"The purpose for this is to prevent users from abusing the system that for easy searching/indexing of the posts. This enforces the site’s “Tag What You See” rule, in that you cannot tag an image as “male” or “female” unless there is visible evidence of that. Even if another site has the same character with better visibility of its gender, that post uniquely must contain those elements. Mistagging, adding invalid tags, or removing valid tags are not punishable for a one-time offense, but they will be disciplined if they produce a pattern of tagging abuse."

I have a question about this. Does this imply that say a Femboy cannot be tagged as such if they're fully clothed and would be tagged as female or ambiguous gender, even if the artist and/or commissioner EXPLICITLY states that they are a femboy? By not mentioning something like "unless stated by the creator" or something of the like, I can only assume canon by the character's creator and/or artist has no bearing on tags here?

For starters, there are lore tags for when a TWYS tag contradicts a character's gender. If a "femboy" gets tagged female despite being male, you can use the male_(lore) tag to declare that the character is male.

Secondly, clothing has nothing to do with tagging a character's gender. E6 has a gender chart to help determine a character's gender by TWYS; a character's gender is typically determined by both body type and, if visible, genitalia. Otherwise, it does not matter what a person says, the gender must be upheld by TWYS. They can edit the description to include that the character is male, use the lore tag, and so on, but editing the general tag to an invalid one is not OK.

aelvir said:
"The purpose for this is to prevent users from abusing the system that for easy searching/indexing of the posts. This enforces the site’s “Tag What You See” rule, in that you cannot tag an image as “male” or “female” unless there is visible evidence of that. Even if another site has the same character with better visibility of its gender, that post uniquely must contain those elements. Mistagging, adding invalid tags, or removing valid tags are not punishable for a one-time offense, but they will be disciplined if they produce a pattern of tagging abuse."

I have a question about this. Does this imply that say a Femboy cannot be tagged as such if they're fully clothed and would be tagged as female or ambiguous gender, even if the artist and/or commissioner EXPLICITLY states that they are a femboy? By not mentioning something like "unless stated by the creator" or something of the like, I can only assume canon by the character's creator and/or artist has no bearing on tags here?

If you look at it, and without any outside info it looks like a female, you tag it as female. You can use the lore tags for outside information that is contrary to Tag What You See.

So, what about non-binary characters, what about agender characters, hell what about any character that has a gender outside the binary, do they just get tagged as "male" or "female" and get misgendered in the tags?

nazariel said:
So, what about non-binary characters, what about agender characters, hell what about any character that has a gender outside the binary, do they just get tagged as "male" or "female" and get misgendered in the tags?

nonbinary_(lore). Lore tags specifically for agender or gender-fluid or any of the others can be requested (I'm surprised they aren't already there, actually). The male, female, and other "General" tags refer to the apparent sex of the character, not their gender. There are lore tags to both indicate when the apparent sex is different from their intended sex (e.g. when an andromorph character gets tagged male because you can't see their genitals), as well as for gender (trans, nb, etc) separately.

watsit said:
nonbinary_(lore). Lore tags specifically for agender or gender-fluid or any of the others can be requested (I'm surprised they aren't already there, actually). The male, female, and other "General" tags refer to the apparent sex of the character, not their gender. There are lore tags to both indicate when the apparent sex is different from their intended sex (e.g. when an andromorph character gets tagged male because you can't see their genitals), as well as for gender (trans, nb, etc) separately.

I'll admit it'd feel wrong to see a trans girl character being tagged as "male" or anything but female, even with lore tags
It's probably just subjective and if the site's rules are like that then that's is I guess but, yeah

nazariel said:
I'll admit it'd feel wrong to see a trans girl character being tagged as "male" or anything but female, even with lore tags
It's probably just subjective and if the site's rules are like that then that's is I guess but, yeah

People browsing e621 typically browse for the visual content, not the lore, and that's what's intended. Some users may learn of and enjoy the lore behind images, but the larger audience for most images will not know that lore and will be enjoying "oh this character is masculine and/or has male bits" rather than "Hey this lady might not have the body of one but she sure is one"

Some artists disagree with this and put forth a DNP status, and that's fine. We don't need to have everything that exists here.