to 'scientificness' when constructing a tag ontology is unclear, but fortunately 'sex' is both scientifically appropriate and currently less vague than 'gender'.

savageorange said:
Okay I want to be clear: This (and its other iteration, in Tokaido's post) is a terrible argument...

I think you misunderstood what I was saying. I wasn't advocating offensive tagging as a means to keep certain people away, I was saying that changing our ways to cater to certain easily offended people would in turn irritate and possibly drive away other people, getting us nowhere.
The argument that our tags "effectively balance the need for accurate tag names with the need for simple and memorable tag names" was thoroughly made earlier. This was just a follow up, accepting that if changes aren't made, the types of people who have felt turned away in the past will continue to turn away.
If we did start using pronouns like xhe and xer (etc) in an attempt to satisfy everyone, those people would stay at the expense of others.
For instance, I showed this thread to some friends to see what they thought, and they were much more opposed to a lot of these ideas than I was. Now, these people do not have accounts on the site, but they do visit occasionally, and they made it clear that the more complicated newer ideas did not strike a cord with them. I understand that a few of my friends is not representative of the whole community opinion, but it does show that there are others out there expressing dissent.

TL,DR: People have different likes and dislikes. Taking extreme steps to avoid offending one person may in turn offend another. This trade-off is not worth the hassle.

Phantom_Janitor said:

TL,DR: People have different likes and dislikes. Taking extreme steps to avoid offending one person may in turn offend another. This trade-off is not worth the hassle.

^ this was my point. Not that we should actively try to alienate anyone, but that I don't think it's worth the hassle.

Also, I only advocate the term gender over sex because sex would be confusing on this site. But I'm open to other terms.

I say we keep it as it is. WHO'S WITH ME?

TheHuskyK9 said:
I say we keep it as it is. WHO'S WITH ME?

YOU HAVE MY SWORD!

Tokaido said:
YOU HAVE MY SWORD!

And you have my hoe.

TheHuskyK9 said:
I say we keep it as it is. WHO'S WITH ME?

If anything, I see more reasons to keep the existing terms than ever. So yeah, I'll agree to keeping it.

Phantom_Janitor said:
TL,DR: People have different likes and dislikes. Taking extreme steps to avoid offending one person may in turn offend another. This trade-off is not worth the hassle.

Well, okay.
Honestly, I just think the correct guideline to use for tagging will maximize the combination of clarity and memorability. Some of them do (like herm, male, or female). Some of them don't (like cuntboy -- clear but not memorable IME)

I'm a bit puzzled by the latest spate of replies. Who has proposed to **actually change any tags at all**, so far? I've only seen a few people saying 'the current tags are not good enough'. Why do we need to vigorously express support for a position that has not yet been challenged?

In case there is any ambiguity on my own position: I proposed that instances of 'gender' be changed to 'sex' in wiki pages. Now that I think about it, this does in fact present a problem re: crossgender, which **would** consequently need renaming -- To what, I don't know, 'crosssex' sounds equally absurd as crossgender.

Phantom_Janitor said:
TL,DR: People have different likes and dislikes. Taking extreme steps to avoid offending one person may in turn offend another. This trade-off is not worth the hassle.

Basically, the problem with political correctness in general.

Clawstripe said:
Basically, the problem with political correctness in general.

I guess Halite was right - political correctness is a very American idea.
I mean: normal people call the idea of not offending one group of people "empathy" or "not being asshole". Calling it "political correctness" is very American thing indeed.

It's really funny how some people are now saying that suggestion of making few tag aliases is "Taking extreme steps". Yeah... Tag aliases - shit like that never happened here before.

Another funny thing is how one user who once bumped old thread because one artist didn't get alt nickname on the site is now saying that changing tags that may cause discomfort to more than one people is not important.

But the funniest thing is how many people suddenly find tags like dickgirl as another world wonder despite the fact that both in theory (dick + girl = herm) and in practice this tag has proven to be very unclear in meaning, especially for new people.

These tag names are bad for multiple reasons, and given how tag aliases works people who search or blacklist these tags wouldn't probably tell a difference if tags were renamed. I would understand if there was disagreement about what new tags should be. However after last Husky's post it's clear that it's not the case.

You know, the only people who are ideological in this thread are the ones who for no good reason want to keep current status quo. Especially when they calling wikipedia feminazi organization - seriously WTF?

I think, perhaps, you misunderstood my point.
Not sure if it was on purpose, but either way it's not the point I was making.

Granberia said:
I guess Halite was right - political correctness is a very American idea.
I mean: normal people call the idea of not offending one group of people "empathy" or "not being asshole". Calling it "political correctness" is very American thing indeed.

I'm okay with respecting other people. "Do unto others" and all that. However, the way I see it, political correctness is taking this concept too far, into the realm of oversensitivity, censorship, and thought police. As feminazis take feminism too far, so the politically correct tend to take being respectful to others too far.

But the funniest thing is how many people suddenly find tags like dickgirl as another world wonder despite the fact that both in theory (dick + girl = herm) and in practice this tag has proven to be very unclear in meaning, especially for new people.

Personally, the only real problem I have with those two tags is the vulgarity, but I'm also aware that's one of my hangups and that trying to enforce my hangups on other people, with their own ideas of what's acceptable and what's not, is foolish and doomed to failure. It's much, much easier to just automatically censor them in my head.

You know, the only people who are ideological in this thread are the ones who for no good reason want to keep current status quo. Especially when they calling wikipedia feminazi organization - seriously WTF?

