The herm and maleherm tags are an issue.
To start, 'herm' has multiple different usages within furry and porn that are inconsistent with e6's definition. When someone's personal definition is 'all altersex with boobs' and another person's is 'all altersex' and another person's is 'gynomorphs' that leads to inconsistent tagging that needs to be watched and cleaned up regularly. The term itself and the implications the tag has do not give clues how it is supposed to be used.
On top of that, herm/maleherm does not leave room for characters/species that are totally androgynous or their other sexual characteristics are unshown or ambiguous. A genitals-only image tells you a character has a vulva AND a penis, but does not tell you what their bodyshape is otherwise.
Finally, 'herm' has historically been used as a derogatory and hurtful term towards real-world intersex people.

So, a proposed alternative is bigenital. The one con is that it might be interpreted as 'two sets of any genitals', but context of use and implications should be able to enforce the correct use of the term. At the very least, it's more intuitive than 'herm' is.
'Bigenital' on its own doesn't have the same body type split as herm/maleherm, and this is fine for its own tag- it would serve as an umbrella term for both cases as well as being a valid tag for androgynous/ambiguous cases- but this split IS useful for searching and blacklisting. I'm not certain how best to split the tag, but I can think of a few options:
-male_bigenital and female_bigenital (con: potentially implies male/female should be added, however this con already exists with maleherm)
-masculine_bigenital and feminine_bigenital (con: maybe someone interprets it as manly vs girly?)
-bigenital_andromorph and bigenital_gynomorph (con: potentially implies andro/gynomorph should be added, similar issue exists with maleherm)

hermaphrodite already means something that has both sets of sexual organs, though? if people use the definition wrong it's not really our fault. I'm not sure changing the name to something else will really solve the problem. and, like, bigenital kinda already sounds like it could apply to multi_genitalia.

regsmutt said:
On top of that, herm/maleherm does not leave room for characters/species that are totally androgynous or their other sexual characteristics are unshown or ambiguous. A genitals-only image tells you a character has a vulva AND a penis, but does not tell you what their bodyshape is otherwise.

I mean, the same's true for male and female. we don't have a way to describe a character who has any genitalia and lacks any other gender pointers (biological or cultural).

I'm totally on board when it comes to renaming them. herm seems really derogatory to me. I once had an idea of renaming them to gynandromorph for herm and androgynomorph for maleherm. They're both a portmanteau of gynomoprh and andromorph, and gynandromorph comes from a real biological phenomenon. The only con that I can think of is that they're kinda long and a little hard to remember. Thoughts?

dba_afish said:
hermaphrodite already means something that has both sets of sexual organs, though? if people use the definition wrong it's not really our fault. I'm not sure changing the name to something else will really solve the problem. and, like, bigenital kinda already sounds like it could apply to multi_genitalia.

Hermaphrodite has had a variety of different specific definitions both historically and in modern use. "Produced both ova and sperm" or "has both sets of gonads" is a biological definition, but even there there is movement away from the term. "A female sculpture with a penis" is the original definition of the term as it arose to describe specific sculptural depicitions of Aphrodite. It has also been used, both medically and derogatorily, to refer to intersex people and intersex conditions which, in mammals, cannot involve having both (functional) male and female gonads. Porn usage of the term is all over the place.

Even if there was only one strict definition that got used, there is still the issue of 'herm' being a derogatory term for intersex people. If you want to debate the use of it in strictly biological contexts, then whatever, but e621 is NOT a biological context. Using derogatory terms as tags is offputting and should be avoided where possible. Here it feels very, very possible to use a different term.

I mean, the same's true for male and female. we don't have a way to describe a character who has any genitalia and lacks any other gender pointers (biological or cultural).

Sure, but there are at least guidelines for those cases, even if they fail in certain contexts (e.g. trans characters). Shortcomings of the male/female tags are a different topic entirely.

munchmallow-frosty said:
I'm totally on board when it comes to renaming them. herm seems really derogatory to me. I once had an idea of renaming them to gynandromorph for herm and androgynomorph for maleherm. They're both a portmanteau of gynomoprh and andromorph, and gynandromorph comes from a real biological phenomenon. The only con that I can think of is that they're kinda long and a little hard to remember. Thoughts?

I think those are a little bit hard to remember. I know I'd be checking the wiki for which is which each time I used them lol.

I initially thought bigenital_andromorph/gynomorph sounding like they should imply andromorph or gynomorph respectively was a con, but as I thought about it more I actually don't hate it. I know that getting rid of 'intersex' entirely has been floated when renaming that tag has come up. Making the category andromorph, gynomorph, bigenital, and combinations of them might work for that.

regsmutt said:
Sure, but there are at least guidelines for those cases, even if they fail in certain contexts (e.g. trans characters). Shortcomings of the male/female tags are a different topic entirely.

I mean, not really? or at least not anything more than for herm, they're all just:

herm is the default, so characters who present androgynously are tagged that, same as for androgynous presenting male and female characters. _{(and as such, nulls have the only bodytype that can be tagged on any part of the spectrum)}

I don't think the solution to this problem would be to create a tag split here, not only because it dosn't really solve the whole problem, but also because it'd be a massive undertaking to reclass so many posts. a better answer would just be to leave the current seven gender categories and just create androgynous_* subtags for the three gender categories that stuff can "default" into.

dba_afish said:
I mean, not really? or at least not anything more than for herm, they're all just:

	penis?	vagina?	both?
girl	gynomorph	female	herm
boy	male	andromorph	maleherm
androgynous	male	female	herm

herm is the default, so characters who present androgynously are tagged that, same as for androgynous presenting male and female characters. _{(and as such, nulls have the only bodytype that can be tagged on any part of the spectrum)}

I don't think the solution to this problem would be to create a tag split here, not only because it dosn't really solve the whole problem, but also because it'd be a massive undertaking to reclass so many posts. a better answer would just be to leave the current seven gender categories and just create androgynous_* subtags for the three gender categories that stuff can "default" into.

