Topic: Non-lore gender tags, discrimination and subjectiveness

From time to time, I've seen discussions on this forum about:

• What is the correct use of certain gender tags
• Cases of gender dysphoria because of the disparity of gender tags and lore gender tags in some posts (as has happened very recently)
• TWYS not feeling that useful in searches because of subjectiveness (What if an andromorph character has something akin to breasts? Should it be tagged "female" instead because that's what it seems like? Same for gynomorph characters with non-noticeable breasts and the list could go on and on). People doesn't seem to be able to reach a clear consensus on this matter aside from shooting down others' opinions/suggestions or letting things be as they are.

I personally resonate with the third point myself. I don't understand why gender tags are used and defended as an objective thing to tag when it obviously is not. They don't work as a grouping tag because of the subjectiveness of it and the huge spectrum of body shapes and attributes. When I search for gender tags, I always end up having to add patches to my query here and there, to a point where gender tags become irrelevant.

Also, everything gender related (crossdressing as an example comes to mind) is, in my opinion, more about context than about what is actually displayed, precisely because gender identity is a subjective thing (e.g. why are posts like post #6127090 tagged as crossdressing? Posts like these might as well be a female depiction of the characters, but they are tagged as "male"/"female" even though nothing in the picture indicates such thing).

And what I think is more important, making a considerable portion of the furry community feel alienated in favor of the convenience of conformity doesn't sit right with me. We don't need any more divisions in our community as things are. And it would be foolish to dismiss this as "if you don't like it, don't use e621", when e621 is one of the most important furry art databases.

These discussions will keep happening again and again unless there's a change. I invite you to consider the possibility of relegating all gender tags into the lore category. It's not a perfect solution, but I don't think there's one where everyone is satisfied.

Gender tags lose any and all meaning once in the lore category, you may think they have no function as is but they clearly do serve a purpose and function well enough else they would not be used and blacklisted

We're also not a personal art gallery so yes, if you don't like how the site functions we invite you to leave and go to a different site
In fact, start your own booru, see how quickly tagging falls apart and the complaints about people not being able to find what they want
What we have is not perfect and never will be, but it's the best we've got and throwing it all out doesn't solve anything

Every person who has suggested changes has either not grasped how the site actually works, or not taken into account that 90% of users are just gooners that don't care about what a given character identifies as, they care what's between their legs and on their chest and that's about it

That's all the gender tags are, they're a label for specific sets of features

I'd also like to call in forum #473594 (which funny enough is also in a topic about gender tags)

donovan_dmc said:

• less than 10% of the site has ever edited a post (forum #463461)
• the top 10 users are responsible for 27.5% of all post changes (forum #463044)
• the next 40 users make up 17.2% (forum #463044)
• 50 people are responsible for almost 50% of all edits (44.7%)

And forum #463461

donovan_dmc said:
200,286 ((626*320)-34) users with >=1 post edit, which is about 8.5% of all users

less than 10% of users registered on this site have ever edited a post, the majority here are just searching and do not care what the tags are as long as they can generally find what they are looking for
And that doesn't even account for the anonymous users that are just search, I don't have numbers on those but I'd bet it's significantly higher than the registered users

randomanon said:
(e.g. why are posts like post #6127090 tagged as crossdressing? Posts like these might as well be a female depiction of the characters, but they are tagged as "male"/"female" even though nothing in the picture indicates such thing)

I understand the point you are trying to get across, but this example doesn't help since you can see the bulge…

When it comes to the way I understand the world, I 100% agree that gender is more than "tag what you see" anatomy. I agree with Donovan's point as well, though - I think our tags need to be maximally functional. I'm thus OK with tags like "male" and "female" denoting a subjective understanding of sex, not gender.

This is a place to save and organize art. We have to make compromises to make it navigable and understandable for a broad base of users. That includes people who may not have English as a first language. I don't think we can realistically expect most users to be up to speed on the difference between sex and gender.

randomanon said:
These discussions will keep happening again and again unless there's a change. I invite you to consider the possibility of relegating all gender tags into the lore category. It's not a perfect solution, but I don't think there's one where everyone is satisfied.

The lore-based gender tags were introduced as a means to appease all of those complaints to begin with, regarding how TWYS conflicts with what the author/character owner says about their own characters, see topic #23515.
Merging the normal gender tags with their lore-based counterparts so that everything is consolidated into one is an absolutely horrible idea.
It would serve no functional purpose whatsoever other than to force the tags to say whatever the character owner wants them to say.

Let's say for a moment there that we cave in to the complaints, revert the over decade-old policy, and dump all of the gender/sex tags into the lore category.
Functionally, allowing people to tag whatever gender they like, instead of what is visually apparent on the post at that moment.

The functionality of searches based around a character's sex would break down instantly and people's blacklists would cease to work.
Can you imagine the amount of conflicts that would bring, ranging from people tag warring over what gender a post should have as well as how to fix their completely-busted searching/blacklist?
Not to mention that tagging is a community-wide effort as well, so all of the reports of people abusing the tags or claims of purposeful misgendering.

People should understand by now that the TWYS policy is not used to make definitive statements about one's character, but rather what is visually apparent at that moment instead.
It is not a "this post definitely contains X" statement, but rather a "this post appears to contain X".
If they do not wish to comply with TWYS, then it is completely fine to takedown their arts from here and/or post elsewhere.

