DrNick said:
This would be a whole lot less absurd if literally anyone, anywhere, *ever* will search for gynomorph or andromorph. But they won't -- these are bogus made up newspeak tags that exist only to try and appease -- nobody will ever actually use them.

And I would be remiss if I don't point out the irony of NMNY's profile picture next to a paragraph about why "dickgirl" is too vulger on a furry porn site. I've been around e621 for more than 10 years and have seen a lot of political correctness and snowflake syndrome come and go and it pretty much all boils down to taking this stuff *way* too damn seriously.

But go ahead and change the tags. Then in six months when the goalposts have moved again to "now delete the dickgirl alias, for its existence doth offendeth me" the shitstorm can kick off again.

In contradiction to what you said, the only time I've ever seen an alias be removed from a tag is when the main tag has been updated and the tags shift to a new, or when the tag is disambiguated. Never have I seen something be removed for the sake of it. It would cause disarray in tagging, searching, and blacklisting.

Versperus said:
In contradiction to what you said, the only time I've ever seen an alias be removed from a tag is when the main tag has been updated and the tags shift to a new, or when the tag is disambiguated. Never have I seen something be removed for the sake of it. It would cause disarray in tagging, searching, and blacklisting.

Using counterexamples is pointless; when someone cries about snowflakes, that almost always indicates they are arguing in bad faith.

AShadyZebra said:
Using counterexamples is pointless; when someone cries about snowflakes, that almost always indicates they are arguing in bad faith.

I'm not going to argue peoples personal feelings because it's a loosing fight. I'll simply do what I can in explaining method to the madness. The only way I can see cuntboy and dickgirl being unaliased from the replacement tags is in the event said replacement tags are changed out for a different tag. and in that event all tags which would be at the time aliased to gynandromorph or andromorph would be shifted to the new alias, including gynomorph and andromorph.

As the staff said, it's not about trans or not trans its about trying to tone down the vulgarity in an effort to make the site more inclusive.

And as we're all well aware its impossible to please everyone, there are people that are happy with the change and there are those that are not. It's why suggestions for alias and implication are always open option in the forum for people to start debates, and state points on a better course of action.

Do I think that automatically calling people names as a response is an appropriate response? No, but unfortunetly forums that are liable to attract attention, attract all attention. From both sides of the argument there are always those which don't exactly say their bit in the most polite of fashion.

DamienG said:
Honestly, TWYS is extremely biased in its enforcement, and this is largely a lateral step. This is why trans and trans friendly people are upset.

You claim that because you can't see a character's 'gender' that you can't tag them as their gender identity or expression as trans.

But you can't really 'see' a cisgender character's 'gender' any more than you can trans! It's no less a 'lore' tag. But you have no problem tagging cisgender people based on that 'lore'.

[...]

You suggest using secondary and tertiary secondary sexual characteristics but these are so ill defined in both art and reality that pretty much no two people have the same idea of what to tag a lot of the time.

Our gender tags don't tag "gender" but a specific combination of primary, secondary, and tertiary sexual characteristics, based on average human people. The average is more than precise enough for our purposes to tag characters as biologically male, female, or other. Just male, female, and intersex doesn't cut it, therefor we have a further tags for the other common match ups. Like for example a feminine body with male genitals.

DrNick said:
This would be a whole lot less absurd if literally anyone, anywhere, *ever* will search for gynomorph or andromorph. But they won't -- these are bogus made up newspeak tags that exist only to try and appease -- nobody will ever actually use them.

And I would be remiss if I don't point out the irony of NMNY's profile picture next to a paragraph about why "dickgirl" is too vulger on a furry porn site. I've been around e621 for more than 10 years and have seen a lot of political correctness and snowflake syndrome come and go and it pretty much all boils down to taking this stuff *way* too damn seriously.

But go ahead and change the tags. Then in six months when the goalposts have moved again to "now delete the dickgirl alias, for its existence doth offendeth me" the shitstorm can kick off again.