Herm/maleherm is already a split. Addressing androgynous/ambiguous cases isn't a main goal (the main goal is to move away from a term that culturally has blurry definitions and offensive connotations), it's just a secondary benefit. Androgynous/ambiguous images defaulting to the tag that has a female definition feels odd here. Having a specific 'maleherm' tag that by definition cannot imply the plain 'herm' tag is very odd.

The two alternatives to having female_bigenital and male_bigenital (or an equivalent) are a) eliminating the split entirely and aliasing both to bigenital, which is bad for searching and blacklisting, or b) making the tags bigenital and male_bigenital which again creates a weird situation where a tag with what looks like a modifier can't be implicated to the plain tag.

There are 183 pages of posts tagged herm. Sorting out ambiguous cases should not be impossible. Sorting out improperly tagged gynomorph images will be harder.

Mate I'll be honest my first thought was this was some hyper-related thing and was "big genitals". This is a more hideous and clunky thing to rename the tags to than the gynomorph/andromorph change was. I'm sure if you really, really want it changed, you can come up with a better term than "bigenital" or the overlong (and confusing to the casual user) gynandromorph/androgynomorph suggestion. Perhaps, if I had to toss out a theoretical solution, something like male and female, or "masculine and feminine" if thou must, permutations of a "dualsex" or "heteromorph"? I'd say to take a page from Gelbooru and use "full_package_*morph", given all features must be visible anyway, but that seems a bit long as well.

munchmallow-frosty said:
I'm totally on board when it comes to renaming them. herm seems really derogatory to me. I once had an idea of renaming them to gynandromorph for herm and androgynomorph for maleherm. They're both a portmanteau of gynomoprh and andromorph, and gynandromorph comes from a real biological phenomenon. The only con that I can think of is that they're kinda long and a little hard to remember. Thoughts?

Androgyny/androgynous (words made from a combination of the andro- and gyno- prefixes) refers to people/characters with an ambiguously male or female appearance. It's ambiguous_gender (and the former already aliased, the latter is defunct and should be aliased though currently empty). Tagging on -morph and the end and trying to use it as the basis for herm and maleherm replacements would create more confusion than it attempts to resolve.

votp said:
Mate I'll be honest my first thought was this was some hyper-related thing and was "big genitals". This is a more hideous and clunky thing to rename the tags to than the gynomorph/andromorph change was. I'm sure if you really, really want it changed, you can come up with a better term than "bigenital" or the overlong (and confusing to the casual user) gynandromorph/androgynomorph suggestion. Perhaps, if I had to toss out a theoretical solution, something like male and female, or "masculine and feminine" if thou must, permutations of a "dualsex" or "heteromorph"? I'd say to take a page from Gelbooru and use "full_package_*morph", given all features must be visible anyway, but that seems a bit long as well.

I've seen 'bigenital' in use in other spaces. 'Full_package' feels a bit overly sexual, especially considering that it would be applied to things that aren't necessarily intended to be porn. However, it's better than 'herm' and if people truly prefer it, well I'm not going to object.

regsmutt said:
The herm and maleherm tags are an issue.
To start, 'herm' has multiple different usages within furry and porn that are inconsistent with e6's definition. When someone's personal definition is 'all altersex with boobs' and another person's is 'all altersex' and another person's is 'gynomorphs' that leads to inconsistent tagging that needs to be watched and cleaned up regularly. The term itself and the implications the tag has do not give clues how it is supposed to be used.
On top of that, herm/maleherm does not leave room for characters/species that are totally androgynous or their other sexual characteristics are unshown or ambiguous. A genitals-only image tells you a character has a vulva AND a penis, but does not tell you what their bodyshape is otherwise.
Finally, 'herm' has historically been used as a derogatory and hurtful term towards real-world intersex people.

There is already an intersex tag.

As someone who is intersex (47,XXY), I don't find the term hermaphrodite offensive. In my experience, the people who claim that 'herm' is a durogatory term are either not intersex or have strong attention-seeking disorders (like NPD).

In addition, 'hermaphrodite' is also a medical/scientific term for an organism that has both sperm and egg producing organs, as another poster mentioned.

Honestly this entire situation seems to me like it will only dilute the tags, making it more confusing for users who want to search for specific things.

It's an unnecessary tag. It's a solution looking for a problem that does not and never has existed.

votp said:
I'd say to take a page from Gelbooru and use "full_package_*morph", given all features must be visible anyway, but that seems a bit long as well.

I was under the impression that "full-package" just means a character has balls to go with their penis. it's essentially the inverse of our sackless (to which herm_half_package is aliased).

dba_afish said:
I was under the impression that "full-package" just means a character has balls to go with their penis. it's essentially the inverse of our sackless (to which herm_half_package is aliased).

Full package is used for "has everything", newhalf for just cock and balls, and the general futa tag for anything else (umbrella tag). It was more a muse on possible "solutions" than anything, that said.

votp said:
Full package is used for "has everything", newhalf for just cock and balls, and the general futa tag for anything else (umbrella tag). It was more a muse on possible "solutions" than anything, that said.

"full-package furanari" is penis+balls+vagina
"half-package futanari" is penis+vagina, no balls

"newhalf" is a Japanese slang term for a transsexual person _{(usually it's considered a pretty derogatory one, at that)}.
"futa" (or "futanari") is litterally just "hermaphrodite" in japanese, so it really should not include "newhalf".

either way, we've kinda tried to move away from using words that specifically make mention a character's genitals for the gender tags, so "full-package" would probably be not great, even if its definition did fit.

