Topic: non-binary

The bulk update request #13678 is pending approval.

Reason: nonbinary tags because i love nonbinary people

It's generally preferred to alias to a tag matching the first part of a tag. e.g. gynomorph_penetrating_nonbinary should be aliased to gynomorph_penetrating to avoid unnecessary autocomplete results for someone typing in gynomorph_p....

forest1985 said:
create implication nonbinary_scarf -> nonbinary_pride_colors
create implication nonbinary_man_pride_colors -> nonbinary_pride_colors

and no nonbinary_woman_pride_colors?

aurorianarchivist said:
and no nonbinary_woman_pride_colors?

nobody made that a tag by uploading a post with it, i guess. tags only exist when there are/were posts inside of them

forest1985 said:
nobody made that a tag by uploading a post with it, i guess. tags only exist when there are/were posts inside of them

doesn't mean you can't add it still
the tag may come in the future

it's just preparation

also if this whole bur where to be the case wouldnt also nonbinary_pride_colors imply transgender_pride_colors since being nonbinary is by technicality be also trans

aurorianarchivist said:
also if this whole bur where to be the case wouldnt also nonbinary_pride_colors imply transgender_pride_colors since being nonbinary is by technicality be also trans

not necessarily, there are people who are nonbinary who don't also consider themselves transgender.

aurorianarchivist said:
also if this whole bur where to be the case wouldnt also nonbinary_pride_colors imply transgender_pride_colors since being nonbinary is by technicality be also trans

non-binary people are not cis, but not all non-binary people consider themselves trans. Often this is due to associations with it only being applicable to trans men and women, making them uncomfortable as they are the western binary genders, and nonbinary genders are explicitly not part of the western binary

Why alias away the x-on-nonbinary tags? I'd guess because nonbinary is specifically a lore tag?

Though, I do have a suggestion: Instead of an implication for nonbinary_scarf, which only has one post, I'd alias it to invalid_tag. Really nonbinary_scarf is just nonbinary_pride_colors + scarf + pride_color_accessory.

dba_afish said:
not necessarily, there are people who are nonbinary who don't also consider themselves transgender.

forest1985 said:
non-binary people are not cis, but not all non-binary people consider themselves trans. Often this is due to associations with it only being applicable to trans men and women, making them uncomfortable as they are the western binary genders, and nonbinary genders are explicitly not part of the western binary

i was talking more on the basis of the BUR rather than the logistics because of the implication nonbinary_man_pride_colors -> nonbinary_pride_colors

i am also nonbinary myself cuz gender is messy and i rather do and be my own thing
aligning to one side or the other is finniky so i rather not
post #5324874

also asking this genuinely, what does "western binary" mean

dba_afish said:
not necessarily, there are people who are nonbinary who don't also consider themselves transgender.

There are gay men who insist they aren't "lgbt", despite gay being the second word in the acronym. That doesn't mean we say "being gay isn't necessarily lgbt". Personal insecurities and hangups about a categorization doesn't change the fact that words have definitions. Nonbinary is a subset of transgender, which is defined as identifying as any gender different from that assigned at birth.

aurorianarchivist said:
also asking this genuinely, what does "western binary" mean

It in itself is kind of flakey terminology, but generally refers to gender roles common in Western countries. It's different in, for example, lots of African countries where women are expected to be the leaders, farmers, etc. as opposed to Western countries where men are expected to do those things. They're different throughout the world.

listlesssky said:
There are gay men who insist they aren't "lgbt", despite gay being the second word in the acronym.

I think this is more to do with association with the broader community and related activism which people may try to distance themselves from, as "LGBT" has kind of become associated with that rather than just categorizations of sexuality and gender identity.

mklxiv said:
I think this is more to do with association with the broader community and related activism which people may try to distance themselves from, as "LGBT" has kind of become associated with that rather than just categorizations of sexuality and gender identity.

That's my point though. People may have a million weirdo personal reasons to object to the various categorizations we use on this site, but we have to be objective and tag based only on what we see and what the definitions are, and nonbinary is defined as a subset of transgender.

The whole "nonbinary isn't transgender" thing was started by bigots trying to gatekeep and fracture the community anyway, and is not supported by any of the major psychological organizations or lgbt+ groups with any level of authority over these topics. Reinforcing petty intracommunity drama and bigotry in the tagging policy of this site would be ridiculous.

listlesssky said:
That's my point though. People may have a million weirdo personal reasons to object to the various categorizations we use on this site, but we have to be objective and tag based only on what we see and what the definitions are, and nonbinary is defined as a subset of transgender.

I agree, I was just stating why people don't consider themselves LGBT but are gay. :P

aurorianarchivist said:
also asking this genuinely, what does "western binary" mean

The male and female binary as commonly seen in the West. To be fair, the binary is also common all over the globe. However, a small number of societies here and there have acknowledged a third gender, sometimes with their own social duties and privileges. Examples include the two spirit of the Native Americans (with various names according to languages, such as the nadle of the Navajo) and the physical deviants with no gender status of the Pokot of Kenya (not all who recognize a third gender are kind about it).

clawstripe said:
The male and female binary as commonly seen in the West. To be fair, the binary is also common all over the globe. However, a small number of societies here and there have acknowledged a third gender, sometimes with their own social duties and privileges. Examples include the two spirit of the Native Americans (with various names according to languages, such as the nadle of the Navajo) and the physical deviants with no gender status of the Pokot of Kenya (not all who recognize a third gender are kind about it).

There's another in India but I forget what it's called

The whole "are nonbinary people trans" discussion is kind of irrelevant, because the transgender pride colors tag is not a tag for all the pride flags of all identities that fall under the trans umbrella. It's a tag for the colors of that one particular trans pride flag design.

listlesssky said:
There are gay men who insist they aren't "lgbt", despite gay being the second word in the acronym. That doesn't mean we say "being gay isn't necessarily lgbt". Personal insecurities and hangups about a categorization doesn't change the fact that words have definitions. Nonbinary is a subset of transgender, which is defined as identifying as any gender different from that assigned at birth.

well for me, "identifying as any gender different that assigned at birth", would require me to comfortably identity with any solidly definable category, which I do not.

also just, identifying as trans would feel kinda like stolen valor.

listlesssky said:
That's my point though. People may have a million weirdo personal reasons to object to the various categorizations we use on this site, but we have to be objective and tag based only on what we see and what the definitions are, and nonbinary is defined as a subset of transgender.

The whole "nonbinary isn't transgender" thing was started by bigots trying to gatekeep and fracture the community anyway, and is not supported by any of the major psychological organizations or lgbt+ groups with any level of authority over these topics. Reinforcing petty intracommunity drama and bigotry in the tagging policy of this site would be ridiculous.