As I said in a previous post, I think the real problem people have with the tags is more the vulgarity than how well they describe the two sexes. However, there doesn't seem to be any real idea of what to replace them with, unless it were something like "intersex_(male_body_w/_pussy)" and "intersex_(female_body_w/_penis)". I thought "shemale" could be a possibility with "hemale" (or "hefemale") – thus matching "male" and "female" – for the other sex, and because I thought it might be funny to suggest "itmale" for anything more extreme than herm. :p

However, my suggestion was shot down, but thems the risk one takes.

I think now would be a good time to repeat (again) what I mentioned in the OP and previous posts:

• Whatever sets of tags agreed upon are irrelevant; provided that they're all the same level of sensitivity

It was just my personal opinion in suggesting everything use established/'official' terms recognized by the parties concerned (gays, lesbians, transgenders etc)

Not that any of the points mentioned are invalid though, it's more about standardization for the time being

We can debate the ethics of it later (or now, as most of you seem to like doing)

titanmelon said:
It was just my personal opinion in suggesting everything use established/'official' terms recognized by the parties concerned (gays, lesbians, transgenders etc)

Not that any of the points mentioned are invalid though, it's more about standardization for the time being

It already is standardized, I thought. We have terms for male, female, and the three basic intersexes. They also have nothing to do with internal gender (most transgender) or sexual orientation (gay, lesbian), but of physical sex. If there's any established/official terms to be used, then it's probable that we should ask a medical researcher for widely-agreed upon and strictly standardized medical definitions, rather than the looser, less-standardized, and sometimes not well-agreed-upon terms used by the diverse LGBT community.

Clawstripe said:
It already is standardized, I thought.

Terms like cuntboy, dickgirl, horsecock, cock_vore, multi_cock, cock_ring, snakecock, pussy, equine_pussy, canine_pussy, feline_pussy, pussy_juice, cum_in_pussy, wet_pussy etc etc don't really sound standard when compared to the *penis* and *vagina* terms to me though

If there's any established/official terms to be used, then it's probable that we should ask a medical researcher for widely-agreed upon and strictly standardized medical definitions, rather than the looser, less-standardized, and sometimes not well-agreed-upon terms used by the diverse LGBT community.

That's actually a pretty interesting idea
I would guess that social science/gender identity individuals in academic circles would have terms for what's needed

Official terms tend to be rather obscure.
For instance, in my field (entomology), we use gynandromorph to refer to organisms that have a mix of male and female characteristics. Which is not the same as herm, since herms have both male and female genitalia.

And while I'm no expert in the medical field, I believe that the proper term for 'cuntboy' would be gynandroid, since gynandry is defined as "a female approximating to the male type of physique".

here is my suggestion to resolve this issue

references to genitalia need to be standardized throughout all tags, with respect to term used and the tone of these terms

we cannot alias pussy -> vagina because of all those wonderful historical reasons that everyone mentions every single time

therefore medical terms are unacceptable

ergo, implement the following changes

official term for male genitalia should be 'dick' to match the tone of the 'pussy' tag

alias penis/cock/meat_pillar/whatever -> dick universally across all tags involving male genitalia

alias cunt/cunny/ham_wallet/whatever -> pussy across all tags involving female genitalia

alias cuntboy -> pussyboy for consistancy and 1% increase in offensiveness

and now everything agrees hooray

the issue of dickgirl and cuntboy/pussyboy being offensive to trans individuals and others is a salient one that deserves attention

however i am not certain this is the proper venue :(

Sooooooo

We doing anything with this?

Another example are the anatomically_correct_* tags

anatomically correct penis
anatomically correct pussy
-
While I'm at it, here's a list:

*pussy (50+ tags)
pussy* (<50 tags)

*penis (<200 tags)
penis* (~100 tags)

*herm*, *intersex*, *cuntboy*, *dickgirl* all have <10 tags each

I don't care which one we use as long as we're consistent (though I personally see no reason to bother with changing from penis to dick). I've been depreciating the cock tags more than anything (there's still a handful of them left), but I'm hesitant to touch the gender tags; those would probably be the last ones to change if we do.

I have an idea about intersex genders. How about tagging them with intersex and one letter abbreviation of genitalia it should have? So:
cuntboy = intersex_v (intersex with vagina)
dickgirl = intersex_bp (intersex with breasts and penis)
herm = intersex_bpv (intersex with breasts and penis and vagina)
maleherm = intersex_pv (intersex with penis and vagina)

Pros:
There are no misleading names like dickgirl (girl = pussy and breasts; girl + dick = dickgirl herm)

Few searches are easier. For example searching for intersex character with penis can be accomplished by intersex_*p*

The only term used in tags is intersex which is not a slang term.

Cons:
Names are still a bit misleading but are better compared to current state.

It uses vagina instead of pussy mainly because it starts with different letters.

Granberia said:
For example searching for intersex character with penis can be accomplished by intersex_*p*
The only term used in tags is intersex which is not a slang term.

I don't have the ability to respond to the rest of this, but it never occurred to me to try using wildcards in the middle like that. A search like this one would have been really handy a couple days ago.

Granberia said:
I have an idea about intersex genders. How about tagging them with intersex and one letter abbreviation of genitalia it should have? So:
[...]

That's a potentially great idea!

It might be a bit more of a hassle at first, but there's no ambiguity or potentially-offensive/misleading nomenclature (character owners et al)

I especially like that the physical features are alphabetized, which makes it easier to remember the order

To be safe, I suppose we could alias the other possible combinations to the main ones:

intersex_pb -> intersex_bp

intersex_bvp -> intersex_bpv
intersex_pbv -> intersex_bpv
intersex_pvb -> intersex_bpv
intersex_vbp -> intersex_bpv
intersex_vpb -> intersex_bpv

intersex_vp -> intersex_pv