Saying "herm is a derogatory term" is a joke that you're either spreading because you think it's funny, or because you fell for it. So let's just move on from that embarrassing part of the argument.

Herm is clear in what it means even if other sites use it differently. Maleherm on the other hand was damn confusing to learn existed. It's like bumping into a straight-bisexual tag. Sure with time I worked out what it meant, but it is not a good name. Yet I can't think of any better solution. I only see there being a need for change in the off chance the site adds in new functionality where the tags can be marked as applying to just one character rather than the entire image, which would allow for some nice things like "Herm flat-chested renamon" to give us exactly what we want. Until that amazing but unlikely update happens, the tags right now work well. Bigenital is NOT a solution if it still gives us wacky tags like Malebigenital.

There's a real-life term for having both genitals (yes that's a real thing, penile-preserving vaginoplasty and vagina-preserving phalloplasty) called salmacian: https://salmacian.org/

wandering_spaniel said:
There's a real-life term for having both genitals (yes that's a real thing, penile-preserving vaginoplasty and vagina-preserving phalloplasty) called salmacian: https://salmacian.org/

According to that page:

Salmacian is a term for people who wish to have a mixed genital set.

Seems it's referring more to an identity than a state of being. It doesn't sound like a good fit for a tag for characters who do have both genitals, and either don't care that they have both (it's just natural to them and they never really think about wanting them both or not) or actively only want one set but have both regardless.

wandering_spaniel said:
There's a real-life term for having both genitals (yes that's a real thing, penile-preserving vaginoplasty and vagina-preserving phalloplasty) called salmacian: https://salmacian.org/

Salmacian is one of the alternatives I've seen. It's been shot down as an alternative for 'intersex', and while this seems like a better fit in terms of definition, it still might have a bit too much of a learning curve. Still, it's a better option than herm.

a_big_fat_fox said:
There is already an intersex tag.

As someone who is intersex (47,XXY), I don't find the term hermaphrodite offensive. In my experience, the people who claim that 'herm' is a durogatory term are either not intersex or have strong attention-seeking disorders (like NPD).

In addition, 'hermaphrodite' is also a medical/scientific term for an organism that has both sperm and egg producing organs, as another poster mentioned.

Honestly this entire situation seems to me like it will only dilute the tags, making it more confusing for users who want to search for specific things.

It's an unnecessary tag. It's a solution looking for a problem that does not and never has existed.

minus said:
Saying "herm is a derogatory term" is a joke that you're either spreading because you think it's funny, or because you fell for it. So let's just move on from that embarrassing part of the argument.

Herm is clear in what it means even if other sites use it differently. Maleherm on the other hand was damn confusing to learn existed. It's like bumping into a straight-bisexual tag. Sure with time I worked out what it meant, but it is not a good name. Yet I can't think of any better solution. I only see there being a need for change in the off chance the site adds in new functionality where the tags can be marked as applying to just one character rather than the entire image, which would allow for some nice things like "Herm flat-chested renamon" to give us exactly what we want. Until that amazing but unlikely update happens, the tags right now work well. Bigenital is NOT a solution if it still gives us wacky tags like Malebigenital.

Both of you pretty much hit the nail on the head here. Maleherm is really the only valid problem stated here as it is slightly confusing at first, but even then it's very minor. I can't think of a good name for it other than 'breastless_herm' but that's very clunky, especially if it has to be combined in related tags. I would rather keep 'maleherm' than use that.

regsmutt said:
The herm and maleherm tags are an issue.
To start, 'herm' has multiple different usages within furry and porn that are inconsistent with e6's definition. When someone's personal definition is 'all altersex with boobs' and another person's is 'all altersex' and another person's is 'gynomorphs' that leads to inconsistent tagging that needs to be watched and cleaned up regularly. The term itself and the implications the tag has do not give clues how it is supposed to be used.
On top of that, herm/maleherm does not leave room for characters/species that are totally androgynous or their other sexual characteristics are unshown or ambiguous. A genitals-only image tells you a character has a vulva AND a penis, but does not tell you what their bodyshape is otherwise.
Finally, 'herm' has historically been used as a derogatory and hurtful term towards real-world intersex people.

So, a proposed alternative is bigenital. The one con is that it might be interpreted as 'two sets of any genitals', but context of use and implications should be able to enforce the correct use of the term. At the very least, it's more intuitive than 'herm' is.
'Bigenital' on its own doesn't have the same body type split as herm/maleherm, and this is fine for its own tag- it would serve as an umbrella term for both cases as well as being a valid tag for androgynous/ambiguous cases- but this split IS useful for searching and blacklisting. I'm not certain how best to split the tag, but I can think of a few options:
-male_bigenital and female_bigenital (con: potentially implies male/female should be added, however this con already exists with maleherm)
-masculine_bigenital and feminine_bigenital (con: maybe someone interprets it as manly vs girly?)
-bigenital_andromorph and bigenital_gynomorph (con: potentially implies andro/gynomorph should be added, similar issue exists with maleherm)

I'll just provide a warning that this is a bad idea, very clunky and honestly running along the same problematic lines as the dreaded c-boy and d-girl slurs that were thankfully phased out.... Aside from the fact that it would be incorrect terminology as breasts are not genitalia which are a consideration when applying the present herm or maleherm tags.

kyiiel said:
Both of you pretty much hit the nail on the head here. Maleherm is really the only valid problem stated here as it is slightly confusing at first, but even then it's very minor. I can't think of a good name for it other than 'breastless_herm' but that's very clunky, especially if it has to be combined in related tags. I would rather keep 'maleherm' than use that.