Non-binary people aren't necessarily trans though. While many are trans, there are a number of cultures who have gender outside of the established "male female" binary. I am agender, and that is different than my assigned gender as birth therefore I fall under the trans umbrella. A friend and colleague is two-spirit, that is an established gender in their culture and is outside the western binary, however neither they nor their wider culture consider them to be trans, thus to place them under the trans umbrella would be incorrect and (at least according to my specific colleague) seen as culturally insensitive. I get the urge to keep things consistent on here for tagging, but gender is a complex topic

Another thing to consider is that we're dealing with fictional drawings. With transgender meaning "identifying as any gender different that assigned at birth" and non-binary meaning "identifying as a gender outside of the gender binary", you need to ask if someone can create a world or setting where a character can be the latter without the former. Can someone make an image depicting a character that identifies as a gender outside of the gender binary, and is the same gender they were assigned at birth?

watsit said:
Another thing to consider is that we're dealing with fictional drawings. With transgender meaning "identifying as any gender different that assigned at birth" and non-binary meaning "identifying as a gender outside of the gender binary", you need to ask if someone can create a world or setting where a character can be the latter without the former. Can someone make an image depicting a character that identifies as a gender outside of the gender binary, and is the same gender they were assigned at birth?

Could also be worlds/settings/cultures where they don't assigned gender at birth, but at some other time thus making it the characters originally assigned gender (I may be wrong/misremembering, but I vaguely remember reading about a culture that does this irl)

lust_demon_laz said:
gender is a complex topic

Insensitivity is the lesser evil here: The idea being nonbinary isn't inherently trans is constantly weaponized against nonbinary people to exclude us from access to lifesaving transition resources and stigmatize us. Reinforcing that just because a handful of specific individuals dislike the word 'trans' perpetuates actual material harm that's far deeper than an insult. And on that topic: Trans women consider being labeled "male" or "gynomorph" pretty damn insensitive, and yet that's what this site labels them anyway. It doesn't give a shit about sensitivity, and if it ever began to then there would be far bigger priorities than this.

Also, if we're being real: the primary reason certain people consider it 'insensitive' to label someone trans who by-definition fits it is because they view being trans itself as an inherently negative thing they don't want to be associated with regardless of whether they fit the definition. Prejudice is not logical and shouldn't be treated as such.

watsit said:
Another thing to consider is that we're dealing with fictional drawings.

This extends to fictional characters. People bend over backwards to make categories that separate trans women from fictional women who magically have a dick, purely because some viewers get ashamed or angry at the idea of finding a trans woman attractive. This is why the "gynomorph" tag is named what it is. Sane categorization schemes and respect toward actual trans people are both thrown out in order to preserve the comfort of drawings who hypothetically might find the word trans icky, and the comfort of bigots who are terrified of the idea of being attracted to a trans woman.

listlesssky said:
This extends to fictional characters. People bend over backwards to make categories that separate trans women from fictional women who magically have a dick, purely because some viewers get ashamed or angry at the idea of finding a trans woman attractive.

Well, the good thing about lore tags is they don't care what viewers think. If some woman with or without a dick is trans according to the creator, then it doesn't matter if people can still goon to it or not, they're tagged that, and users willfully misgendering them can be punished.

listlesssky said:
This is why the "gynomorph" tag is named what it is.

No, it's named that because it's describing something different. Not all depictions of trans women are as "women with dicks", and it's a reality that a fictional depiction of a "woman with a dick" doesn't have to fit the definition of a trans woman (even IRL it doesn't have to be, though yes it likely is 99+% of the time).

watsit said:
No, it's named that because it's describing something different. Not all depictions of trans women are as "women with dicks", and it's a reality that a fictional depiction of a "woman with a dick" doesn't have to fit the definition of a trans woman (even IRL it doesn't have to be, though yes it likely is 99+% of the time).

What is truly different between a woman who was born with a dick (or got it through 'magic') and a trans woman... who is also a woman who was born with a dick. Sure some trans women went through male puberty, but not all did, and certainly not all trans woman characters did. The idea there is some magical inherent gender essence that makes them fundamentally different from 'real' women is A) Transphobic and B) Sure as hell not TWYS-compatible. That part isn't even debated, it's the current tagging policy to lump them together into one group. Right now that group is called 'gynomorphs', a term which is incredibly dehumanizing toward real trans women. The argument that calling that group 'trans women' would potentially be considered insulting by some of those fictional drawings doesn't matter because they are drawings, which do not matter as much as real people.

listlesssky said:
What is truly different between a woman who was born with a dick (or got it through 'magic') and a trans woman... who is also a woman who was born with a dick.

well, I mean, one of them is cisgender, does that count?

listlesssky said:
Reinforcing that just because a handful of specific individuals dislike the word 'trans' perpetuates actual material harm that's far deeper than an insult.

And reducing other cultures' experience of gender to individuals disliking the word trans helps perpetuate the actual ongoing cultural genocide against native/first nations people. I was trying to avoid inflammatory language, but your narrow mindedness on this issue has forced me to be more explicit. Conflating 3rd+ genders from indigenous/non-european cultures with being trans is actively contributing to cultural genocide and is the exact mindset that people who refuse to acknowledge the existence of trans people have

lust_demon_laz said:
And reducing other cultures' experience of gender to individuals disliking the word trans helps perpetuate the actual ongoing cultural genocide against native/first nations people. I was trying to avoid inflammatory language, but your narrow mindedness on this issue has forced me to be more explicit. Conflating 3rd+ genders from indigenous/non-european cultures with being trans is actively contributing to cultural genocide and is the exact mindset that people who refuse to acknowledge the existence of trans people have

My friend and colleague's first and only assigned gender is two-spirit, and that is by definition cis and by definition non-binary. Labeling them as trans is not only incorrect but an overtly genocidal act

Also, your argument that there are other insulting/insensitive/transphobic terms used for tagging is not the coup de grâce you think it is. It's essentially arguing that we should keep perpetuating harmful terminology. Personally I think we should take any and every opertunity we can to remove/replace hateful/harmful language from out system, and at the very least not add new instances of harmful language

listlesssky said:
What is truly different between a woman who was born with a dick (or got it through 'magic') and a trans woman... who is also a woman who was born with a dick. Sure some trans women went through male puberty, but not all did, and certainly not all trans woman characters did. The idea there is some magical inherent gender essence that makes them fundamentally different from 'real' women is A) Transphobic and B) Sure as hell not TWYS-compatible. That part isn't even debated, it's the current tagging policy to lump them together into one group. Right now that group is called 'gynomorphs', a term which is incredibly dehumanizing toward real trans women. The argument that calling that group 'trans women' would potentially be considered insulting by some of those fictional drawings doesn't matter because they are drawings, which do not matter as much as real people.

I would argue that your assumption that gynomorph (which is entirely derived from a fantasy porn concept) is synonymous with "trans woman" is a lot more dehumanising towards real trans women than you perceive the tag itself to be.

What are you actually trying to accomplish in this thread?

listlesssky said:
What is truly different between a woman who was born with a dick (or got it through 'magic') and a trans woman... who is also a woman who was born with a dick.

A trans woman is someone who was assigned male (or non-female more generally) at birth and who now identifies as a woman, irrespective of what physical genitalia they used to or currently possess. In regards to artwork and fictional characters, it's entirely possible to, for example, have a character born with a penis and be assigned "female" because they 1) also have a vulva or visible breasts and that's what the people group do for such a body type, and/or 2) some birth or pre-birth event gives a sign that the people group takes as meaning the character should be raised female, and so assign them "female" despite the presence of a penis. That character grows up and continues to identify as a woman into adulthood. They would then be a cis woman with a penis, as they are a woman with a penis identify as the gender they were assigned at birth.