"Gynandromorph" has first been used in printing around 1890 according to Merriam-Webster, we've just split the term up so we have a term for either direction.

Fifteen said:
While I'm wholly in favor of such a change, I was kinda hoping the masculine_intersex/feminine_intersex pair would be the final decision considering it would set a framework for other similar tag groups, whereas andromorph and gynomorph are single words.

I believe masculine_intersex/feminine_intersex were also the prefered choice last time that discussion came up (see forum #211398, for instance), so what were the reasons for this to be the administration's final decision?

Someone just reminded me that one of the reason why composed tags like feminine_intersex would actually suck is that you then have a whole lof of situations where those have ot be composed in turn, such as muscular_dickgirl → muscular_feminine_intersex and maleherm/cuntboy → masculine_herm/masculine_intersex, which gets out of control very very quickly.

With that in mind, I'm fully in support of gynomorph and andromorph as replacements for the current intersex tags.

I'm not gonna join in on the ongoing discussion because I lack the knowledge required to do so.

Instead, I'll say that I doubt anyone will actually use these new tags for searching (at least I know I won't because they're a mouthful). In the end, this changes nothing.

...that is all. I just hope I didn't start a shitstorm by saying this... Please forgive me in advance.

NotMeNotYou said:
"Gynandromorph" has first been used in printing around 1890 according to Merriam-Webster, we've just split the term up so we have a term for either direction.

I don't doubt the validity of the word(s), just the practicality of the tags. There are plenty of technically-real-words-that-nobody-uses which don't lend themselves to being useful tags.

Versperus said:
In contradiction to what you said, the only time I've ever seen an alias be removed from a tag is when the main tag has been updated and the tags shift to a new, or when the tag is disambiguated. Never have I seen something be removed for the sake of it. It would cause disarray in tagging, searching, and blacklisting.

I hope you're right.

AShadyZebra said:
Using counterexamples is pointless; when someone cries about snowflakes, that almost always indicates they are arguing in bad faith.

I was careful to *avoid* calling names by saying "snowflake syndrome" in the past tense to refer to a very real behavior. Either way, just because you don't like the word I used doesn't mean my post was insincere.

Man these are such garbage replacements. "Gynomorph" and "andromorph" sound like super-broad terms that cover anyone with feminine or masculine features respectively. Nothing about "gynomorph" says "also has a dick", and nothing about "andromorph" says "also has a vagina". We're getting replacements that are less functional and are absolutely going to confuse people who don't keep up with this dramatic gender tagging bullshit. And no, "just read the wiki" isn't an excuse, how many people do you think are gonna read the wiki for every tag with an obtuse name? How many people who casually use this site even know what the little '?' next to the tag names is for?

The best part is the whiners who got this change to happen are, predictably, still whining it up in this thread. And don't tell me it was about making tags less "vulgar", especially not for tags that are only used on porn, especially not on a site with other tag names like cock_vore, abortion_by_cock, or tentacle_rape.

DamienG said:

Hey, as someone who was heavily involved in the Charr discussion, I just want to point out Yinglets aren't going to be a great example for general gender tagging. The gender tagging TWYS guidelines are set up for bodies with human-based anatomy, with no room for anything that's at a point in-between human-structure-level anthro and full feral. Charr only get their special exception because they're juuuuust human-like enough to be able to use body type as an argument. (and let's face it, most artists anthrofy Charr more than people realise in the first place.)

I love seeing non-human-conforming species, but TWYS has no place for them, and that's probably even less likely to change than trans characters getting their own tags.
The only winning move is to stop caring about the tags.

But you can't really 'see' a cisgender character's 'gender' any more than you can trans!

And this is what the site gets for calling it "gender" instead of "sex."
We're not actually tagging gender, we're tagging sexual configuration. But contemporary linguistics have intertwined the two for too long, oops.