"breastless" wouldn't work anyway because ferals and whatnot. also, even for normal adult anthros, breasts aren't the be-all end-all differentiation between the feminine and masculine gender categories; breasts==feminine, not breasts=/=not feminine.

ryu_deacon said:
I'll just provide a warning that this is a bad idea, very clunky and honestly running along the same problematic lines as the dreaded c-boy and d-girl slurs that were thankfully phased out.... Aside from the fact that it would be incorrect terminology as breasts are not genitalia which are a consideration when applying the present herm or maleherm tags.

I am a bit confused as to where breasts being criteria is coming from. They're not criteria and weren't mentioned anywhere in the quoted post.
I'm also not seeing how it's similar to c-boy/d-girl. There isn't a history of bigenital being used as a slur. If it's that it explicitly references genitals, 'genital' isn't a crude term.

regsmutt said:
I am a bit confused as to where breasts being criteria is coming from. They're not criteria and weren't mentioned anywhere in the quoted post.
I'm also not seeing how it's similar to c-boy/d-girl. There isn't a history of bigenital being used as a slur. If it's that it explicitly references genitals, 'genital' isn't a crude term.

I've rewritten this comment 3 4 times before posting it.

First and foremost, I feel weird and dirty using 'bigenital'.

Secondly, a hermaphrodite, typically called 'intersex', simply means someone posesses features that are both typically masculine and feminine. The most common example is people who present feminine but have masculine genitals.

Hermaphrodites do not necessarily have visible examples of both masculine and feminine reproductive organs. For example, some intersex humans have one or both ovaries. IIRC, one of the hosts of Boy Boy on YouTube had an ovary despite being AMAB, but that was it. At the risk of TMI, I suffer from something similar in addition to having KS.

Because of this, "bigenital" does not apply to a large portion of the hermaphroditic content on this site.

Breasts are relevant because a lot of furry hermaphrodites are feminine presenting, with feminine bodies and faces, including breasts, but posessing masculine sexual anatomy.

If anything, 'maleherm' should be removed from the site. You cannot be both a male and a hermaphrodite. It's contradictory.

If you want to search for 'maleherm' content, use the tags intersex and masculine, optionally with other masculine-affirming tags/terms.

The takeaway is that 'bigenital' is inaccurate to describe a lot of intersex artwork and characters. Not all hermaphrodites have both outward genitals. Sometimes it's what's inside that counts.

a_big_fat_fox said:
I've rewritten this comment 3 4 times before posting it.

First and foremost, I feel weird and dirty using 'bigenital'.

Secondly, a hermaphrodite, typically called 'intersex', simply means someone posesses features that are both typically masculine and feminine. The most common example is people who present feminine but have masculine genitals.

Hermaphrodites do not necessarily have visible examples of both masculine and feminine reproductive organs. For example, some intersex humans have one or both ovaries. IIRC, one of the hosts of Boy Boy on YouTube had an ovary despite being AMAB, but that was it. At the risk of TMI, I suffer from something similar in addition to having KS.

Because of this, "bigenital" does not apply to a large portion of the hermaphroditic content on this site.

Breasts are relevant because a lot of furry hermaphrodites are feminine presenting, with feminine bodies and faces, including breasts, but posessing masculine sexual anatomy.

If anything, 'maleherm' should be removed from the site. You cannot be both a male and a hermaphrodite. It's contradictory.

If you want to search for 'maleherm' content, use the tags intersex and masculine, optionally with other masculine-affirming tags/terms.

The takeaway is that 'bigenital' is inaccurate to describe a lot of intersex artwork and characters. Not all hermaphrodites have both outward genitals. Sometimes it's what's inside that counts.

Herm is not a synonym or umbrella term for intersex. On e6 herm is defined specifically and only as a feminine body with both a penis and a vagina. All other uses of the tag on e6 are incorrect and mistagging. So yes, bigenital does describe all (correctly tagged) herm content on e6.

If you do not like the use of 'genital' does another alternative feel better?

regsmutt said:
Herm is not a synonym or umbrella term for intersex. On e6 herm is defined specifically and only as a feminine body with both a penis and a vagina. All other uses of the tag on e6 are incorrect and mistagging. So yes, bigenital does describe all (correctly tagged) herm content on e6.

If you do not like the use of 'genital' does another alternative feel better?

I think leaving the tags alone is a good idea unless they are provably problematic. As it stands none of the inter/herm/morph tags are particularly problematic.

*links to the 5 other threads with the same topic*

a_big_fat_fox said:
I think leaving the tags alone is a good idea unless they are provably problematic. As it stands none of the inter/herm/morph tags are particularly problematic.

"Provably" isn't super possible with something that can be subjective depending on life experience and language. However, there IS plenty of existing writing showing that 'herm' is a controversial term that is considered by many in English-speaking communities to be offensive.

InterAct:
https://interactadvocates.org/faq/
https://www.dcu.ie/intersex-faqs/words

Intersex Society of North America:
https://isna.org/node/16/
https://web.archive.org/web/20130701061246/http://www.isna.org/faq/hermaphrodite
(As an aside, these writings are from before 2008 showing that this opinion is not new and has existed for decades.)

Reddit (informal but shows nuance and how views vary):
https://www.reddit.com/r/intersex/comments/i7ftnn/is_hermaphrodite_an_offense_term/?rdt=49023
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskLGBT/comments/1dx4ufu/is_hermaphrodite_a_slur_against_intersex_people/

regsmutt said:
(a lot of things)

This sounds exactly like when some people were trying to claim femboy is offensive and we should use roseboy instead (which ironically sounds more like a slur)

regsmutt said:
Intersex Society of North America:
https://isna.org/node/16/
https://web.archive.org/web/20130701061246/http://www.isna.org/faq/hermaphrodite
(As an aside, these writings are from before 2008 showing that this opinion is not new and has existed for decades.)