Or they can be assigned "gynomorph" or "herm" or some other term outside of the sex binary at birth, and continue to identify as that as they grow up, so they aren't a woman with a penis, a cis woman or a trans woman, while having a penis and breasts with a feminine body. Fiction isn't limited to the real world, these fictional worlds don't need to have the same prejudices, assumptions, or limitations that results in people being trans in the real world.

If you're afraid that someone can use that as an excuse to deny the validity/existence of trans people through their stories, then focus on that pattern of denial. There's plenty of people that not only accept, but fight for trans people, and who can still engage with these ideas.

listlesssky said:
Sure some trans women went through male puberty, but not all did, and certainly not all trans woman characters did. The idea there is some magical inherent gender essence that makes them fundamentally different from 'real' women is A) Transphobic and B) Sure as hell not TWYS-compatible. That part isn't even debated, it's the current tagging policy to lump them together into one group. Right now that group is called 'gynomorphs', a term which is incredibly dehumanizing toward real trans women.

Right now, gynomorph refers to characters that have a visible penis/bulge and breasts, without a vulva. It indicates nothing about what they used to have, what kind of puberty they went through (if they're even old enough to have gone through puberty yet), what they identify as, or what they were assigned at birth (if anything). The term "gynomorph" was selected specifically to focus on the physical aspect ("gyno-" meaning "female" and "-morph" meaning "form") and not imply anything about the character's gender identity.

Personally, I'm someone who doesn't even like how "gynomorph" and "herm" characters are assumed to be women in the first place and are collected under "feminine sexes", let alone the default assumption that they identify as women and were assigned non-female at birth. It comes across to me as 'attractive to male gaze = woman', in an apparent attempt to retain a hetero-normative function despite breaking from the sex binary by having a combination of male and female anatomy. It's not gay for a straight guy to jerk it to someone with a penis, as long as he can convince himself they're a woman, I guess (not saying that's what everyone does, even passively or subconsciously, more that it's a cultural thing that's built up over time and we just continue to roll with). But that's just me, I know not everyone feels the same about that.

listlesssky said:
And on that topic: Trans women consider being labeled "male" or "gynomorph" pretty damn insensitive, and yet that's what this site labels them anyway. It doesn't give a shit about sensitivity, and if it ever began to then there would be far bigger priorities than this.

Trans people aren't a hivemind- I've known trans people who don't really mind and understand the tagging system in that regard. Common vocal opinions on the forums don't change that, and it's best not to treat trans people as innately all having the same opinion on it. So please stop saying "trans people" when you mean "the trans people in my inner circle who all agree with me." Being called "male" I get the issue with, mind you- at the same time, we don't have separate words for sexes as opposed to gender, so how else are sexes supposed to be referred to as? Also just putting this out there, the "gynomorph" tag was meant to be an inoffensive alternative to a prior tag (one that was also never meant to describe trans women) and people are still getting upset over it despite it too not being intended as a descriptor of trans women. What the fuck are people supposed to call that body type at this point when every possible descriptor is being deemed offensive by somebody (or the same handful of people) who then feel(s) the need to project that opinion on everyone else?

mklxiv said:
What the fuck are people supposed to call that body type at this point when every possible descriptor is being deemed offensive by somebody (or the same handful of people) who then feel(s) the need to project that opinion on everyone else?

In my observation, the practice of categorization of bodily appearance (that other people get a say in identifying your body, rather than you dictating how they must identify your body) is the thing that is felt to be offensive.

Attacking 'implications' of a particular label is effective for the goal of presenting that label as injurious. Learning all the implications of a word is time consuming and hard, so it's difficult to rule out the idea that particular implications do apply; especially if the other person diffuses responsibility by saying '*people* are offended; this "is" offensive.' rather than just 'I'm offended'.

(incidentally, e621 takes the general posture that we redefine words to whatever extent is needed in order to achieve an overall-usable search and tagging system. Moderators and admins being relatively unmoved by arguments about implications is a consequence of this.)

To demonstrate: E621 could temporarily relabel all relevant tags -- instead of 'male', 'female' , 'herm', 'gynomorph', 'andromorph', 'maleherm', 'ambiguous_gender', make them just xx, yy, zz, aa, bb, cc, dd. After allowing a short period of adjustment, would the rate of complaints drop?

Anyway, your question may have been rhetorical, but I felt the need to explain how I see it, FWIW.

savageorange said:
In my observation, the practice of categorization of bodily appearance (that other people get a say in identifying your body, rather than you dictating how they must identify your body) is the thing that is felt to be offensive.

Attacking 'implications' of a particular label is effective for the goal of presenting that label as injurious. Learning all the implications of a word is time consuming and hard, so it's difficult to rule out the idea that particular implications do apply; especially if the other person diffuses responsibility by saying '*people* are offended; this "is" offensive.' rather than just 'I'm offended'.

(incidentally, e621 takes the general posture that we redefine words to whatever extent is needed in order to achieve an overall-usable search and tagging system. Moderators and admins being relatively unmoved by arguments about implications is a consequence of this.)

To demonstrate: E621 could temporarily relabel all relevant tags -- instead of 'male', 'female' , 'herm', 'gynomorph', 'andromorph', 'maleherm', 'ambiguous_gender', make them just xx, yy, zz, aa, bb, cc, dd. After allowing a short period of adjustment, would the rate of complaints drop?

Anyway, your question may have been rhetorical, but I felt the need to explain how I see it, FWIW.

while most of the discussion on the forums leans towards just constant talk about renaming the gender tags to ever more new and obscure neologisms every chance, most of the time I've seen people talk about this subject it's more that they think that the site philosophy in general, and usually TWYS specifically is bad.

dba_afish said:
while most of the discussion on the forums leans towards just constant talk about renaming the gender tags to ever more new and obscure neologisms every chance, most of the time I've seen people talk about this subject it's more that they think that the site philosophy in general, and usually TWYS specifically is bad.

Do they display actual understanding of TWYS in so doing? Are there strong, sound objections to TWYS offsite that we never see here?

Personally what I have seen mostly ranges between active refusal to understand, to simple lack of understanding. eg. making claims about the meaning of male / female / herm / gynomorph / etc that are demonstrably false. eg 'the male tag is claiming that this character is "male"' -- That may seem obviously true, but it's a matter of interpretation. The 'male' tag is claiming that this character displays certain attributes and does not display other ones, as defined by the wiki; it has nothing to do with the general meaning of "male" out there in society. eg gendered behaviours, expectations and presumptions; or whatever your personal presumptions about 'males' may be. You're free to conclude that it does or doesn't mean this character is rendered as "male" by your personal standards, but your personal standards are irrelevant to what TWYS treats it as. "gender" tags especially are used in a highly technical way.

(if someone wants to object 'the definition on the wiki is not necessarily the one actually used' -- sure, the actual behaviour of people applying these tags also counts for a lot. If it contradicts then it should be corrected.)