Understand the recent reigniting of this discussion was by a bad-faith actor who doesn't understand how the site works engaging in a purity contest, while attempting to prescribe to transgender people (especially the staff) how they're supposed to think and feel about the subject. They aren't willing to discuss it at all so it's best not to even give them the benefit of the doubt. They just like being angry at things.

thegreatwolfgang said:
The lore-based gender tags were introduced as a means to appease all of those complaints to begin with, regarding how TWYS conflicts with what the author/character owner says about their own characters, see topic #23515.
Merging the normal gender tags with their lore-based counterparts so that everything is consolidated into one is an absolutely horrible idea.
It would serve no functional purpose whatsoever other than to force the tags to say whatever the character owner wants them to say.

Let's say for a moment there that we cave in to the complaints, revert the over decade-old policy, and dump all of the gender/sex tags into the lore category.
Functionally, allowing people to tag whatever gender they like, instead of what is visually apparent on the post at that moment.

The functionality of searches based around a character's sex would break down instantly and people's blacklists would cease to work.
Can you imagine the amount of conflicts that would bring, ranging from people tag warring over what gender a post should have as well as how to fix their completely-busted searching/blacklist?
Not to mention that tagging is a community-wide effort as well, so all of the reports of people abusing the tags or claims of purposeful misgendering.

People should understand by now that the TWYS policy is not used to make definitive statements about one's character, but rather what is visually apparent at that moment instead.
It is not a "this post definitely contains X" statement, but rather a "this post appears to contain X".
If they do not wish to comply with TWYS, then it is completely fine to takedown their arts from here and/or post elsewhere.

Every part of your argument has been addressed in the comment you're replying to, including and especially the idea that you can just take your ball and leave one of the most imortant furry databases.

This is ultimately a question about who this site is and is not for, and judging by some of the canned responses to this question that keep showing up, that answer is increasingly NOT the furry/queer community

cardin_drakerav said:
This is ultimately a question about who this site is and is not for, and judging by some of the canned responses to this question that keep showing up, that answer is increasingly NOT the furry/queer community

what do you even mean "increasingly"? are you trying to say that the site has gotten worse with how it handles these issues?

Do you have a single fact to back that up?

cardin_drakerav said:
This is ultimately a question about who this site is and is not for, and judging by some of the canned responses to this question that keep showing up, that answer is increasingly NOT the furry/queer community

This is e621. We're all queer here. You have to negotiate and talk significant changes to the website architecture through with the people you share the website with.

Would it help if the wikis were updated to make it clear that tags like "male" and "female" are referring to sex distinctions, not gender distinctions (except for the "lore" tags, which are trans inclusive and based on identity?) I don't think conflating sex and gender so everything is tied to gender at the expense of sex is workable, for the reasons that people have already explained, but I'm open to other suggestions.

cardin_drakerav said:
This is ultimately a question about who this site is and is not for, and judging by some of the canned responses to this question that keep showing up, that answer is increasingly NOT the furry/queer community

If this furry art imageboard isn't for furries, who is it for? Do you understand how ridiculous this sounds, given this is explicitly a site for furries? And may I ask who you consider to be a furry, if not just someone with a strong interest in sapient creatures and an acceptance of individuality?

donkdewd said:
This is e621. We're all queer here. You have to negotiate and talk significant changes to the website architecture through with the people you share the website with.

Would it help if the wikis were updated to make it clear that tags like "male" and "female" are referring to sex distinctions, not gender distinctions (except for the "lore" tags, which are trans inclusive and based on identity?) I don't think conflating sex and gender so everything is tied to gender at the expense of sex is workable, for the reasons that people have already explained, but I'm open to other suggestions.

I second this. I'm not opposed to making the site more comfortable for more people given a big part of being a furry is being an individual and accepting others' individuality. But that also needs to come with making sure search still functions and it's overall usable and not creating a tagging nightmare.

cardin_drakerav said:

This is ultimately a question about who this site is and is not for, and judging by some of the canned responses to this question that keep showing up, that answer is increasingly NOT the furry/queer community

Almost every member of staff to my knowledge is some level of queer, including myself. Also e6 has some of the least crude gender tags, We don’t use futa, cuntboy, dickgirl, or any of those that almost every other site does. Despite some people’s wishes there needs to be a way to sort things, or no one will ever be happy.

I prefer femme coded and androgynous characters in art typically, so I often remove the male tag when looking for artworks. I know many people who are the opposite. Take away gender tags and this site will be a shit show where no one will ever find what they want and no one will be happy.

The lore tags are there for a reason, they are there to show what characters actually are, while the “gender” tags are more like sex tags, they just cover the base body type, nothing more.

dba_afish said:
what do you even mean "increasingly"? are you trying to say that the site has gotten worse with how it handles these issues?

Do you have a single fact to back that up?

"increasingly" is admittedly overly-generalized not just to e6, but to the wider internet.

As for facts that back the assertion up, TWYS has been deployed to defend misgendering trans characters in the tags on more sites than just this one

mklxiv said:
If this furry art imageboard isn't for furries, who is it for? Do you understand how ridiculous this sounds

Yes. It very much should not be this way

Ok, we're not splitting this over 2 threads; take it to forum topic #61584.