Quoting this one:

The word "hermaphrodite" implies that a person is born with
two sets of genitals -- one male and one female -- and this is something
that cannot occur.

A key point here is that true hermaphroditism doesn't exist in humans, referring to people with a chromosomal disorder as a word used to describe animals that have both sets of genitalia is obviously both misleading and dehumanising. It's offensive to call a trans woman a "femboy" (because she's obviously not a boy) but that doesn't mean it's offensive to call somebody who identifies as male a femboy.

However, it's also be obvious that characters on e621 are fictional and aren't bound by the laws of reality. The herm tag presents numerous characters that have true hermaphroditism, the kind that isn't possible in real life humans. They could be slugs, they could be aliens, they might have obtained the second set of genitalia through science or magic, or it could just be the personal choice of the character designer. Why would it be offensive to describe a true hermaphrodite character as a herm?

I really feel like most the confusion in the first place comes from the intersex tag, which doesn't really make much sense compared to the real life definition. People with both sets of genitalia just don't exist in real life - so hermaphrodites aren't intersex people. Anybody who would come under the classification of andromorph or gynomorph in real life is most likely going to be transgender - HRT or surgery does not make you intersex either, so intersex wouldn't apply here either.

Most accurate depictions of individuals with a chromosomal disorder would still very likely fit in the male or female classification according to TWYS.

faucet said:
I really feel like most the confusion in the first place comes from the intersex tag, which doesn't really make much sense compared to the real life definition.

I'd be in favor of just getting rid of the intersex tag. It's odd to me to have an umbrella tag for herm, maleherm, andromorph, and gynomorph, when andromorph and gynomorph have the complete opposite set of genitals/breasts of each other, and maleherm and gynomorph are also quite different, and where every single tag incorporating one of those 4 sexes has at least one duplicate tag with intersex in its place. There's no umbrella tag for things like this with male, female, and ambiguous_gender.

regsmutt said:
"Provably" isn't super possible with something that can be subjective depending on life experience and language. However, there IS plenty of existing writing showing that 'herm' is a controversial term that is considered by many in English-speaking communities to be offensive.

InterAct:

Intersex Society of North America:

(As an aside, these writings are from before 2008 showing that this opinion is not new and has existed for decades.)

Reddit (informal but shows nuance and how views vary):

"Provably" can be proven with how people are complaining about the tags in the forums.

InterAct says that some people are reclaiming the term.

Those reddit posts are dubious at best.

The confusion about the herm tags is almost exclusively because the people using it don't know what it means and don't know how to use tags.

It's implied into intersex. Herm should just be removed/invalidated along with maleherm, and just use intersex instead.

watsit said:
I'd be in favor of just getting rid of the intersex tag. It's odd to me to have an umbrella tag for herm, maleherm, andromorph, and gynomorph, when andromorph and gynomorph have the complete opposite set of genitals/breasts of each other, and maleherm and gynomorph are also quite different, and where every single tag incorporating one of those 4 sexes has at least one duplicate tag with intersex in its place. There's no umbrella tag for things like this with male, female, and ambiguous_gender.

Umbrella terms are fine. Like I said, if you want to look for masculine intersex on this site, just use those tags. intersex and masculine works great in conjunction with solo. This entire issue can be solved just by using existing tags.

ah yes let's remove the little representation intersex people get. Fantastic idea to an already isolated and marginalized group of people.

a_big_fat_fox said:
Umbrella terms are fine. Like I said, if you want to look for masculine intersex on this site, just use those tags. intersex and masculine works great in conjunction with solo. This entire issue can be solved just by using existing tags.

masculine isn't a populated tag and intersex exclusively covers 4 gender presentation categories girl with penis, boy with vagina, girl with both, boy with both) all of which are on different ends of a spectrum with andromorph and gynomorph also being kind of askew from each other as well. not only does this not necessarily jive with the real-world definition, this also means that the intersex tag applies to characters who were canonically born with these traits, as well as trans characters.

a_big_fat_fox said:
ah yes let's remove the little representation intersex people get. Fantastic idea to an already isolated and marginalized group of people.

intersex_(lore) will still exist, which is a tag for characters who are actually intersex rather than just one of those 4 body configurations.

dba_afish said:
masculine isn't a populated tag and intersex exclusively covers 4 gender presentation categories girl with penis, boy with vagina, girl with both, boy with both) all of which are on different ends of a spectrum with andromorph and gynomorph also being kind of askew from each other as well. not only does this not necessarily jive with the real-world definition, this also means that the intersex tag applies to characters who were canonically born with these traits, as well as trans characters.

intersex_(lore) will still exist, which is a tag for characters who are actually intersex rather than just one of those 4 body configurations.

Transgender people are intersex. Just not by natural means.

The tags aren't defined enough to cover the real world examples where applicable and that is the source of most tag related issues.

I don't know. I still feel like the removal of the tag would be disrespectful. I'd personally feel invalidated, but I only speak for myself.

a_big_fat_fox said:
Transgender people are intersex. Just not by natural means.

The tags aren't defined enough to cover the real world examples where applicable and that is the source of most tag related issues.