If you mean they dislike 'TWYS' because of the results it produces (people seeing labels that they don't want to see on images of their characters), then sure, pragmatically, they object to TWYS[the thing as they experience it]. But IMO people regularly miss this distinction -- saying 'TWYS is bad!' doesn't mean a person is objecting to the actuality of TWYS. They are objecting to their thoughts about whatever is in their head under the label 'TWYS', and that can have a strong connection to the actual TWYS, or be disconnected from it.

IOW when people "object to TWYS", I think it is reasonable to take this as them 'objecting to "TWYS"'. I have the same attitude to many things: I'm not going to take on your 'objections' until I establish that they are grounded in the reality of the thing you claim to be objecting to. Especially so as the topic of discussion becomes more abstracted ('TWYS' or 'sociopaths' vs, say, 'aging' or 'sickness').

(to be clear, I believe there are sound objections to TWYS; but most of the ones I know are also essentially objections to having a rigorous system of categorization at all, so they're incompatible with also wanting eg. search to work.)

dba_afish said:
most of the time I've seen people talk about this subject it's more that they think that the site philosophy in general, and usually TWYS specifically is bad.

Many people do attribute the gender issues to TWYS, and they're completely wrong to do so. TWYS has nothing to do with this.

The actual root cause of the whole clusterfuck is defining the gender tags by the genitals > breasts > general appearance hierarchy.
None of those three things are 'gender', and they should be three separate tags... the good news is that two already are! Only the third is missing.
A general appearance tag would render the whole self-contradictory 'gender' system redundant.
A criticism i've seen is that "general appearance" isn't objective enough, but it is already used as the third and final determination for gender in drawings where genitals and breasts are not visible.
This isn't niche, it's how gender is tagged in a huge percent of SFW art and it works perfectly fine there.

If appearance tags were added in place of gender ones 99% of the complaints about the current system would instantly go away:

• There'd be no misgendering, because there's no gender tags at all.
• Because genitals, breasts, and general appearance would be all tagged independently of one another, you could search for any character with any combination of those tags however you'd like including combos impossible under the current janky system such as characters with an androgynous overall appearance, another common request.
• Expanding on that, it would eliminate huge amounts of combo tags that are of the general form [gender] with [appearance].
• It would reduce tagging confusion. Right now the gender tags work very differently in different contexts, such as for NSFW art (where it's mainly genital/breasts based) vs SFW art without visible breasts (where it's based on general appearance). This requires a huge howto page and massive explanations on every gender tag, and still people misunderstand it nonstop. All of that would be gone under this change, because all three tags would work exactly the same way in all contexts.
• It aligns closer to user expectations, especially that of non-technical users, since most of time when someone searches for a gender general appearance is what they want.
• It fits well with proposed per-character tag schemas that have been tossed around by staff as a future change to the site, as you could select the specific attributes of each character in a more granular way than you can with the current gender tag system.

And none of this requires compromising TWYS in the slightest.

mklxiv said:
Trans people aren't a hivemind

dba_afish said:
constant talk about renaming the gender tags to ever more new and obscure neologisms every chance, most of the time I've seen people talk about this subject it's more that they think that the site philosophy in general, and usually TWYS specifically is bad.

We aren't the ones who asked to be called wild neologisms like "gynomorph", don't put that on us.
It's true that we aren't a hivemind: back when the dickgirl/cuntboy name change happened there were some people who claimed to be trans defending those terms. Does that mean we should go back to them?
The fact a tiny subgroup will put up with being called ridiculous medical terms or literal slurs doesn't change the fact the overwhelming majority of trans people, when asked what "gender" category they want to be in, will pick the gender category matching their gender. It's not rocket science.

And since gender is an internal identity that can't be seen, it should exist as a lore tag and nothing more.

watsit said:
The term "gynomorph" was selected specifically to focus on the physical aspect ("gyno-" meaning "female" and "-morph" meaning "form") and not imply anything about the character's gender identity.

savageorange said:
[the male tag] has nothing to do with the general meaning of "male" out there in society. eg gendered behaviours, expectations and presumptions; or whatever your personal presumptions about 'males' may be.

"But the wiki says the gender tags aren't about gender" is a completely true statement, and the fact that such a ridiculous and self-contradictory statement is true shows how broken this system is.
All the attempts to patch it up have only added gilding on top of deep structural rot.

Imagine yourself in the shoes of a random trans artist. You see your pre-HRT trans woman OC got posted to a random gallery website you've never heard of without your consent.
Worse, it has the "male" gender tag. Upon trying to fix it, you get hit with a warning and told "erm actually, it's not misgendering to tag your character as male because the wiki said so! the male gender tag isn't about gender".

If we're being real, the only reason this site doesn't have 20 times as many DNPs is because most trans artists and allies don't even know their work is being posted here, much less how easy it would be to put a stop to that.

eightoflakes said:
I would argue that your assumption that gynomorph (which is entirely derived from a fantasy porn concept) is synonymous with "trans woman" is a lot more dehumanising towards real trans women than you perceive the tag itself to be.

I never said it was synonymous, I think you wildly misunderstood me. But i'm glad that you agree that trans women shouldn't be tagged gynomorphs.

lust_demon_laz said:
And reducing other cultures' experience of gender to individuals disliking the word trans helps perpetuate the actual ongoing cultural genocide against native/first nations people. I was trying to avoid inflammatory language, but your narrow mindedness on this issue has forced me to be more explicit. Conflating 3rd+ genders from indigenous/non-european cultures with being trans is actively contributing to cultural genocide and is the exact mindset that people who refuse to acknowledge the existence of trans people have

I debated even responding to this. But this specific rhetoric, framing being trans as some foreign concept being "imposed" instead of a natural human variation that has existed for all of history, is used time and again to justify enormous violence against us in the name of "defending our culture". As a result i'm forced to be explicit too in response. This is going to be long, and this debate is related to the main topic by a very thin thread, so i'm going to wrap it in a section and be done with it.

listlesssky said:
We aren't the ones who asked to be called wild neologisms like "gynomorph", don't put that on us.
It's true that we aren't a hivemind: back when the dickgirl/cuntboy name change happened there were some people who claimed to be trans defending those terms. Does that mean we should go back to them?
The fact a tiny subgroup will put up with being called ridiculous medical terms or literal slurs doesn't change the fact the overwhelming majority of trans people, when asked what "gender" category they want to be in, will pick the gender category matching their gender. It's not rocket science.

And since gender is an internal identity that can't be seen, it should exist as a lore tag and nothing more.

Firstly, "gynomorph" wasn't meant to be a descriptor of trans people, it's a descriptor of a fantasy body type as a replacement of "futa" (which had the exact same kind of use case and also wasn't intended as a descriptor of trans people). I think it's more of a problem that trans characters are being labeled as such rather than the terms themselves, which are supposed to describe fantasy body types and are benign; their application to trans characters are also a side effect rather than the intent. Gynomorph/futa aren't the same thing as trans and to conflate them isn't right. "Gynomorph" isn't even a gender nor a sex. While I believe TWYS is rotten to the core with enforced miscategorization of content (including like for trans characters), the issue I take is the alternatives being proposed which would basically force searching specific genital configurations with tag exclusions that would also break searches like male/male is even worse and even more unusable. I'm a gay guy, I like seeing 2 "traditionally" male Eevees getting it on. How am I supposed to be able to look that up if the male tag is gone and just replaced with penis? If the intent behind the tags was hostile I'd be more up in arms, but it wasn't- although it's seemingly being treated as such. Also remember a good deal of the e621 staff is trans and aren't up in arms about this, do their opinions on the subject not matter? Also, what metric are you using that the overwhelming majority of trans people are in support of your view? From what I've seen trans people seem to be split on it, but of course that's anecdotal.

mklxiv said:
How am I supposed to be able to look that up if the male tag is gone and just replaced with penis?

