Topic: Tag implication: fingering -> penetration

The tag implication #67706 fingering -> penetration is pending approval.

Reason: This was previously suggested and rejected in topic #20042, but that was 7 years ago, and I believe this warrants a reexamination.

See topic #34213 and topic #32887 for additional discussion on this topic. The core argument against is that some posts depict external fingering with no or little penetration, but others argued that such examples should not count as fingering in the first place.

Forgot to mention, sometimes things are kept separate even though they are technically true for practical searching reasons.
Such as, if you would consider two fingers into an orifice as being double_penetration (but seriously though, this would dump ~52k fingering posts into the ~907k penetration pool, so I'm not sure if people would like that).

thegreatwolfgang said:
(but seriously though, this would dump ~52k fingering posts into the ~907k penetration pool, so I'm not sure if people would like that).

Quite a few fingering posts are already tagged penetration. fingering penetration has ~19k results, and while some of them may be a result of penile/dildo/tentacle penetration alongside fingering, some aren't.

I think a bigger issue is how fingering is being used for seemingly two different acts. One being to penetrate into a sexual orifice with fingers, and the other to rub the outside of the genitals with fingers. Essentially, vaginal_fingering is conflating the equivalent of anal_fingering (fingerings penetrating into the vaginal tunnel) and handjob (fingers rubbing the upper labia or exposed clitoris), which I think should be kept separate. Distinguishing those uses and having *_fingering used solely for penetrating into a sexual orifice with fingers, and this implication makes total sense.

thegreatwolfgang said:
Such as, if you would consider two fingers into an orifice as being double_penetration

Do tongues count towards penetration count? If yes, then logically fingers should also count. If no, then it should be simple enough to revise the wiki description for double_penetration to carve out an exception.

watsit said:
Distinguishing those uses and having *_fingering used solely for penetrating into a sexual orifice with fingers, and this implication makes total sense.

This, and I would change the non-penetrative uses to *_rubbing.

As far as I’m aware, the current clitoral_fingering tag is the only thing holding up this implication, since a clitoris is not an orifice and cannot be penetrated, so those are all rubbing. The rest would be fixing the occasional anal or labial rubbing, but the vast majority of these are penetrative and are lacking the penetration tag.

spe said:
a clitoris is not an orifice and cannot be penetrated

Well, technically it can, but it would either be a piercing or an impalement.

spe said:
As far as I’m aware, the current clitoral_fingering tag is the only thing holding up this implication, since a clitoris is not an orifice and cannot be penetrated, so those are all rubbing. The rest would be fixing the occasional anal or labial rubbing, but the vast majority of these are penetrative and are lacking the penetration tag.

I was going to suggest an alias to clitoris_rubbing, but that tag actually already exists and is used to depict tribadism. This will require some juggling.

The bulk update request #11306 has been rejected.

mass update clitoris_rubbing -> tribadism
create alias clitoral_fingering (0) -> clitoral_rubbing (3343)

Reason: Would this work?

EDIT: The bulk update request #11306 (forum #452769) has been rejected by @Beholding.

beholding said:
I was going to suggest an alias to clitoris_rubbing, but that tag actually already exists and is used to depict tribadism. This will require some juggling.
...
mass update clitoris_rubbing -> tribadism

You might be confused with what tribadism is, i.e., rubbing two pussies together.
For clitoris_rubbing to apply, you need stimulation of the clitoris through rubbing with a hand, pussy, or anything else.

beholding said:
create alias clitoral_fingering (2685) -> clitoral_rubbing (73) # duplicate of alias #74754; has blocking transitive relationships, cannot be applied through bur

Reason: Would this work?

It would not, not before the other alias request gets approved or declined.
In any case, discussions should be restarted there if there is to be any revived attempts to move forward with this renaming.

The bulk update request #11306 (forum #452769) has been rejected by @Beholding.

spe has graciously answered my prayers and approved the clitoral_fingering rename. Unless there are any other problematic *_fingering tags, this implication should now be valid.

beholding said:
spe has graciously answered my prayers and approved the clitoral_fingering rename. Unless there are any other problematic *_fingering tags, this implication should now be valid.

My point still stands on whether or not people would want fingering (as a whole) to be considered as penetration.
Most definitions outside of e621 (e.g., Wikipedia) includes the sexual stimulation of areas outside/around the vagina (i.e., vulva & clitoris) in addition to inside the vagina (i.e., vaginal_canal).