I don't know. I still feel like the removal of the tag would be disrespectful. I'd personally feel invalidated, but I only speak for myself.

we've had people bring up issuses with the usage of "intersex" as the tagname a couple of times in the past half-dozen months, so all of us around here've heard a lot of arguments pulling in multiple different directions on this one subject.

personally, I really do not know what the best solution would be, here because... like, if we were in an alternate universe where everything was identical except we just didn't have a tag with the fiction that intersex serves, I don't think it'd possible to convince me that creating one would really serve much purpose...

like-- I don't really know if it has much functional utility, it's a blanket tag for what, in my mind at least, are a few extremely disparate categories. but also, at this point it's just kinda engrained in the website. we've never invalidated a tag anywhere near its scale, and it'd inevitably have an impact on a tonne of users. the amount of blacklists affected alone would be pretty massive _{^{(and while a part of me says that I'm not sure I care about the effect on the type of person to blacklist intersex, it's still probably best for everyone to try to have a good user experience regardless)}}.

a_big_fat_fox said:
I don't know. I still feel like the removal of the tag would be disrespectful. I'd personally feel invalidated, but I only speak for myself.

I dunno, trans_(lore) and nonbinary_(lore) are both tags that have only ever existed in the lore category, and I've never really felt like those being there really meant characters/people weren't being represented properly or anything.

although I can't say I don't at least see where you're coming from, feeling this way. I mean, I have probably gotten a little more heated than necessary when discussing tags/categories I'm attached to/identity with.

dba_afish said:
we've never invalidated a tag anywhere near its scale

video_games was at least 4, probably 5 times the size of what intersex currently is
_{I'm aware the two tags are wildly different and video games likely was not widely used in blacklists, but it was still a tag that had over 1 million posts which we invalidated}

a_big_fat_fox said:
Transgender people are intersex. Just not by natural means.

The tags aren't defined enough to cover the real world examples where applicable and that is the source of most tag related issues.

I don't know. I still feel like the removal of the tag would be disrespectful. I'd personally feel invalidated, but I only speak for myself.

Transgender people are not typically considered intersex unless they have an intersex condition. Even if you would like to argue that hrt creates an intersex condition, not all trans people go on hrt.

The intersex tag on e6 already excludes many, if not most, real-world intersex conditions. Pregnant men are not tagged intersex, micropenises and enlarged clitorises are not tagged intersex, chromosomal differences are not tagged intersex, and so on. The tag is explicitly only for genital configurations.

The intersex_(lore) tag can cover all intersex conditions.

I'm empathetic to your concerns of erasure, and it is important to make sure that doesn't happen. Currently though, it does look like there are systems in place that will hopefully be able to prevent intersex characters from becoming unsearchable.

There's kind of a reason that we arrived at these sets of terms: female/male, herm/maleherm, andromorph/gynomorph, all of which require some sign of presence and are not horrible to figure out which qualifies.
Removing herm and maleherm would be oh so wonderful and not harmful in any way (sarcasm). I've seen sites that basically group anything clearly not female or male or ambiguous into a far more controversial 'futanari' tag or similar. It feels that removing nuance entirely would be the wrong way to go.
All the other arguments about replacing intersex with a different catch-all term have been mostly gone over in the other topics, but if we replaced it, what with? And if removed entirely, it would be a major hassle to everyone, without nearly as much clear benefits as the cub tag. All the other terms nominated as replacements had problems. Might want to go over them before making more suggestions, or at least, revisit them if mentioning again.

There are probably a non-zero number of people that precisely want unsearchability. Yeah, don't feed the trolls. Same reason we have TWYS with lore tags and visual tags separated.

BTW: Look up the alias history here for that tag.

dba_afish said:
"breastless" wouldn't work anyway because ferals and whatnot. also, even for normal adult anthros, breasts aren't the be-all end-all differentiation between the feminine and masculine gender categories; breasts==feminine, not breasts=/=not feminine.

How about "masculine_leaning_herm?"

dinbyy said:
How about "masculine_leaning_herm?"

We could probably shorten that to "mascherm" so we can keep the acronym used in tags like "mtmh_crossgender."

munchmallow-frosty said:
We could probably shorten that to "mascherm" so we can keep the acronym used in tags like "mtmh_crossgender."

"maleherm" just sounds so much better, though... "mascherm" has the weird thing where two adjacent consonant sounds are in way different parts of the mouth and it just not fun to say.

I mean, it wouldn't be the end of the world if we made this change, but I just don't really see the point? are there really people that have a problem with "male" half of the tag name specifically that'd be solved by using "masc" instead?

Just alias them to flat_chest and breasts, j/k

I really hope I'm not necroing this thread too bad, but I feel like this topic is worth bringing back considering it's Pride Month now. I saw a post on my Bluesky timeline that reminded me of this debate, so I feel like we should give it another shake.

I feel like dualsex would be pretty good alternative to herm. It's not too crass, and it doesn't have a history behind it. Maybe we can even split it to fem_dualsex and masc_dualsex, kinda like how herm and maleherm are used now. We would also have to change the crossgender tags to reflect this, as well. For example, mtmh_crossgender would now be mtmd_crossgender. We could also maybe add sackless_dualsex for characters that have everything but balls. Additionally, I feel like the tag intersex is due for a bit of an overhaul, since the way it's used now is pretty inaccurate to real life, and may be misleading. I would have expected it to be used for actually intersex characters or characters with ambiguous genitalia, but that's not what it is. It's not even really supposed to be tagged on its own, but rather it's added by implications, which I'm not sure about how useful that is.

That just my two cents. Thoughts?

IMO it seems like herm is being used similarly to intersex (which is better defined as well), so maybe herm needs more clear boundaries as per what it means to better distinguish it from intersex.

Also regarding the supposed vulgarity of the term, while I am not intersex myself I live with an intersex person who, like a different commenter here who was actually intersex, he does not find the term offensive. It does seem like mostly non-intersex people calling the term "herm" offensive (kind of like what people were doing to the word "femboy" a couple times) so I'm very skeptical of claims of it being a slur. As such...

Finally, 'herm' has historically been used as a derogatory and hurtful term towards real-world intersex people.