That's only part of listlesssky's proposal AFAICS. I think under the proposal it would be something like masc/masc -pussy (though maybe the terms masc etc would be something different)

I think there is a recent thread pursuing that kind of general idea (which is where I got 'masc' from).
It seems reasonable for simple cases, I haven't considered whether it works with more complex / many-characters interaction yet.

savageorange said:
That's only part of listlesssky's proposal AFAICS. I think under the proposal it would be something like masc/masc -pussy (though maybe the terms masc etc would be something different)

I think there is a recent thread pursuing that kind of general idea (which is where I got 'masc' from)

I don't personally like that terminology, given "masc" is used almost exclusively when describing lesbians and trans men. Though I at least get what you mean, and that could sort of work in theory but I don't know how well in practice. IMO the big barrier is that "male" and "female" are used to describe both sex and gender and there's no separate words for those use cases.

savageorange said:
That's only part of listlesssky's proposal AFAICS. I think under the proposal it would be something like masc/masc -pussy (though maybe the terms masc etc would be something different)

I think there is a recent thread pursuing that kind of general idea (which is where I got 'masc' from).
It seems reasonable for simple cases, I haven't considered whether it works with more complex / many-characters interaction yet.

"masc" and "fem" are still gendered terms, this would do nothing to solve the problem and make browsing hundreds of times worse. it'd still be pretty much impossible to to find mixed gender groups/pairs even moreso exacerbated if you're trying to look for posts with one or more gender non-conforming or intersex characters.

mklxiv said:
Firstly, "gynomorph" wasn't meant to be a descriptor of trans people

Exactly, which is why it shouldn't be applied to them

mklxiv said:
"Gynomorph" isn't even a gender nor a sex

Exactly, which is why it shouldn't be called a fucking gender tag lmfao

Literally the one single thing everyone agrees on here is "gender tags aren't actually about gender", so why not just change the damn name? It's such an easy win, and the fact people are so furiously opposed to it makes it clear that the intent is indeed hostile. Many people will gladly shoot themselves in the foot if it means a trans person gets shot in both feet.

But really, it doesn't matter what degree of hostility it was made with. All that matters is the current effect.

mklxiv said:
How am I supposed to be able to look that up if the male tag is gone and just replaced with penis?

Right now 'male' is literally defined as 'penis' in every case where one is visible except for herms, so just switch the word?

The proposed system would let you simplify it it further though. Right now the only actual way to limit a search to only gay art is the ridiculous "[query] ( ~male ~andromorph ~maleherm ) -female -gynomorph -herm"
Under the proposed system, literally just add "-female" to your query, which rules out everyone who looks like a woman. If you want to rule out trans dudes and herms you can also do -vulva -breasts for a grand total of three terms.

There are only three tags, they're a binary yes/no, and they have no weird double-uses like the current gender ones have, so any combo you are searching for only takes three terms to find and never needs a ~ operator. The only exception is herms, which obviously have both genitals and so take 4 terms to limit a search to (the same as right now)

mklxiv said:
From what I've seen trans people seem to be split on it

Are we actually debating whether trans people like their gender being labeled as their gender or not? Do I need to pull up some stupid studies showing the damage to mental health etc misgendering causes in trans people, or go through the DNP list to try and see how many trans artists had their work pulled for that reason? Surely I don't.

There's also a survivorship bias, any trans person who criticizes gender tagging gets dogpiled off these forums. Like, you can literally search here and see thread after thread after thread by trans people talking about it, realizing this is an extremely hostile environment that doesn't give a shit, and then leaving forever. And every time it's like, the same 5 or so people dunking on them. If we got all those random people together they'd be a solid chunk of support, but of course why would any of them stick around and invest their time in a place that treats us like this? Looking back through even older threads I sure saw a lot of people claiming to be trans who were extremely vocally defending us being tagged under "dickgirl" back when that change was being debated, does that mean we are 'split' on that and should go back to it?

Honestly, it seems like the environment has actually gotten worse. There was some openness to change before, there's 0 now. If the dickgirl debate was happening today there's no way in hell renaming it to gynomorph would ever get approved.

dba_afish said:
"masc" and "fem" are still gendered terms, this would do nothing to solve the problem

They're presentations, not genders. Saying a character's gender is male is not even remotely the same as saying that their appearance is masc, and you know it. Disagreeing on a fashion choice is far lower stakes than misgendering.

dba_afish said:
it'd still be pretty much impossible to to find mixed gender groups/pairs

"this change doesn't solve literally every imaginable problem" doesn't change the fact it's still an improvement. and i have it on good authority from a janitor that we aren't supposed to care about tags that help find mixed pairs or groups because hypothetically in the distant future we might get per-character tagging

listlesssky said:
The fact a certain culture may not have as much power to harm us as global superpowers like India or the US does not excuse this kind of exterminationist rhetoric, especially when many of those cultures do inflict massive violence on trans people unlucky enough to be born within their territories just like imperialists do

At this point I can help but feel like you're intentionally misunderstanding what I'm saying

Not all non-binary genders are trans. Some cultures have more than 2 gender identities. It is possible to be assigned a gender outside of the binary. To be trans, one must identify as a gender other than their assigned gender. If a person is assigned a gender outside the binary, and they identify with that gender, they are by definition both cis and non-binary. Saying all non-binary genders must be trans erases 3rd+ genders and reinforces the male/female binary as the only possibility for assigned genders. That is an act of erasure that has been part of a centuries long cultural genocide. The fact that modern countries where these cultures are are trying to erase queer people from their societies is also an act of cultural genocide, and is mainly being pushed by USAmerican Evangelical Christians. We should have solidarity with other oppressed groups and respect them by not forcing our terminology onto their culture. Trying to force our terminology is no better than the imperialist powers forcing their male/female binary on us. Fighting for recognition of trans people and our rights can be done while also fighting for the recognition of other genders outside the binary. To not do that is to stick your head in the sand and go "my rights are more important than anyone elses" and is frankly selfish bullshit. Acknowledging that some non-binary genders can be assigned does not invalidate the existence of trans people, including in cultures that have genders outside the binary. Anyone of any gender can be trans, cultures that have 3rd+ genders also have trans people. Saying that since countries are attempting/conducting queer genocide we can cast away other oppressed groups is not only short sighted, but just plain bullshit, and if you refuse to see that than I have nothing else to say to you on the topic.

