Topic: sex vs gender

this is just another one of e621's confusing vocabulary that makes me sigh. things like male, female, andromorph, gynomorph, ambiguous_gender are called genders instead of sexes.

i have ideas for how to clean things up but this is mostly to get a conversation going (again?), like i did with intersex tags. Not making this an actual BUR, but here's something:

alias male -> male_(sex)
alias male_(lore) -> male_(gender) (while remaining a lore tag, so the tag-what-you-see policy remains)
alias female -> female_(sex)
alias female_(lore) -> female_(gender)
imply trans_male_(lore) -> male_(gender)
imply trans_female_(lore) -> female_(gender)
alias nonbinary_(lore) -> nonbinary_(gender)
etc.

This is just a foundation, very rough draft, and if things happen i expect it to be a slow process

forest1985 said:
alias male_(lore) -> male_(gender) (while remaining a lore tag, so the tag-what-you-see policy remains)

Lore tags must have a _(lore) suffix, and non-lore tags can't have a _(lore) suffix. It's enforced by the system.

To quote the FATAL RPG rulebook:

² Though sex usually refers to biological differences and gender usually refers to environmental differences, gender is chosen for this chapter because sex may be confused with sexual acts.

I'm still complete newbie when it comes to tags/aliases
cis_male_(lore) would be more consistent since we already got trans_male_(lore)

A few things:

1. Nonbinary isn't a sex, it's implied to be a gender. Changing the tag to nonbinary_(gender) is redundant.
2. This would make tagging a confusing mess for the uninitiated (not just the malicious) with basically no benefit over changing existing references from gender to sex for the male and female tags, as they're already implied to be sexes by the existence of their lore tag counterparts, which are by extension implied to be gender and not sex.
3. Some people aren't attracted to trans characters, and others specifically want to see them. How would you otherwise search for or filter out a trans male, for example, given both cis males and trans males would have the male_(gender) tag in that case, implying good tagging? I feel like removing trans_male_(lore) and trans_female_(lore) would harm searchability.

Also having this granular terminology really isn't productive. Like this isn't going to make anyone's life meaningfully better if that's the intention; it comes off as performative to me.

EDIT: Read an implication as an alias. Oops.

forest1985 said:
Not making this an actual BUR, but here's something:

even so i would still recommend doing one for the other people in the back that doesn't reply to the forums but still give feedback, it grants a wider range of "what do people think of this"

the BUR doesn't have to be approved or reject, it can stay as it is to make a point or something, like how topic #62928 is just 1 singular alias instead of a wholely planned bur

watsit said:
Lore tags must have a _(lore) suffix, and non-lore tags can't have a _(lore) suffix. It's enforced by the system.

oh

There was a huge convo about this a few months ago.

TL;DR: 'Male', 'Female', etc are in an awful spot because they are dual-use tags, referring to presentation, genitalia, and breasts. This is also redundant since we already have tags for genitalia and breasts.

Currently the order of precedence for deciding which gender tag to use is
1) Genitals?
2) Breasts?
3) General appearance

1 and 2 already have independent tags, making this system clunky and redundant. The proposal was to change male/female/etc to be only about general appearance, which matches how people normally refer to gender.

This has the added benefit of matching what users expect, because if a gay user filters with "-female" they typically aren't happy when their results are full of a million extremely feminine trans women who are tagged the ridiculous "gynomorph" instead. It also opens the way to other presentation-based tags.

However it'd also require a massive tag rework campaign, and plenty of users here are actively hostile toward anything they see as trans-inclusive, so I wouldn't hold your breath on anything of the sort happening.

See topic #62124

What about renaming the lore tags man_(lore) woman_(lore) trans_man_(lore) trans_woman_(lore)

lust_demon_laz said:
What about renaming the lore tags man_(lore) woman_(lore) trans_man_(lore) trans_woman_(lore)

Why would we assume that andromorphs and gynomorphs are consistently trans? Why don't maleherms and andromorphs count as men? Why don't herms and gynomorphs count as women? Why would we do this at the cost of making the existing trans/gender lore tags more ambiguous? Why wouldn't trans_man_(lore) imply man_(lore), and trans_woman_(lore) imply woman_(lore)?