Could you elaborate on this? Like, specific historical events?

munchmallow-frosty said:
(...)

A lack of balls does not a new gender make

Seriously, we'd need another 3 gender tags at least for what can be handled with a single non-gendered tag

Honestly, given the confusion the herm/maleherm separation seems to bring up (people thinking it's feminine or masculine herm respectively, when it's really the presence (or lack) of breasts that decides; which in turn creates problems with ferals or non-mammal species that don't have breasts), and especially now with busty boy's ghost back adding to the confusion, I wonder if the herm/maleherm tag dichotomy has outlived its usefulness and there should just be one tag for characters that have both a vagina and penis and not try to be too nuanced with it.

watsit said:
I wonder if the herm/maleherm tag dichotomy has outlived its usefulness and there should just be one tag for characters that have both a vagina and penis and not try to be too nuanced with it.

This feels like the equivelant of merging male/gynomorph and female/andromorph, both of which would absolutely ruin search results

mklxiv said:
IMO it seems like herm is being used similarly to intersex (which is better defined as well), so maybe herm needs more clear boundaries as per what it means to better distinguish it from intersex.

Also regarding the supposed vulgarity of the term, while I am not intersex myself I live with an intersex person who, like a different commenter here who was actually intersex, he does not find the term offensive. It does seem like mostly non-intersex people calling the term "herm" offensive (kind of like what people were doing to the word "femboy" a couple times) so I'm very skeptical of claims of it being a slur. As such...

Could you elaborate on this? Like, specific historical events?

I'll just quote a previous comment:

InterAct:
https://interactadvocates.org/faq/
https://www.dcu.ie/intersex-faqs/words

Intersex Society of North America:
https://isna.org/node/16/
https://web.archive.org/web/20130701061246/http://www.isna.org/faq/hermaphrodite
(As an aside, these writings are from before 2008 showing that this opinion is not new and has existed for decades.)

Reddit (informal but shows nuance and how views vary):
https://www.reddit.com/r/intersex/comments/i7ftnn/is_hermaphrodite_an_offense_term/?rdt=49023
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskLGBT/comments/1dx4ufu/is_hermaphrodite_a_slur_against_intersex_people/

This is why I feel we should move away from this kind of language. The fewer potentially offensive/alienating terms we have on the site, the better. With that being said, how feasible is dualsex as a replacement?

regsmutt said:
I'll just quote a previous comment:

InterAct:
https://interactadvocates.org/faq/
https://www.dcu.ie/intersex-faqs/words

Intersex Society of North America:
https://isna.org/node/16/
https://web.archive.org/web/20130701061246/http://www.isna.org/faq/hermaphrodite
(As an aside, these writings are from before 2008 showing that this opinion is not new and has existed for decades.)

Reddit (informal but shows nuance and how views vary):
https://www.reddit.com/r/intersex/comments/i7ftnn/is_hermaphrodite_an_offense_term/?rdt=49023
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskLGBT/comments/1dx4ufu/is_hermaphrodite_a_slur_against_intersex_people/

Thanks for the clarification. I talked to my intersex roommate about it again too and he said that herm and intersex aren't even the same thing. So, it does sound like in the context of furry art there needs to be 2 tags to describe both things as furry art can (and often does) have actual hermaphroditism. There may also just be a problem with people tagging intersex characters as herm (or vice versa).

mklxiv said:
There may also just be a problem with people tagging intersex characters as herm (or vice versa).

There is not a situation in our gender tagging in which tagging just intersex is valid, it is an umbrella tag and only an umbrella tag

I'm starting to wonder why we have the tag intersex at all, considering the definition has been so drastically changed from real life and the fact that you're not supposed to tag it on its own. Is it just for blacklisting purposes?

munchmallow-frosty said:
I'm starting to wonder why we have the tag intersex at all, considering the definition has been so drastically changed from real life and the fact that you're not supposed to tag it on its own. Is it just for blacklisting purposes?

we've discussed it in other threads at some point.

if we were there at the start of the site with our current philosophy on tagging, when deciding on the gender tags, something like intersex likely would not have ever come into existence. but, since we've inhereted decisions from the past, it does, and getting rid of it now would likely cause more of a problem than keeping it around.

dba_afish said:
we've discussed it in other threads at some point.

if we were there at the start of the site with our current philosophy on tagging, when deciding on the gender tags, something like intersex likely would not have ever come into existence. but, since we've inhereted decisions from the past, it does, and getting rid of it now would likely cause more of a problem than keeping it around.

Would renaming it to something more accurate to what we're going for cause problems, too? If we can't just get rid of the tag outright, we could at least change the name to something that better encapsulates its use here as an umbrella tag.

munchmallow-frosty said:
Would renaming it to something more accurate to what we're going for cause problems, too? If we can't just get rid of the tag outright, we could at least change the name to something that better encapsulates its use here as an umbrella tag.

We have just as many topics trying to rename it as trying to get rid of it

donovan_dmc said:
We have just as many topics trying to rename it as trying to get rid of it

I see. I take it that none have been successful so far, considering it's still the same. Anyway, I feel like I kinda went off topic for a bit, my apologies.

Would either bigenital or dualsex work as replacements for herm/maleherm? I feel like those are our strongest contenders so far. They're not nearly as crass or derogatory, and they seem fairly to the point to me.

How about aliasing herm to its original form hermaphrodite? It's not too big of a change, Users ought to know what it means already, it's not slangy so ought to feel less derogatory to those who feel that herm is, and is more fitting considering the formalization of other tags, like pussy and the two non-hermaphrodite intersex genders.