Why don't you try contributing to the site in some way, such as helping tagging writing wiki's or even uploading, instead of just arguing in the forum

aurorianarchivist said:
wouldnt also nonbinary_pride_colors imply transgender_pride_colors since being nonbinary is by technicality be also trans

dba_afish said:
not necessarily, there are people who are nonbinary who don't also consider themselves transgender.

forest1985 said:
non-binary people are not cis, but not all non-binary people consider themselves trans.

Whether the demographics overlap isn't relevant. The "trans pride colours" are light blue, pink, and white, but a pride flag specifically for nonbinary people will have different colours. Should we also tag posts that have the flag of Maryland with "stars and stripes" because it's a US state?

listlesssky said:
Trans women consider being labeled "male" or "gynomorph" pretty damn insensitive, and yet that's what this site labels them anyway.

Ah, this argument again... This site labels male-looking depictions of characters as male. Characters, including those that are intended to be trans women, will be tagged as female in images where they are depicted as such.

I have yet to meet a real life trans person who would be simultaneously comfortable being depicted as their assigned gender yet uncomfortable being referred to as such by third parties unaware of their identity. The trans women who're out would be way more offended to be drawn looking like dudes at all than by whatever the picture gets tagged as after the fact, while the closeted/boymoding trans women are obviously not going to out themselves by pitching a fit every time they get gendered male. I can believe that some people on the internet have found a way to have that problem with their furry OCs, but at that point you just have to accept that if you post your art publicly, not everybody will see it the way you want them to.

listlesssky said:
People bend over backwards to make categories that separate trans women from fictional women who magically have a dick

listlesssky said:
What is truly different between a woman who was born with a dick (or got it through 'magic') and a trans woman... who is also a woman who was born with a dick.

listlesssky said:
Right now that group is called 'gynomorphs', a term which is incredibly dehumanizing toward real trans women. The argument that calling that group 'trans women' would potentially be considered insulting by some of those fictional drawings doesn't matter because they are drawings, which do not matter as much as real people.

Watsit said nothing about anyone being insulted by being called trans. I don't know why you're ignoring the fact that many of those characters simply are not trans. Also, trans status is usually not verifiable by TWYS regardless. Taken altogether, your argument only makes sense if you're conflating being trans with having certain genitalia.

listlesssky said:
genitals > breasts > general appearance [...] should be three separate tags

Until we have per-character tags, that would render the tagging system practically unusable for anything other than solos.

I would be in favor of renaming them from "gender" tags to "biological sex" or "physical sex" or "sexual presentation" while leaving the existing page in place. And changing ambiguous_gender to ambiguous_sex

I would also be highly in favor of allowing artists and character owners to be able to request sex tags be locked out on specific characters/pieces and only having ambiguous_sex (+any anatomy terms that apply under twys, ex penis). Personally I would love to be able to have my character (in my pfp) labeled as only ambiguous_sex instead of male, herm, and maleherm

I think that those changes would probably strike the best balance between respecting trans & non-binary people while not massively degrading search capabilities.

listlesssky said:
It doesn't matter what degree of hostility it was made with (though the insane resistance to even changing names, going back to people protesting the renaming of 'dickgirl', makes the answer of "overwhelming" quite clear)

People are hostile to change, even when in reality it inconveniences them little. The more trivial the change, the worse, often (cf. 'bikeshedding'). This doesn't have to be complicated or on any level a conspiracy.

There was some openness to change before, there's 0 now. If the dickgirl debate was happening today there's no way in hell renaming it to gynomorph would ever get approved.

..And also, the sequence of aliasings of the same tag-concept happening over time kind of make any subsequent aliasings look more and more like a joke. The reason for objecting to the latest change would be obvious: it's just 'it won't work to any significant extent, just as the last change of this kind didn't work'.

Such a critique is completely in line with your arguments that the system is breaking the basic tagging problem down in an incorrect (units of analysis) and confusing ("gender") way.

forest1985 said:
"they're not gender tags" why are they called gender tags then?

They are called gender tags because sex tags are.. well, tags about sex acts.
This reasoning has come up many times. Maybe you think it's bad reasoning, but AFAICS it *is* the cause of the tags being called gender tags.

(personally I think 'presented sexual characteristics' is the most accurate way to describe them, but obviously this is too long to be practical in regular use.)

lust_demon_laz said:
I would be in favor of renaming them from "gender" tags to "biological sex" or "physical sex" or "sexual presentation" while leaving the existing page in place. And changing ambiguous_gender to ambiguous_sex

I would also be highly in favor of allowing artists and character owners to be able to request sex tags be locked out on specific characters/pieces and only having ambiguous_sex (+any anatomy terms that apply under twys, ex penis). Personally I would love to be able to have my character (in my pfp) labeled as only ambiguous_sex instead of male, herm, and maleherm

I think that those changes would probably strike the best balance between respecting trans & non-binary people while not massively degrading search capabilities.

this sounds great. i think sexual presentation works best, as femboy isn't a sex but it is a presentation. sexually.

lust_demon_laz said:
[Many things]

Literally every single point you brought up here, pretty much to the word, is something I directly addressed. Transness having a physiological, biological origin, not a cultural one. The fact that trans people do not have a fucking imperialist power behind our terminology, and thus our words are by definition not "imperialist erasure". How the rhetoric of calling a trans term an "attack" on a culture is a frequent direct justification for violence against trans people, not some unrelated axis of oppression you can just separate. But there's no point repeating myself further, if you didn't read it then you're not going to now.

lust_demon_laz said:
Why don't you try contributing to the site in some way, such as helping tagging writing wiki's or even uploading, instead of just arguing in the forum

I have a shitload of art archived, much of which i'd love to upload, but I know for a fact many of the people who made it would be disgusted with these practices and would never permit it. Only you guys can change that.

forest1985 said:
also; this site has a nazi tag with over 1000 posts, you ain't getting anywhere with them. i got a warning simply for saying i don't like nazifurs.

Ugh, don't me started on the damn nazifurs. I got pushback for suggesting implying nazi -> politics while an earlier suggestion of implying communism -> politics got no pushback whatsoever. (Implying specific parties, and other ideologies (like libertarian and anarchism) to politics also got pushback). Someone even opposed the nazi implication because they didn't like the idea of "half the politics tag being nazi"

listlesssky said:
Literally every single point you brought up here, pretty much to the word, is something I directly addressed. Transness having a physiological, biological origin, not a cultural one. The fact that trans people do not have a fucking imperialist power behind our terminology, and thus our words are by definition not "imperialist erasure". How the rhetoric of calling a trans term an "attack" on a culture is a frequent direct justification for violence against trans people, not some unrelated axis of oppression you can just separate. But there's no point repeating myself further, if you didn't read it then you're not going to now.

I have a shitload of art archived, much of which i'd love to upload, but I know for a fact many of the people who made it would be disgusted with these practices and would never permit it. Only you guys can change that.