NotMeNotYou said:
"Gynandromorph" has first been used in printing around 1890 according to Merriam-Webster, we've just split the term up so we have a term for either direction.

Yeah, and "gynandromorph" works for that because it combines "gyno-" for female and "andro-" for male. If you split off the prefixes you get terms meaning, effectively "female formed" and "male formed", which besides not meaning what they're going to be used for, are also ridiculous neologisms apparently based on an obscure scientific term.

There's only 2 genders, get over it snowflakes!

AlexHusky112 said:
There's only 2 genders, get over it snowflakes!

There's really no need to reply to the thread if you aren't going to contribute something productive to the discussion at hand.

hanzai said:
Man these are such garbage replacements. "Gynomorph" and "andromorph" sound like super-broad terms that cover anyone with feminine or masculine features respectively. Nothing about "gynomorph" says "also has a dick", and nothing about "andromorph" says "also has a vagina". We're getting replacements that are less functional and are absolutely going to confuse people who don't keep up with this dramatic gender tagging bullshit. And no, "just read the wiki" isn't an excuse, how many people do you think are gonna read the wiki for every tag with an obtuse name? How many people who casually use this site even know what the little '?' next to the tag names is for?

The best part is the whiners who got this change to happen are, predictably, still whining it up in this thread. And don't tell me it was about making tags less "vulgar", especially not for tags that are only used on porn, especially not on a site with other tag names like cock_vore, abortion_by_cock, or tentacle_rape.

Aliases are going to stay the same, so those used to old tags will still get the same results. The tags will function exactly the same, just will redirect to a new name automatically. So, no, things will still work fine, shit just has a new name the system redirects it to. Calm down. It's like how dog redirects to domestic_dog, the old tag names will just redirect to the new names.

Also, a good chunk of the "whiners" who got the change to happen are admins themselves.

It's stuff like this and the species changes that make me wish I never got involved with this site.

I just...I don't even know where to begin here.

This is a good change and I support the Admin's decision to implement it. Thank you.

ImpidiDinkaDoo said:
Aliases are going to stay the same, so those used to old tags will still get the same results. The tags will function exactly the same, just will redirect to a new name automatically. So, no, things will still work fine, shit just has a new name the system redirects it to. Calm down. It's like how dog redirects to domestic_dog, the old tag names will just redirect to the new names.

Also, a good chunk of the "whiners" who got the change to happen are admins themselves.

Why bother quoting my whole post if almost nothing you're responding with has anything to do with what I said? You're just giving the cookie-cutter response that's been given a couple dozen times already in this thread. I specifically focused on problems that aliasing doesn't do anything to address, because despite what you seem to be assuming, I do know that aliases exist and what they can and cannot do.

hanzai said:
Why bother quoting my whole post if almost nothing you're responding with has anything to do with what I said? You're just giving the cookie-cutter response that's been given a couple dozen times already in this thread. I specifically focused on problems that aliasing doesn't do anything to address, because despite what you seem to be assuming, I do know that aliases exist and what they can and cannot do.

My response is such because the tags will function as before and work the same, so how would that confuse anything? If the old tags alias to the new tags, then 2 and 2 will be put together and "oh, these new tags mean what this was now" will be understood.

ImpidiDinkaDoo said:
My response is such because the tags will function as before and work the same, so how would that confuse anything? If the old tags alias to the new tags, then 2 and 2 will be put together and "oh, these new tags mean what this was now" will be understood.

Aliases very notably don't do anything for helping anyone make sense of the tag list, which besides the ability to search for content, is one of the big draws of sites that tag/categorize content like this: if you find something you like or are interested in, you can look over at the list of tags and click on the ones for the relevant parts of the content you like.

