The Wiki entry for human_on_anthro states that the tag must be used

When a human character is depicted romantically or sexually with an anthro character.

But the tag also implicates interspecies which the Wiki states must be used for

Sexual or mating activity between different species.

The current definition for interspecies doesn't allow for non-sexual inter-species activities, while human_on_anthro does. Either the implication should be removed or one of the definitions be reconsidered.

It must also be noted that the anthro_on_anthro allows for romantic activities, while anthro_on_feral and feral_on_feral do not.

wingedwolf9232 said:
It must also be noted that the anthro_on_anthro allows for romantic activities, while anthro_on_feral and feral_on_feral do not.

I don't know why people treat the wiki as gospel when anyone can edit it. Logically, the tags should be consistent, so they should all refer to both romantic and sexual pairings.

it sounds more like the wiki needs editing rather than the tag needing to be unimplicated

jockjamdoorslam said:
I don't know why people treat the wiki as gospel when anyone can edit it. Logically, the tags should be consistent, so they should all refer to both romantic and sexual pairings.

Not necessarily.

The anthro_on_anthro, human_on_anthro, and human_on_human all benefit from being usable on romantic and sexual scenarios, like how male_on_male (i.e., male/male) or other gender on gender tags do not always imply sex.

However, anthro_on_feral and human_on_feral both imply bestiality, which makes it inherently sexual. Subsequently, feral_on_feral is designed in the same vein as that.

thegreatwolfgang said:
However, anthro_on_feral and human_on_feral are tied down and implied to bestiality, which makes it inherently sexual.

At risk of touching on a taboo topic, if a feral and non-feral character were shown in some kind of romantic relationship without any explicit content, wouldn't that still be bestiality? Maybe the tag doesn't need to be solely for sexual stuff.

strikerman said:
At risk of touching on a taboo topic, if a feral and non-feral character were shown in some kind of romantic relationship without any explicit content, wouldn't that still be bestiality? Maybe the tag doesn't need to be solely for sexual stuff.

wouldn't that just look like someone having a good relationship with a pet? Like, I don't think it's reasonable to tag bestiality to someone cuddling with a dog for example. Which, by the logic would be applicable for the tag visibly.

strikerman said:
At risk of touching on a taboo topic, if a feral and non-feral character were shown in some kind of romantic relationship without any explicit content, wouldn't that still be bestiality? Maybe the tag doesn't need to be solely for sexual stuff.

We can have an anthro/human embracing their feral pet in bed and it would seem romantic but not in one bit sexual.
Likewise, kissing your pet would seem romantic, but that is still not considered bestiality.

Thus, intimacy with an animal does not necessarily makes it explicit or sexual.

versperus said:
wouldn't that just look like someone having a good relationship with a pet? Like, I don't think it's reasonable to tag bestiality to someone cuddling with a dog for example.

What if they're nude with their genitals on full display? Perhaps one of the the character's genitals inadvertently touching the other character simply because they're in close proximity, but they're not otherwise doing anything more sexual than when clothed. I think that would be enough to have it be tagged with something akin to the bestiality tag, even if it's not explicit sex.

The <form>_on_<form> tags seem to be for cases where some sexual element is present in the interaction, even if the interaction itself may not be sexual. A human showing normal affection for a dog by petting them or cuddling them while clothed wouldn't get the human_on_feral tag because it's not sexual or romantic behavior, but mere platonic affection.

I feel that if we were to unimply bestiality from the anthro/human_on_feral tags, it would make it more accurate in terms of romantic situations.
However, at the same time, it would condemn bestiality into the same fate as sex where it would end up in a state of disuse and make blacklisting tough.

Perhaps if we could consider having two characters engaged in penetration as sex, such as the case with the proposals to imply gender_penetrating_gender with sex (see topic #30736 & topic #31792), then we could have anthro/human_penetrating_feral and feral_penetrating_anthro/human imply bestiality instead.
Separate BURs would need to be in place for implying anthro/human_penetrating_anthro/human to sex though, since they have not been suggested yet.

versperus said:
wouldn't that just look like someone having a good relationship with a pet? Like, I don't think it's reasonable to tag bestiality to someone cuddling with a dog for example. Which, by the logic would be applicable for the tag visibly.

I was thinking along the lines of a french kiss or something. Safe for work technically, but a lot more than just an owner with their pet.

thegreatwolfgang said:
We can have an anthro/human embracing their feral pet in bed and it would seem romantic but not in one bit sexual.

