Quick introduction:
I am the OP behind topic #31106 (latex ≠ rubber) which ultimately led to the latex tag being unaliased from rubber (thank you @Rainbow_Dash 😉). Since then, hundreds of posts have been tagged with latex and/or rubber.

After months of debating on what to do next with these tags, I noticed a lot of discussion with regards to the different ‘rubbers’ that exist (such as latex, vinyl, PVC, neoprene, nitrile, etc.) as well as the distinction between utilitarian wear and fetish wear (with emphasis on rubber/latex gloves).

Therefore, I’ve decided to start this new thread as a follow-up in order to debate and agree on a solution.

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The idea I had in mind is to (hopefully) create a new tag — something likepolymer — and alias all rubber-like materials to this new tag. Using specific rubber-like material tags would overly complicate things with TWYS (tag what you see). Here are some examples for clarification:

post #2671135 post #2855622 post #2968227 post #3150933 post #2669738 post #3109577 post #2941681 post #3689720 post #2958417

All of these posts are tagged with either rubber, latex, neoprene, or vinyl. Most of them even use a combination of these tags. It would be very hard to tell which post features what material without context. Other than different art styles, they all appear to be indistinguishable from one another; they are virtually similar if not identical.

A mention was already made to implicate all these specific ‘rubbers’ to a rubber-like_material tag. However, an alias would be better in order to conform with TWYS. As a matter of fact, all these materials that have been mentioned (rubber, latex, vinyl/pvc, neoprene, etc.) are all polymer-based.

Aliasing all of them to polymer could solve this huge debate on ‘rubber or latex’ and ‘rubber-like materials’ (hopefully for good).

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With regards to latex_gloves, maybe it can remain as its own tag to prevent any confusion, but we’ll see what everyone else thinks.

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If you have any suggestions, ideas, or concerns regarding this topic, please leave comments and we can all examine things further.

NOTE FOR ADMIN AND JANITORS:
Please don’t report this for spam. First I posted this topic as a BUR on topic #36113, but then rejected it so that others can make their suggestions as well.

I like the catch-all tag idea. I'm not into this fetish myself so maybe there's something I'm missing, but honestly all the art looks identical to me. I uploaded some of my friend's rubber/latex art yesterday and noticed the rubber/latex tags are a total mess.

Since polymer refers to any molecule made up of long chains of monomers (including silk, wool, and polyester) and not just rubbery materials, I wonder if the tag would be better off just literally named "rubberlike_material"? It's a boring name but it works.
edit: "rubbery_*"?

We also have the "glistening_[noun]" tag family already, which is kind of a brute-force solution to the problem but I can't deny it's usually accurate and easy to tell just by looking. On a site with a tag-what-you-see policy, it seems more appropriate to use tags that describe how something looks rather than what they seem to be made of.

I second this idea, since most of the time the rubber or latex tag was used interchangeably using a universal tag for rubber/latex/neoprene will make searching for what is essentially the same category a whole lot easier. The added benefits is that there wouldn't be much confusion on whether to add the rubber tag to this or the latex tag to that. Although will something like the polymer tag work for something like latex/rubber goo_creatures? or do we have to use a different tag to denote something like that?

TWYS is a nice rule, but having over 20 pages of "latex" without a "rubber" tag is frustrating when the terms are used interchangeably most of the time.

for the sake of being easier to find or tag, an exception needs to be made in this case because most people just tag it as "latex" and move on.

whyhaveireturned said:
TWYS is a nice rule, but having over 20 pages of "latex" without a "rubber" tag is frustrating when the terms are used interchangeably most of the time.

for the sake of being easier to find or tag, an exception needs to be made in this case because most people just tag it as "latex" and move on.

"Latex" is the material people think of when they see shiny clothing in art. Rubber honestly shouldn't be a tag at all, it should just be latex and latex_*

Hello all… long time no see.