1- gender is part of identity and identity is culutral. people would still have genders without culture but culture gives us tools to define and understand ourselves
2- it is not the end of the world if people like different words. they still get gender affirming care.
3- trans people in general are not attacking culture but you are by saying others have to use your terms instead of their own

lust_demon_laz said:
Ugh, don't me started on the damn nazifurs. I got pushback for suggesting implying nazi -> politics while an earlier suggestion of implying communism -> politics got no pushback whatsoever. (Implying specific parties, and other ideologies (like libertarian and anarchism) to politics also got pushback). Someone even opposed the nazi implication because they didn't like the idea of "half the politics tag being nazi"

bruh if they don't like it we can nuke that damn tag like we did pedo iconography. just another form of harmful ideology, but hey if it's not kids they're hurting but *insert minority* it's just an opinion.

listlesssky said:
They're presentations, not genders. Saying a character's gender is male is not even remotely the same as saying that their appearance is masc, and you know it. Disagreeing on a fashion choice is far lower stakes than misgendering.

"this change doesn't solve literally every imaginable problem" doesn't change the fact it's still an improvement.

That's not improved, that's de-proved.

the existing gender tags are already meant to categorize presentation, all you're doing is taking six of the existing categories and boiling them down to a binary.

listlesssky said:
and i have it on good authority from a janitor that we aren't supposed to care about tags that help find mixed pairs or groups because hypothetically in the distant future we might get per-character tagging

okay, so, in this potential distant future after a total rework of the tagging system, we might have a partial solution to a problem. I don't even think that per-character tags would would solve the problems that removing the existing paring tags would cause.

dba_afish said:
the existing gender tags are already meant to categorize presentation

Except they only do it half the time. That's the whole issue:

• In art with no genitals or boobs, they categorize presentation
• In art with genitals or boobs they categorize genitals and boobs, often in a way that does not agree with presentation

There's no actual solution that does not involve splitting these two uses apart
Let the genital and boob tags categorize genitals and boobs, and give us a dedicated general appearance tag that 'gender' has been serving as a bastardized replacement for

Using a binary is intentional because it means that the presence or absence of 3 tags gives you 8 different combos. 4 gives you 16. And we can add as many appearance tags as is useful (hell, there are already a ton of de-facto appearance tags which could be folded into this system cleanly)

Most existing pairing tags can easily be renamed/redefined to just be about genitals or boobs or appearance, since most of them were already always just about one of those anyway and were simply using gender as a shorthand for it.

lust_demon_laz said:
I would be in favor of renaming them from "gender" tags to "biological sex" or "physical sex" or "sexual presentation" while leaving the existing page in place. And changing ambiguous_gender to ambiguous_sex

Christ, this is somehow even worse. Not only does this not solve the double-use issue, these dogwhistle term choices are definitely edging over from ignorance to malice. Despite what terfs might say, "biological" or "physical sex" is not a coherent category whatsoever. Your endocrine system is the mechanism by which nearly all sex characteristics are controlled, and going on HRT changes it which changes them. The few exceptions can be changed by surgery.

This also has the extremely funny result of classifying a trans woman pre-bottom surgery as "biologically male" which would piss off trans people, but then classifying her as "biologically female" after bottom surgery (and in any picture where her dick isn't visible) which would piss off transphobes. We love "compromise" that just pisses off and fucks over absolutely everyone.

listlesssky said:
Under the proposed system, literally just add "-female" to your query, which rules out everyone who looks like a woman.

Hold on a minute, what are you even arguing for? Before you were complaining about misgendering, but now you're saying that characters should be tagged as male or female according to some combination of observable traits. A canonically trans female character would still be tagged as male if she's drawn to look like a man. How is that different from the current system?

listlesssky said:
If you want to rule out trans dudes and herms you can also do -vulva -breasts for a grand total of three terms.

-vulva -breasts doesn't rule out trans men because believe it or not, trans men are not defined by having vulvas and/or breasts. I really shouldn't have to explain this.

kyuuuuu said:
Hold on a minute, what are you even arguing for? Before you were complaining about misgendering, but now you're saying that characters should be tagged as male or female according to some combination of observable traits. A canonically trans female character would still be tagged as male if she's drawn to look like a man. How is that different from the current system?

As I told dba afish, who asked something similar above:

They're presentations, not genders. Saying a character's gender is male is not even remotely the same as saying that their appearance is masc, and you know it. Disagreeing on a fashion choice is far lower stakes than misgendering.

I'm also not opposed to renaming them to "masc" and "fem" as was proposed elsewhere a number of times, to emphasize that they're purely aesthetic. Trans people of any type are allowed to present or dress in a masculine or feminine if they want to. Acknowledging that is fine so long as you don't make an assumption about their gender from it.

kyuuuuu said:
-vulva -breasts doesn't rule out trans men because believe it or not, trans men are not defined by having vulvas and/or breasts. I really shouldn't have to explain this.

It doesn't rule out all trans men no, but it rules out anyone who would be tagged 'andromorph' under the current system as in MkLXIV's example. The point was to show that it encompasses all the filtering options of the current system and more. We have nothing to lose but our chains.

listlesssky said:
They're presentations, not genders. Saying a character's gender is male is not even remotely the same as saying that their appearance is masc, and you know it. Disagreeing on a fashion choice is far lower stakes than misgendering.

I'm also not opposed to renaming them to "masc" and "fem" as was proposed elsewhere a number of times, to emphasize that they're purely aesthetic. Trans people of any type are allowed to present or dress in a masculine or feminine if they want to. Acknowledging that is fine so long as you don't make an assumption about their gender from it.

wait, are you suggesting that we just keep using female and male but then broaden them? like-- dude, half of the complaints we get are about trans and nonbinary characters being tagged male or female, if we keep using those then we're _really_ solving nothing.

listlesssky said:
I'm also not opposed to renaming them to "masc" and "fem" as was proposed elsewhere a number of times, to emphasize that they're purely aesthetic.

Does this distinguish physical body type from presentation choices? Like, what about a character who's built like a brick but wearing a dress, are they "masc" because of their body or "fem" because of their clothes? Do you prioritize one and if so how do you get everyone to apply that rule consistently?

Regardless, your system would make it a lot more difficult to find gender diverse couples in a sea of straight ones, or even just a specific combination of features on one character in anything other than a solo post. If you'll spare a moment of sympathy for the heteros, their blacklists would be rendered useless. But all that's been said already.

listlesssky said:
It doesn't rule out all trans men no, but it rules out anyone who would be tagged 'andromorph' under the current system

I really don't like how you're ignoring the main point here. You've repeatedly conflated having certain genitalia with being trans, multiple people have commented on this, and yet you still refuse to address it. To the point that it's making me uncomfortable. Do you not see the problem or...?

dba_afish said:
wait, are you suggesting that we just keep using female and male but then broaden them? like-- dude, half of the complaints we get are about trans and nonbinary characters being tagged male or female, if we keep using those then we're _really_ solving nothing.

I genuinely have no idea how you got "so you want to keep calling them male and make it even broader?" from the post you're quoting which talks about doing the opposite both those things.

Also, the complaints you get are about them being mistagged. This might shock you to hear but trans women are perfectly happy to be tagged as feminine terms.

Sure, a pre-everything boymoder totally in the closet and dressing like a man would get tagged as having a masc appearance, but that's far better than mistagging their gender as male, and that specific scenario makes them impossible to correctly classify under any TWYS system so it's not a problem specific to this. It's also an extreme minority of a minority.