I wouldn't consider a mere hug or embrace as romantic. There's a difference between romantic and platonic affection. The latter shouldn't imply bestiality, but I also wouldn't use the <form>_on_<form> tag for that since it's a platonic interaction rather than a sexual or romantic one. If someone's having a romantic display with their pet, I would count that as being relevant for the x_on_feral and bestiality tags (see also: bestiality marriage, which is used when there's an indication of a feral and non-feral being married, even if there's no romantic or sexual display). Romancing with a dog is rather on the sexual side of things, even if it's not sex itself.

thegreatwolfgang said:
Perhaps if we could consider having two characters engaged in penetration as sex, such as the case with the proposals to imply gender_penetrating_gender with sex (see topic #30736 & topic #31792), then we could have anthro/human_penetrating_feral and feral_penetrating_anthro/human imply bestiality instead.

That would still leave cases where there's a more-than-platonic display of affection that hasn't gone into full penetrative sex, which I'd say is a decent number of posts. There's a fair number of posts under bestiality -penetration, and I wouldn't remove bestiality from any of them.

It's notable that the zoophilia tag, which could be used to indicate a more romantic and less sexual aspect of feral+non-feral interaction, is aliased to bestiality.

watsit said:
If someone's having a romantic display with their pet, I would count that as being relevant for the x_on_feral and bestiality tags (see also: bestiality marriage, which is used when there's an indication of a feral and non-feral being married, even if there's no romantic or sexual display). Romancing with a dog is rather on the sexual side of things, even if it's not sex itself.

The bestiality_marriage tag does not seem to be a valid one, it lacks a proper wiki and just seem like anthro/humans and ferals wearing wedding_dresses or present in a wedding situation.
I still don't think it would be accurate though to consider romantic situations between a non-feral and a feral to be akin to bestiality, as it is defined as sexual activity between them.

That would still leave cases where there's a more-than-platonic display of affection that hasn't gone into full penetrative sex, which I'd say is a decent number of posts. There's a fair number of posts under bestiality -penetration, and I wouldn't remove bestiality from any of them.

It's notable that the zoophilia tag, which could be used to indicate a more romantic and less sexual aspect of feral+non-feral interaction, is aliased to bestiality.

That is true, but people will need to manually add them in that case and not rely on implication chains.
The *_penetrating_* would not cover all sexual interactions, but that is the same with the *_on_* tags (barring anthro_on_feral & human_on_feral) and people rarely do add in the sex tag when appropriate.

Reviving the zoophilia tag would be nice, but the current understanding of the majority of people (or the lack thereof) is that it is always related to sex, which would make reviving it moot (see topic #15685).

Both @Warsit and @TheGreatWolfgang make perfectly valid points but I'm leaning to @TheGreatWolfgang's side here.

watsit said:
There's a difference between romantic and platonic affection. The latter shouldn't imply bestiality [...]

None of them should imply bestiality as that tag is defined as:

Sexual activity between feral and non-feral characters (including human, anthro, taur, naga, etc.).

This is the correct term, not only because the Wiki says so, but other sources agree with these definitions such as the Merriam-Webster ^{bestiality, zoophilia} . As you said, a better term for non-sexual activities between anthro/human_on_feral would be zoophilia. Whether it is a valid or well known tag is not part of the discussion (we can't re-define the entire Wiki so it's important to have a clear scope in mind), the fact remains that bestiality is sexual and should be used only for sexual activities.

Both human_on_anthro and anthro_on_anthro aren't limited to sexual activity and the benefit is that you can search for human_on_anthro rating:safe and human_on_anthro rating:safe when feeling cuddly. You can do this as well for anthro_on_feral rating:safe but each post has the tag bestiality in it. The most immediate and face-palming example I could find was this in which the post is correctly tagged but since it's anthro_on_feral it is applied the bestiality tag while there is nothing sexual with that image.

The bestiality tag also states:

• If the image depicts an anthro character sexually involved with a feral character, it should also be tagged with anthro_on_feral.
• If the image depicts a human character sexually involved with a feral character, it should also be tagged with human_on_feral.
• If the image depicts an anthro character sexually involved with a feral character of the same species, it should also be tagged with same-species_bestiality.