The dog → domestic_dog alias you brought up is a great example of where that isn't a problem, and conversely why this tag is a problem. Someone scanning the tag list won't have any trouble understanding what domestic_dog means and what it's for, and they wouldn't either have trouble understanding tags like cuntboy or dickgirl, which for any "vulgarity" they may have are well-established, descriptive terms. The same absolutely cannot be said for "andromorph" and "gynomorph", which are terms with no major presence on other sites, whose meaning isn't obvious to the average user, and which would probably even mislead the minority who would be familiar with the sciencey synthetic Greek terminology, because going purely off the roots they're constructed from they wouldn't mean what they're planned to be used for.

Unless the admins are going to take an official stance that the tag list, which takes up a good chunk of UI space on every image's page in a very prominent position, is meant only for experienced users who tag a lot of images and read all the wiki pages, it's something aliasing just doesn't do anything to fix. In previous cases this mostly hasn't been a problem because it's been used to replace one straightforward term with another fairly straightforward term, but now it's being used to replace one straightforward term with an obtuse term nobody else uses.

hanzai said:
Aliases very notably don't do anything for helping anyone make sense of the tag list, which besides the ability to search for content, is one of the big draws of sites that tag/categorize content like this: if you find something you like or are interested in, you can look over at the list of tags and click on the ones for the relevant parts of the content you like.

The dog → domestic_dog alias you brought up is a great example of where that isn't a problem, and conversely why this tag is a problem. Someone scanning the tag list won't have any trouble understanding what domestic_dog means and what it's for, and they wouldn't either have trouble understanding tags like cuntboy or dickgirl, which for any "vulgarity" they may have are well-established, descriptive terms. The same absolutely cannot be said for "andromorph" and "gynomorph", which are terms with no major presence on other sites, whose meaning isn't obvious to the average user, and which would probably even mislead the minority who would be familiar with the sciencey synthetic Greek terminology, because going purely off the roots they're constructed from they wouldn't mean what they're planned to be used for.

Unless the admins are going to take an official stance that the tag list, which takes up a good chunk of UI space on every image's page in a very prominent position, is meant only for experienced users who tag a lot of images and read all the wiki pages, it's something aliasing just doesn't do anything to fix. In previous cases this mostly hasn't been a problem because it's been used to replace one straightforward term with another fairly straightforward term, but now it's being used to replace one straightforward term with an obtuse term nobody else uses.

I mean, for a tag to become well established, it has to be used commonly, so who's to say these new tags won't become well established in short time?

Regardless, I think the solution for this would more or less be more tag categories (aka, like with artist, have sections that say "Position", "Sex", etc) rather than just not changing the tags to less vulgar ones.

parasprite said:
It's stuff like this and the species changes that make me wish I never got involved with this site.

I just...I don't even know where to begin here.

Sincere question, Parasprite, how would you have changed the tags?

ImpidiDinkaDoo said:
I mean, for a tag to become well established, it has to be used commonly, so who's to say these new tags won't become well established in short time?

If the peculiarities of e621's approach to tagging caught on that easily, we wouldn't regularly have forum threads and comments and tagging wars based around people not familiar with how e621 runs things thinking it works like every other website. This site absolutely is not influential enough for these terms to overthrow dickgirl and cuntboy "in short time". Like all the other things e621 has changed that other sites have continued to do the same, this is going to stay just another e621 thing.

Regardless, I think the solution for this would more or less be more tag categories (aka, like with artist, have sections that say "Position", "Sex", etc) rather than just not changing the tags to less vulgar ones.

This would help things a lot, but it's also a feature that doesn't exist and has no plans or timeline for existing. Scanning the feature request forum, previous requests for new tag categories don't seem to have gone anywhere. Problems with tag changes shouldn't be brushed away with the reasoning that something that could hypothetically be implemented at some point, but which doesn't seem to be likely to be implemented at any point in the near future, would fix that problem. The changes are being made now, and need to be evaluated in view of how the site does work, not how it could work.