How did the thread about nonbinary tags become the thread for sexes tag annihilation again?

Tagging sexes based fully on presentation (as is already done when there's no breasts/genitals visible) has been controversial since the mikhaila_kirov/reggie_(whygena) wars and I'd like to see the mess caused when that is applied to every post with a character in it because it has to be tagged independently of breast/genital state. Or the inevitable fights over in busty_boy_(lore) over whether characters are masc or fem in presentation if you ignore the breasts.

listlesssky said:
Also, the complaints you get are about them being mistagged. This might shock you to hear but trans women are perfectly happy to be tagged as feminine terms.

y-yeah, dude, and we're still going to be "mistagging" character's genders.

as long as we're still using TWYS, and still tagging based on a gender presentation binary we're going to be tagging characters like the one in this post as <whatever we'd call the masculine tag> because the character externally presents as overall masculine, and we're going to get the same kinda complaints we got before.

kyuuuuu said:
Does this distinguish physical body type from presentation choices? Like, what about a character who's built like a brick but wearing a dress, are they "masc" because of their body or "fem" because of their clothes? Do you prioritize one and if so how do you get everyone to apply that rule consistently?

It's not up to me, this system already exists. It's used to classify characters who have no visible genitals or breasts. The gender tagging howto guide goes into some detail. A significant fraction of all the posts on this site were classified purely based on overall presentation, because that's what the gender tagging guide explicitly says to do if breasts and genitals are not visible. This would simply universalize that practice and tag all characters based on presentation, instead of the current system where some gender tags are applied based on genitals and others based on presentation depending on context.

kyuuuuu said:
I really don't like how you're ignoring the main point here. You've repeatedly conflated having certain genitalia with being trans, multiple people have commented on this, and yet you still refuse to address it. To the point that it's making me uncomfortable. Do you not see the problem or...?

I'll be honest, I've mostly been ignoring you because your vibes are way off and it's making me uncomfortable.

Like why are you defending the current tagging system, which mandates misgendering and defines "gender" tags first by genitalia and second by breasts, and then turning around and accusing me of doing that?
Why are you claiming to care about "finding gender diverse couples" when you're defending the current system which erases nonbinary people entirely, and shunts tons of binary trans people into categories that erase their transness?
Feels pretty weird and bad faith! I am not going to make assumptions, but it's perfectly reasonable for me to not want to engage with that kinda noise.

dba_afish said:
y-yeah, dude, and we're still going to be "mistagging" character's genders.

as long as we're still using TWYS, and still tagging based on a gender presentation binary we're going to be tagging characters like the one in this post as <whatever we'd call the masculine tag> because the character externally presents as overall masculine, and we're going to get the same kinda complaints we got before

Nah. Nobody can get misgendered if we never tag gender. That's... the entire point.

• Presentation is not gender.
• Under TWYS we will occasionally misread presentation even in this new system, yes
• Misreading presentation is much less bad than misgendering, so this is a big win
• It's also far less common, since most trans characters present in a way that overall aligns with their gender regardless of their anatomy.
• So lets tag appearance instead.

We also don't have to tag appearance based on a binary, it's perfectly reasonable for us to include things like 'androgynous'. In fact, a key benefit of this system is that it enables stuff like that which is impossible under the current one.

magnuseffect said:
How did the thread about nonbinary tags become the thread for sexes tag annihilation again?

Tagging sexes based fully on presentation (as is already done when there's no breasts/genitals visible) has been controversial since the mikhaila_kirov/reggie_(whygena) wars.

The raw girth of bullshit contained in the gender tags is a black hole that consumes anything that gets too close.

Also it isn't controversial at all: Basically every character with no genitals or breasts is already tagged based on presentation. Like, right now. And has been for quite a while. That's a huge percent of SFW characters and a decent chunk of NSFW ones (ex. when viewed from certain back angles or with an obscured crotch)

The world has not and will not explode. busty_boy_(lore) is a lore tag with its own goofy rules anyway and barely has 2k tags, they'll be fine.

listlesssky said:
Nah. Nobody can get misgendered if we never tag gender. That's... the entire point.

How would you tag a character's presentation of sexual characteristics, in a way that won't be taken by some people as implying a gender?

listlesssky said:

• So lets tag appearance instead.

We already do tag based on what sexual characteristics a character appears to have. The issue is, no matter the terminology used, English currently lacks the ability to cleanly and distinctly separate sex and gender. And referring to "sex" exclusively quickly becomes ambiguous since it has dual meaning as a verb for the act of sex, and an adjective to describe a character's sexual attributes. See ambiguous_gender; if it was called ambiguous_sex, it would be easily mistaken as referring to the act of sex being ambiguously depicted, rather than saying a character's visible sexual characteristics are ambiguous.

This doesn't mean it always has to be this way, that we can't find or come up with replacement terms without significant problems, but it also doesn't mean any suggestion is automatically good and beyond debate.

listlesssky said:
Nah. Nobody can get misgendered if we never tag gender. That's... the entire point.

• Presentation is not gender.
• Under TWYS we will occasionally misread presentation even in this new system, yes
• Misreading presentation is much less bad than misgendering, so this is a big win
• It's also far less common, since most trans characters present in a way that overall aligns with their gender regardless of their anatomy.
• So lets tag appearance instead.

this is literally a difference in semantics, and also, your conclusions don't follow your argument.

I kinda, like, soundly reject the idea that, in the abstract, calling a trans woman "masculine" or "masc presenting" or whatever is materially diffrent from saying that she looks like a male.

like, if the problem really was gender vs gender presentation, why does that not just warrant the changing of the naming of the existing male and female to terms that are more gender-neutral, making them no longer "gender" tags? why is it instead necessary that we ought to rework the entire system of character categorisation?

listlesssky said:
We also don't have to tag appearance based on a binary, it's perfectly reasonable for us to include things like 'androgynous'. In fact, a key benefit of this system is that it enables stuff like that which is impossible under the current one.

"androgynous" is still defined in reference to the binary.

there's nothing stopping us from tagging androgynous presentation under the current system. we could either tag it as a subset of the existing tags, androgynous_<male/female/herm>, or if we wanted we could split those three up further to create an even 10 gender categories.

dba_afish said:

like, if the problem really was gender vs gender presentation, why does that not just warrant the changing of the naming of the existing male and female to terms that are more gender-neutral, making them no longer "gender" tags?

listlesssky, does gynomorph become less dehumanising if male and female become a similar not-a-gender terms? Would such terms be equally dehumanising?
Does it satisfy

Nobody can get misgendered if we never tag gender.

?

More specific tags would be more accurate, but also more burdensome to keep track of.
I like fewer broad tags. You can always narrow down the search by adding more tags.

Changing male -> masculine would clarify the tag doesn't mean gender.
But it doesn't change the current problem tagging a trans woman masculine, but does it need to?
That's just inherent compromise with TWYS.

The help pages make it clear that tags are a visual guide, not a statement what the characters are.
You can fill in the details with _(lore)

Collect the best ideas and poll them.
You can't make everyone happy.
No one forces to use this site if you still disagree with the best compromise

This is just my view, sorry my ignorance if I misunderstood something