The current wiki definition of fingering is "the sexual stimulation of an orifice by using the fingers, such as the anus, pussy, genital slit, or cloaca."
The word "orifice" here is vague as it does not mention whether it includes inside or around said orifice, so clitoral_rubbing could technically be included as well.
It also does not help that the previous definition used prior to January 2025 mentioned that "this tag is most likely also being used for rubbing the surface of the orifice."

TBH, I don't feel comfortable implying fingering to penetration for the sole reason I have mentioned above.
What I would love to see though is something akin to "cunnilingus vs. tongue_penetration" being implemented, to answer your question earlier.

A potential solution I would suggest is to:

• 1) Make a new finger_penetration tag as a companion tag.
• 2) Unalias finger_in_pussy (to be renamed), finger_in_ass, etc. to become subtags for finger_penetration.
• 3) Redefine fingering and *_fingering as a whole to encompass both *_rubbing and finger_in_*.
• 4) Have finger_in_* imply finger_penetration, and subsequently, penetration.

Honestly, I wouldn't mind making separate tags for finger/tongue penetration. It would be a good way to resolve the issue that most people expect penile penetration when searching "penetration".

thegreatwolfgang said:
My point still stands on whether or not people would want fingering (as a whole) to be considered as penetration.

Considering there's been multiple attempts to make a fingering -> penetration implication, and we likely don't want x_fingering_y tags, I think it's fair to say people do. The primary dissenting factor has been that "clitoral fingering" would sometimes be used for clitoral_rubbing, but that started getting addressed just a few days ago specifically in response to this issue.

thegreatwolfgang said:
Most definitions outside of e621 (e.g., Wikipedia) includes the sexual stimulation of areas outside/around the vagina (i.e., vulva & clitoris) in addition to inside the vagina (i.e., vaginal_canal).

Wikipedia isn't a great reference for how e6 tags work. Tags like bestiality, humanoid, and anthropomorphic are either broader or narrower here than their wikipedia or dictionary counterpart, and I don't see why the same can't apply here given the general presumption that fingering is penetration.

thegreatwolfgang said:
A potential solution I would suggest is to:

• 1) Make a new finger_penetration tag as a companion tag.
• 2) Unalias finger_in_pussy (to be renamed), finger_in_ass, etc. to become subtags for finger_penetration.
• 3) Redefine fingering and *_fingering as a whole to encompass both *_rubbing and finger_in_*.
• 4) Have finger_in_* imply finger_penetration, and subsequently, penetration.

I don't like adding more x_penetration tags where x isn't the thing being penetrated. penile_penetration already confuses me as something that should be for urethral penetration on a penis, and tail_penetration has ambiguity in the face of a tail_mouth or literal_tailhole that can be penetrated like other orifices (the only implication tail_penetration has is from tail_in_tail, which deftly sidesteps that ambiguity).

thegreatwolfgang said:

Proposed Tag Tree

• penetration
• finger_penetration
• finger_in_vagina
• finger_in_ass
• finger_in_slit
• finger_in_cloaca

• fingering
• vaginal_fingering (pending rename?)
• clitoral_rubbing (exterior stimulation of the vulva)
• finger_in_vagina (interior stimulation of the vagina)
• anal_fingering
• anal_rubbing?
• finger_in_ass
• slit_fingering
• slit_rubbing?
• finger_in_slit
• cloacal_fingering
• cloacal_rubbing?
• finger_in_cloaca

I feel the difference in wording between finger_in_x and x_fingering is too vague to properly convey the distinction. As it is, tags like penis_in_ass and penis_in_vagina are woefully undertagged because people will just tag anal_penetration or vaginal_penetration with x_penetrating_y. People will likely just tag x_fingering when fingers are penetrating the given orifice, making finger_in_x largely useless.

If we have separate x_fingering and x_rubbing tags, then I don't see why x_fingering can't be exclusively for fingers penetrating into the orifice and x_rubbing be exclusively for fingers rubbing the outside of the orifice.

Keep in mind that *_rubbing tags aren't very neatly defined either, as I brought up a while back.

watsit said:
Wikipedia isn't a great reference for how e6 tags work. Tags like bestiality, humanoid, and anthropomorphic are either broader or narrower here than their wikipedia or dictionary counterpart, and I don't see why the same can't apply here given the general presumption that fingering is penetration.

Wikipedia was just an example. This definition that fingering includes non-penetrative simulation/clitoral_rubbing is found nearly universally outside of e621 (e.g., WebMD, Planned Parenthood, published journal articles, etc.).
Thus, the general presumption that fingering is and should purely be penetrative in nature cannot be made.