After reading your responses and suggestions, I’ll try to answer everything while keeping it brief:

cloudpie said:
Since polymer refers to any molecule made up of long chains of monomers (including silk, wool, and polyester) and not just rubbery materials, I wonder if the tag would be better off just literally named "rubberlike_material"? It's a boring name but it works.
edit: "rubbery_*"?

I see your point regarding polymer being too broad for just latex and rubbers, but rubbery_* seems a bit weird. We might as well just use rubber_* instead.

errorist said:
We also have the "glistening_[noun]" tag family already, which is kind of a brute-force solution to the problem but I can't deny it's usually accurate and easy to tell just by looking. On a site with a tag-what-you-see policy, it seems more appropriate to use tags that describe how something looks rather than what they seem to be made of.

I’m indifferent on this stance 🤷‍♂️

bdanimare said:
"Latex" is the material people think of when they see shiny clothing in art. Rubber honestly shouldn't be a tag at all, it should just be latex and latex_*

The whole problem with this latex/rubber debate is that so many people use both terms, often causing people to favour one over the other. I myself prefer to see latex and rubber as separate substances (latex = liquid, rubber = solid), but many people disagree with that viewpoint despite them being very different from one another by true definition.

I’ve decided to make this thread for us to hopefully overthrow the latex and rubber tags altogether and think of a catch-all tag if possible (meanwhile mentioning other materials like ‘vinyl’, ‘neoprene’, etc.).

If we can’t agree on what new tag to use, we might as well have to accept the original tag for what it is, whether it be latex or rubber.

zenith-pendragon said:

Hello all… long time no see.

After reading your responses and suggestions, I’ll try to answer everything while keeping it brief:

I see your point regarding polymer being too broad for just latex and rubbers, but rubbery_* seems a bit weird. We might as well just use rubber_* instead.

I’m indifferent on this stance 🤷‍♂️

The whole problem with this latex/rubber debate is that so many people use both terms, often causing people to favour one over the other. I myself prefer to see latex and rubber as separate substances (latex = liquid, rubber = solid), but many people disagree with that viewpoint despite them being the exact definitions.

I’ve decided to make this thread for us to hopefully overthrow the latex and rubber tags altogether and think of a catch-all tag if possible (meanwhile mentioning other materials like ‘vinyl’, ‘neoprene’, etc.).

If we can’t agree on what new tag to use, we might as well have to accept the original tag for what it is, whether it be latex or rubber.

People use the term here because the latex term was aliased to rubber at one point which deleted all of them so you're going to end up seeing more posts with the rubber tag than latex. It used to be the other way around, by a large margin. I still believe it should be latex since like I said, it's the term used for the material when talking about the fetish/kink clothing. Latex would *be* the catch-all to vinyl/pvc since they look the same in art and are imitating latex anyway. Neoprene should just be "wetsuit" and shouldn't refer to the material. Basically, if it's shiny it should be called latex.

The rubber wiki even says that rubber is used in reference to latex

bdanimare said:
People use the term here because the latex term was aliased to rubber at one point which deleted all of them so you're going to end up seeing more posts with the rubber tag than latex. It used to be the other way around, by a large margin. I still believe it should be latex since like I said, it's the term used for the material when talking about the fetish/kink clothing. Latex would *be* the catch-all to vinyl/pvc since they look the same in art and are imitating latex anyway. Neoprene should just be "wetsuit" and shouldn't refer to the material. Basically, if it's shiny it should be called latex.

The rubber wiki even says that rubber is used in reference to latex

Leaving e621 aside for a moment, I know quite a few people (not personally per se) who use the term ‘rubber’ to define the fetish, but there are also many people who rather use the term ‘latex’. It’s really a 50/50 situation here.