Just a quick question: Are people forgetting that
A) This change won't affect to anyone's searching and tagging in any way because you can still keep using the old words just like before thanks to the aliases. Literally only thing that is changis is what label you see stapled on people's characters.
B) We are not using something like "cuntgirl" and "dickboy" instead of male and female tags (I mean im pretty sure that hell would break loose if we did), why tf everyone is so obsessed with wanting to label these two groups as "cuntboy" and "dickgirl"? Like even if you personally don't consider these as slurs, you still should be able to see the issue when two gender tags get words like this while every other one gets far more neutral terms.

hiekkapillu said:
Just a quick question: Are people forgetting that
A) This change won't affect to anyone's searching and tagging in any way because you can still keep using the old words just like before thanks to the aliases. Literally only thing that is changis is what label you see stapled on people's characters.
B) We are not using something like "cuntgirl" and "dickboy" instead of male and female tags (I mean im pretty sure that hell would break loose if we did), why tf everyone is so obsessed with wanting to label these two groups as "cuntboy" and "dickgirl"? Like even if you personally don't consider these as slurs, you still should be able to see the issue when two gender tags get words like this while every other one gets far more neutral terms.

Finally, someone who gets it

hiekkapillu said:

► Click to expand

▼ Click to collapse

Just a quick question: Are people forgetting that

A) This change won't affect to anyone's searching and tagging in any way because you can still keep using the old words just like before thanks to the aliases. Literally only thing that is changis is what label you see stapled on people's characters.

B) We are not using something like "cuntgirl" and "dickboy" instead of male and female tags (I mean im pretty sure that hell would break loose if we did), why tf everyone is so obsessed with wanting to label these two groups as "cuntboy" and "dickgirl"? Like even if you personally don't consider these as slurs, you still should be able to see the issue when two gender tags get words like this while every other one gets far more neutral terms.

Yep, spot on.

I'm sure this change will have some growing pains and maybe there are more descriptive terms to use. However, I still think that it's a change for the better.

Maybe this will help get more people involved in coming up with more descriptive terms in the future?

so if your changing these tags because they are "vulgar" are you also going to rename the "fucked_silly" tag because that includes vulgar language as well?
personally i dislike the new tags as they feel less descriptive.
the word "dickgirl" makes me think of a traditional cis female, but with male reproductive organs. and vice-versa for "cuntboy"
now i myself being a cis/hetro male might not understand how these terms make other people feel, but i do believe they get their intended meaning across quite well.
the new terms feel somewhat ambiguous to me.
when i hear the term "gynomroph" i think "gyno as in gynecology, so this means female" and then i think "morph as in transform" and thats where i get confused.
if i hadent read this post, i would think "gynomorph" would be a gender transformation tag to imply any>female (as the character is being morphed into having a vagina) but that would be a completely inaccurate reading.
altogether i feel as if this change is unnecessary and mildly confusing, but since the old tags will still alias i dont think this will have any noticeable negative impact.
my difficulty understanding the new terms may also be because of the fact that i have auspergers syndrome, and i often have difficulties with change and language.
i havent read much of other peoples comments because a lot of it seems to be drama i dont want to get involved with, so i dont really know what other people think of the new terms.
just my two cents.

FurryMcFuzzball said:
It finally happened, we caved to the changed a tag that wasn't inherently offensive because too many people complained.

Lot of tag changes lately. Has there been a change in management? These tags have worked perfectly for years, suddenly everything's getting a new coat of paint, not that it's any surprise of course.

honestly, thousands and thousands of people use this site / those tags with no issue, and because <1% of people complain incessantly, everyone else has to deal with the aftermath.

its about time people realize words are just that - words, and its entirely up to you on how you deal with reading / comprehending those words. Stop forcing your embarrassingly thin skin on other people.

Yeah just wanted to add I think this is a dumb change.
All it does is makes learning tags harder for new users, and confuse current users.

Nobody is gonna look at the wiki to figure it out. The new tags are honestly more offensive than the old ones. It's a porn site, dick and cunt are appropriate terms.