All of these definitions explicitly mention what to do in case of sexual activity, so it's clear that anthro_on_feral and human_on_feral should not be by themselves sexual: anthro_on_feral and human_on_feral should allow for romantic activity, the bestiality implication should be removed from them. The human_on_feral implication of interspecies should remain because duh, they are not the same species. In retrospective this wasn't a very good idea on my side.

I'm still not so keen on having zoophilia be revived as a tag of its own to describe both romantic and sexual scenarios between non-ferals and ferals, just seems redundant to have since we already have anthro_on_feral, human_on_feral, etc. Unless of course, we consider all forms of non-feral x feral relationships to be zoophilia, it would then serve as an umbrella tag for all relationships with a feral.

Bestiality, on the hand, can be removed from the anthro/human_on_feral tags to allow for romantic scenarios as well. Only when sexual scenarios are involved should bestiality be tagged in.

The entire discussion about the bestiality tag is difficult because bestiality as defined on this site is an imperfect catch all rooted in tag what you see, separate from any lore information about the depicted characters. For example, and I wish I saved a link since I'm pretty sure I saw a screenshot of a moderation conversation on the subject, I'm pretty certain Patreon bans bestiality but does not consider it bestiality when the characters are sapient. Without hypothetical lore tags, it's not possible to differentiate between actual bestiality and images with only sapient characters, and so all biped on quadruped sexuality is tagged as such on this site. Patreon looks beyond a single post to make judgements like that, and of course by its nature that's not how tag what you see works.

Would the loss of the implication lead people to images actually implying sexuality involving non-sapient characters and as such hurt the black list system? In other words, bestiality itself as defined by this site ends up with images only involving sapient characters getting the tag. Are safe/questionable images getting tagged bestiality as a result of implications for human_on_feral, humanoid_on_feral, and anthro_on_feral just another accepted casualty of that wide net?

Someone has edited the wiki for interspecies, fixing this for human_on_anthro.

zeorp said:
The entire discussion about the bestiality tag is difficult because bestiality as defined on this site is an imperfect catch all rooted in tag what you see, separate from any lore information about the depicted characters. For example, and I wish I saved a link since I'm pretty sure I saw a screenshot of a moderation conversation on the subject, I'm pretty certain Patreon bans bestiality but does not consider it bestiality when the characters are sapient. Without hypothetical lore tags, it's not possible to differentiate between actual bestiality and images with only sapient characters, and so all biped on quadruped sexuality is tagged as such on this site. Patreon looks beyond a single post to make judgements like that, and of course by its nature that's not how tag what you see works.

FWIW, there's no dictionary definition of "bestiality" I've seen that mentions sapience. It's always in terms of human and non-human animals. Which makes sense given the state of things, as there doesn't exist another animal which is considered "human-like" enough in its intelligence and awareness for such relations to be considered acceptable. In essence, there is no sapient non-human animal. Anthros and "sapient ferals" aren't real, so there's no way to define whether that counts for bestiality or zoophilia or not.

However, as far as this site goes, AFAIK the current usage of 'bestiality' to mean any non-feral-on-feral romantic or sexual relations is because that's the kind of thing people searching for bestiality want to see, generally speaking.

zeorp said:
In other words, bestiality itself as defined by this site ends up with images only involving sapient characters getting the tag.

There's no way to reliably tag sapience by TWYS. And turning bestiality effectively into a lore tag doesn't make sense. In my opinion, the tags are fine as they are, with <form>_on_<form> indicating some sexual or close romantic activity, and <non-feral>_on_feral sexual or romantic activity covered by the bestiality tag.

zeorp said:
The entire discussion about the bestiality tag is difficult because bestiality as defined on this site is an imperfect catch all rooted in tag what you see, separate from any lore information about the depicted characters. For example, and I wish I saved a link since I'm pretty sure I saw a screenshot of a moderation conversation on the subject, I'm pretty certain Patreon bans bestiality but does not consider it bestiality when the characters are sapient. Without hypothetical lore tags, it's not possible to differentiate between actual bestiality and images with only sapient characters, and so all biped on quadruped sexuality is tagged as such on this site. Patreon looks beyond a single post to make judgements like that, and of course by its nature that's not how tag what you see works.

Nobody has brought up the question of sapience up until this point.

E621 does not define bestiality in regards to level of sapience, but rather the sexual activity between a non-feral and feral, and it is regarded as such with every *_on_feral interaction (with the exception of feral_on_feral).