Regardless, we really need users to decide which of the three scenarios they prefer:

• Everything (rubber, latex, and other materials) should be aliased to a new catch-all tag.
• Everything should be aliased to latex from now on.
• Everything should be aliased back to rubber.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Users of E621. Which one do you prefer?

zenith-pendragon said:
Regardless, we really need users to decide which of the three scenarios they prefer:

• Everything (rubber, latex, and other materials) should be aliased to a new catch-all tag.
• Everything should be aliased to latex from now on.
• Everything should be aliased back to rubber.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Users of E621. Which one do you prefer?

So I'm not a rubber/latex person at all personally so I don't have that much of an opinion, but:
As you said in your old thread, rubber is the solid material and latex is liquid. The liquid gooey stuff and the solid material fetishwear is made of are very distinctly different in art. What if the gooey stuff was called liquid_latex (to emphasize the fact that it's just for the liquid substance for people who don't read wikis) and solids are tagged rubber? The just latex tags (no liquid_) would either be aliased to liquid_latex* or disambiguated. Neither of those options are perfect though, an alias would lead to mistagging and I know staff are trying to avoid disambiguations when possible. It's 3AM so this is probably really stupid lol, I'm very tired, figured it was worth trying to write down though.

Otherwise, I guess I would vote for aliasing back to rubber, as long as there's still some tag or combination to let people find the gooey stuff if they want.

zenith-pendragon said:
Leaving e621 aside for a moment, I know quite a few people (not personally per se) who use the term ‘rubber’ to define the fetish, but there are also many people who rather use the term ‘latex’. It’s really a 50/50 situation here.

Regardless, we really need users to decide which of the three scenarios they prefer:

• Everything (rubber, latex, and other materials) should be aliased to a new catch-all tag.
• Everything should be aliased to latex from now on.
• Everything should be aliased back to rubber.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Users of E621. Which one do you prefer?

Current votes

0 = Alias to a new tag
1 = Alias to latex
1 = Alias to rubber

Everywhere you look online it's usually referred to as latex. Most latex manufactures call it as such too so I think it should be aliased to latex and latex_*

cloudpie said:
So I'm not a rubber/latex person at all personally so I don't have that much of an opinion, but:
As you said in your old thread, rubber is the solid material and latex is liquid. The liquid gooey stuff and the solid material fetishwear is made of are very distinctly different in art. What if the gooey stuff was called liquid_latex (to emphasize the fact that it's just for the liquid substance for people who don't read wikis) and solids are tagged rubber? The just latex tags (no liquid_) would either be aliased to liquid_latex* or disambiguated. Neither of those options are perfect though, an alias would lead to mistagging and I know staff are trying to avoid disambiguations when possible. It's 3AM so this is probably really stupid lol, I'm very tired, figured it was worth trying to write down though.

Otherwise, I guess I would vote for aliasing back to rubber, as long as there's still some tag or combination to let people find the gooey stuff if they want.

IMO solid is latex, liquid would be liquid_latex. Rubber shouldn't be a thing since latex in general usage refers to the fetish/kink clothing which is the main thing that the tag is for.

I have no dog in this fight otherwise, but I would really like the wellington_boots alias to be removed as they don't resemble anything you see if you click on that tag.

Personally?: I think they should be aliased, while technically they aren't the same thing, in practice they are the same thing, but if they must be kept seperate, Latex things should imply latex categories, thus topic #37375

zenith-pendragon said:
Users of E621. Which one do you prefer?

Current votes

0 = Alias to a new tag
1 = Alias to latex
1 = Alias to rubber

I second aliasing them to latex since rubber is a latex, neoprene is a synthetic latex, and while vinyl isn't a latex it does get used as a replacement for rubber. It's not perfect but it does have more versatility as a term than rubber.

I guess most of us can agree that latex will be the main tag from now on.

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cutefox123 said:
Personally?: I think they should be aliased, while technically they aren't the same thing, in practice they are the same thing, but if they must be kept seperate, Latex things should imply latex categories, thus topic #37375

Seeing where things are going, we should include rubber-related tags in the BURs as well, just for the sake of TWYS. I’ll write the rubber BURs and add them to the topic shortly.