IMO, tags should be based as close as possible to their real-world definitions whenever possible (for the average non-furry user to understand) and any deviations from it should be reasonable.
Tags like feral, bestiality, etc. have long been established in the furry community that it is understood that they would include things that deviate from their real-world definition.

To force penetration onto fingering just for the sake of making everything in the latter strictly penetrative in use is not reasonable.

I don't like adding more x_penetration tags where x isn't the thing being penetrated. penile_penetration already confuses me as something that should be for urethral penetration on a penis, and tail_penetration has ambiguity in the face of a tail_mouth or literal_tailhole that can be penetrated like other orifices (the only implication tail_penetration has is from tail_in_tail, which deftly sidesteps that ambiguity).

If ambiguity is an issue, an alternative term like finger_insertion could be discussed.

I feel the difference in wording between finger_in_x and x_fingering is too vague to properly convey the distinction. As it is, tags like penis_in_ass and penis_in_vagina are woefully undertagged because people will just tag anal_penetration or vaginal_penetration with x_penetrating_y. People will likely just tag x_fingering when fingers are penetrating the given orifice, making finger_in_x largely useless.

If we have separate x_fingering and x_rubbing tags, then I don't see why x_fingering can't be exclusively for fingers penetrating into the orifice and x_rubbing be exclusively for fingers rubbing the outside of the orifice.

I think the whole reason why there is now a split in definition for fingering is because of the introduction of clitoral_rubbing as a separate concept on topic #54584 and topic #54597.

Issues brought up on the original discussions were not addressed (e.g., clitoral_rubbing being vague in what is rubbing it).
A few people over there also raised concerns with the new definition now deviating from what is already universally understood, as far as vaginal fingering is concerned.

Looking back at it now, I don't think we should even keep *_rubbing as a subtag for fingering due to issues with vagueness in its name as mentioned above.
Subsequently, I also concede the point in that finger_in_* and *_fingering are too similar in naming to be distinct.

Honestly, I'm stumped at this and how we are trying to make things work.
On one hand, we have certain *_rubbing tags that would not make sense calling *_fingering (e.g., nipple_rubbing is distinct from nipple_fingering).
On the other hand, we are trying to separate clitoral_rubbing from vaginal_fingering. What about non-penetrative vulva rubbing?

thegreatwolfgang said:
A few people over there also raised concerns with the new definition now deviating from what is already universally understood, as far as vaginal fingering is concerned.

I wouldn't say it is universally understood. At least for me, I never thought of "fingering" as being for anything other than penetration with fingers; like fisting is inserting a whole fist/hand into an orifice, fingering is that except just the fingers. I never thought of it as fingers simply rubbing or playing with something until pretty recently when requested implications like this were being rejected.

thegreatwolfgang said:
On one hand, we have certain *_rubbing tags that would not make sense calling *_fingering (e.g., nipple_rubbing is distinct from nipple_fingering).
On the other hand, we are trying to separate clitoral_rubbing from vaginal_fingering. What about non-penetrative vulva rubbing?

There is rubbing_pussy, which could perhaps be renamed to vulva_fondling or vulva_grab (similar to ball_fondling or butt_grab)? And for the ambiguity of *_rubbing tags, perhaps *_finger_play tags. clitoral_finger_play, nipple_finger_play, anal_finger_play, etc, I think better convey a distinction from *_fingering for whether fingers are penetrating or not.

A finger_play tag sounds like it might be a good idea.

I would be generally in favor of shifting "penetration" tags for penetrating objects over to "insertion" instead, just as a general policy. Having penile_penetration and vaginal_penetration meaning opposite things is confusing.

As much as I do like trying to keep tags as close to real-world definitions as possible, I will note that tags like vaginal_fingering and anal_fingering look to be overwhelmingly, if not virtually exclusively penetrative, so the actual usage of the tags have to be taken into account too. Also, the linked articles pretty much only ever mention non-penetrative fingering in regards to clitoral. Wikipedia even says "Vaginal fingering is legally and medically called digital penetration or digital penetration of the vagina," implying that vaginal fingering is exclusively of the penetrative variety. For both of these reasons, rubbing the outside of the vulva would probably be best off in its own tag anyway - perhaps labial_rubbing? Usually it'll be the inner_labia that gets rubbed, as the labia majora isn't as sensitive (although, still labia, so the distinction likely doesn't matter for this tag), and anything else would probably classify as penetration.