The actual problem here is implying zoophilia to every sort of romantic and/or sexual interaction between non-ferals and ferals. If we were to revive the tag for such, I fear people will bring up an even bigger fuss when their posts get tagged as such (just like how bestiality initially did in the beginning).

Would the loss of the implication lead people to images actually implying sexuality involving non-sapient characters and as such hurt the black list system? In other words, bestiality itself as defined by this site ends up with images only involving sapient characters getting the tag. Are safe/questionable images getting tagged bestiality as a result of implications for human_on_feral, humanoid_on_feral, and anthro_on_feral just another accepted casualty of that wide net?

Again, not how it is tagged. Sapience of a character has no say in whether or not a post gets tagged with bestiality.

The problem now is what you have said in the end.
Safe-for-work artworks can exist for all non-feral_on_non-feral interactions, since it is defined as both romantic and sexual interactions.
However, they inherently cannot exist for all non-feral_on_feral due to the bestiality implication and how their wikis limit it to only be sexual.

Someone has edited the wiki for interspecies, fixing this for human_on_anthro.

That was the initial topic for this thread, it was fixed after. It has nothing to do with the bestiality discussion we are currently having.

To be fair the implication of human_on_anthro to be sexual due to the interspecies tag allowing only for sexual activities between the characters was the tip of the iceberg. I'd arge that the discussion has evolved to encompass also the implication of sexual activities in anthro_on_feral and human_on_feral (and bestiality implication) and feral_on_feral content.

Both the problem I described in the original post and the inconsistencies between <form>_on_<form> definitions are part of the same topic. The definition, proper use and convenience of bestiality and zoophilia however: are not, and should be probably discussed in a different post.

What I'm trying to say is that while the definition for interspecies has been corrected, allowing for non-sexual human_on_anthro activities (which was what I pointed up in the original post), the intent of the post was more to being to attention all the inconsistencies in the deffinitions of the <form>_on_<form> Wiki pages. The correction of the interspecies definition was a step in the right direction.

TL;DR: I think the Wiki pages of human_on_feral, anthro_on_feral and feral_on_feral should allow for non-sexual activities. The bestiality tag should not be implicated, but used only (manually or implicated by other tags) when appropiate.

wingedwolf9232 said:
TL;DR: I think the Wiki pages of human_on_feral, anthro_on_feral and feral_on_feral should allow for non-sexual activities. The bestiality tag should not be implicated, but used only (manually or implicated by other tags) when appropiate.

I disagree. In my opinion, bestiality should be implicated by <non-feral>_on_feral tags, and should encompass both sexual and sexual-adjacent activities, like being romantically involved (e.g. a human and feral with romantic ambiance), or having undertones of getting sexual (e.g. kissing with some tongue), or being close to the line (e.g. cuddling while completely naked with genitals on display). It doesn't have to be overtly sexual in the sense of sex or imminent sex, but it does bring to mind something more than platonic care. Not having the implication means the tag would be woefully underutilized, causing people who want to find such content to miss it.

wingedwolf9232 said:
TL;DR: I think the Wiki pages of human_on_feral, anthro_on_feral and feral_on_feral should allow for non-sexual activities. The bestiality tag should not be implicated, but used only (manually or implicated by other tags) when appropiate.

watsit said:
I disagree. In my opinion, bestiality should be implicated by <non-feral>_on_feral tags, and should encompass both sexual and sexual-adjacent activities, like being romantically involved (e.g. a human and feral with romantic ambiance), or having undertones of getting sexual (e.g. kissing with some tongue), or being close to the line (e.g. cuddling while completely naked with genitals on display). It doesn't have to be overtly sexual in the sense of sex or imminent sex, but it does bring to mind something more than platonic care. Not having the implication means the tag would be woefully underutilized, causing people who want to find such content to miss it.

Both very valid arguments. However, the main take is that the bestiality wiki states that sexual activity is involved, thus making romantic scenarios seem over-exaggerated, just like you have said that a human and feral in a romantic ambience (even as a rating:safe scene) would get tagged as bestiality under the current implication chain with human_on_feral.

What we are suggesting is to replace bestiality with zoophilia, while retaining the former tag exclusively for sexual scenarios. Additionally, implicating bestiality with non-feral_penetrating_feral or vice versa will partially help with the underutilisation issue, but will still need to be manually added as per the situation just like the sex tag.