I also prefer the tag dickgirl because it validates that a woman can have a dick.
Maybe it's time to add tag preferences, to display whichever alias you prefer instead of the parent tag.

giamidwi said:
honestly, thousands and thousands of people use this site / those tags with no issue, and because <1% of people complain incessantly, everyone else has to deal with the aftermath.

its about time people realize words are just that - words, and its entirely up to you on how you deal with reading / comprehending those words. Stop forcing your embarrassingly thin skin on other people.

Bro, the majority of admins themselves have wanted this tag change as well. It wasn't due to "small groups complaining", it's been a long time coming for many admins.

Maybe stop projecting this weird mindset you have onto the issue and offer something actually constructive to the conversation.

Sharkiiie said:
It's a porn site, dick and cunt are appropriate terms.

Despite the common misconception, this is NOT a porn site. It is an art archive. A lot of furry works just happen to be NSFW in nature, so a large chunk of content here happens to be porn. However, that doesn't make it 100% porn.

hanzai said:
Aliases very notably don't do anything for helping anyone make sense of the tag list, which besides the ability to search for content, is one of the big draws of sites that tag/categorize content like this: if you find something you like or are interested in, you can look over at the list of tags and click on the ones for the relevant parts of the content you like.

The dog → domestic_dog alias you brought up is a great example of where that isn't a problem, and conversely why this tag is a problem. Someone scanning the tag list won't have any trouble understanding what domestic_dog means and what it's for, and they wouldn't either have trouble understanding tags like cuntboy or dickgirl, which for any "vulgarity" they may have are well-established, descriptive terms. The same absolutely cannot be said for "andromorph" and "gynomorph", which are terms with no major presence on other sites, whose meaning isn't obvious to the average user, and which would probably even mislead the minority who would be familiar with the sciencey synthetic Greek terminology, because going purely off the roots they're constructed from they wouldn't mean what they're planned to be used for.

Unless the admins are going to take an official stance that the tag list, which takes up a good chunk of UI space on every image's page in a very prominent position, is meant only for experienced users who tag a lot of images and read all the wiki pages, it's something aliasing just doesn't do anything to fix. In previous cases this mostly hasn't been a problem because it's been used to replace one straightforward term with another fairly straightforward term, but now it's being used to replace one straightforward term with an obtuse term nobody else uses.

I just got finished explaining this situation to someone in a chat group on Telegram. I agree 1000% with this, and am happy that this has been brought up by others already (so I'm not alone in this belief).

Personally, I feel like e621 should use tags like female_(male_genitals) and male_(female_genitals). It would place the tags in the same area as the female and male tags currently reside in the tagging list, are both unambiguous and descriptive, and people who are new to the fandom and site will instantly understand them.

Tynach said:
I just got finished explaining this situation to someone in a chat group on Telegram. I agree 1000% with this, and am happy that this has been brought up by others already (so I'm not alone in this belief).

Personally, I feel like e621 should use tags like female_(male_genitals) and male_(female_genitals). It would place the tags in the same area as the female and male tags currently reside in the tagging list, are both unambiguous and descriptive, and people who are new to the fandom and site will instantly understand them.

Formatting it that way would make the tagging format incredibly tedious when it comes to characters who have both a penis and a vagina. That + explicitly gendering the genitalia in the tags (we try to not explicitly gender tags, see for, bull, rooster, etc) is a no from me.

ImpidiDinkaDoo said:
Formatting it that way would make the tagging format incredibly tedious when it comes to characters who have both a penis and a vagina. That + explicitly gendering the genitalia in the tags (we try to not explicitly gender tags, see for, bull, rooster, etc) is a no from me.

These changes do not apply to characters with both a penis and a vagina. That's what the herm tag is for. This change is solely about characters who are one specific biological sex in all ways except their genitals, which are entirely replaced with that of the opposite sex. That means a female with a penis but no vagina, and a male with a vagina but no penis.

Given that e621 changed gay to instead be male/male (among other tag changes in the past), I don't believe that preventing verbosity is high on the importance scale.