As for maleherm, why not take a page from busty boy (lore)? Since the difference between the two seems to be that maleherms don't have breasts, perhaps non-busty_hermaphrodite? Breastless hermaphrodite?

I don't think that's a whole lot better. For one, it's mentioned on the websites that regsmutt linked that it's considered a slur in both forms, long or short. Secondly, it's a lot longer and probably harder to spell for some viewers. I feel like it's mostly a lateral change.

I don't currently see why dualsex or bigenital wouldn't work instead.

clawstripe said:
How about aliasing herm to its original form hermaphrodite? It's not too big of a change, Users ought to know what it means already, it's not slangy so ought to feel less derogatory to those who feel that herm is, and is more fitting considering the formalization of other tags, like pussy and the two non-hermaphrodite intersex genders.

As for maleherm, why not take a page from busty boy (lore)? Since the difference between the two seems to be that maleherms don't have breasts, perhaps non-busty_hermaphrodite? Breastless hermaphrodite?

a lack of breasts isn't the be-all end-all of whether a character qualifies for the masculine gender categories or not. same way that flatchested (or feral) female characters aren't always just andromorph.

dba_afish said:
a lack of breasts isn't the be-all end-all of whether a character qualifies for the masculine gender categories or not.

That maleherm is considered a "masculine gender" is part of what's adding to the confusion. Only when the chest area isn't visible, or there's ambiguity with the chest having breasts, pecs, or moobs, would an expressly masculine body lean toward tagging maleherm. But if breasts are clearly there or are clearly not, then the body type is inconsequential. non-busty_* or breastless_* would actually be closer to how maleherm is supposed to be used. You can have the most feminine bodied character possible, but if there's a penis, vagina, and no breasts, it's maleherm.

donovan_dmc said:
We have just as many topics trying to rename it as trying to get rid of it

My only hesitation with outright getting rid of it is stuff that just plain doesn't fit anywhere else.

regsmutt said:
My only hesitation with outright getting rid of it is stuff that just plain doesn't fit anywhere else.

Not sure what you mean. Intersex is only an umbrella tag, grouping herm, maleherm, gynomorph, and andromorph. Intersex should never be tagged on its own, it must be one of the four based on visible genitals/breasts. Nothing is lost by getting rid of it, only some convenience for having a tag that means one of those four (convenience which doesn't exist for any other group, like "maleherm, andromorph, and male" (the "masculine genders"), or "herm, gynomorph, and female" (the "feminine genders"), or "male, female, and ambiguous_gender" (the non-intersex sex tags), or "male and female" (the non-intersex non-ambiguous sex tags)).

The biggest issue I see is that certain tags are aliased to intersex, like futa, since it's historically been used to mean either herm or gynomorph. Without the intersex tag, there isn't really anything those tags can be aliased to. Though that may not be such a bad thing. As mentioned, intersex should never be tagged on its own, and people tagging futa/etc cause only intersex to be tagged and requires someone to fix it. Invalidating/disambiguating these tags could help more people start tagging characters correctly, both by showing them they used an ambiguous tag so they can use the correct tags in the future, and reporting lazy taggers that don't learn to use relatively important tags correctly.

watsit said:
non-busty_* or breastless_* would actually be closer to how maleherm is supposed to be used. You can have the most feminine bodied character possible, but if there's a penis, vagina, and no breasts, it's maleherm.

no? genders have never been tagged like this.
having breasts means a character is necessarily female, gynomorph, or herm, that's true. the fact that a character lacks breasts does not mean that they're always considered andromorph, male, or maleherm.

herm and maleherm especially don't work like you've described, since characters with both sets of genitals default to herm when not enough of their body is visible to determine otherwise (just like how pussy defaults to female and penis to male). what you're describing directly contradicts what the flowcharts say in the howto:tag_gender guide.

watsit said:
Not sure what you mean. Intersex is only an umbrella tag, grouping herm, maleherm, gynomorph, and andromorph. Intersex should never be tagged on its own, it must be one of the four based on visible genitals/breasts. Nothing is lost by getting rid of it, only some convenience for having a tag that means one of those four (convenience which doesn't exist for any other group, like "maleherm, andromorph, and male" (the "masculine genders"), or "herm, gynomorph, and female" (the "feminine genders"), or "male, female, and ambiguous_gender" (the non-intersex sex tags), or "male and female" (the non-intersex non-ambiguous sex tags)).

The biggest issue I see is that certain tags are aliased to intersex, like futa, since it's historically been used to mean either herm or gynomorph. Without the intersex tag, there isn't really anything those tags can be aliased to. Though that may not be such a bad thing. As mentioned, intersex should never be tagged on its own, and people tagging futa/etc cause only intersex to be tagged and requires someone to fix it. Invalidating/disambiguating these tags could help more people start tagging characters correctly, both by showing them they used an ambiguous tag so they can use the correct tags in the future, and reporting lazy taggers that don't learn to use relatively important tags correctly.

You hit the nail on the head when it comes to how I feel about the intersex tag. I think invalidating or disambiguating tags that have since been aliased to intersex is the best course of action here. I would happily check for these tags every day as I do my cleanup rounds and change them as needed.

dba_afish said:
no? genders have never been tagged like this.
having breasts means a character is necessarily female, gynomorph, or herm, that's true. the fact that a character lacks breasts does not mean that they're always considered andromorph, male, or maleherm.

Only in the sense of their being ambiguity with the chest. Like I said, "when the chest area isn't visible, or there's ambiguity with the chest". I suppose I should've also added flat_chested as another potential cause of ambiguity alongside pecs and moobs, and I can see I didn't word my argument very well. Sorry about that. The distinction between a flat_chested female and andromorph applies anywhere breasts could be, including herm and maleherm. I was actually going to respond to Clawstripe saying non-busty_ didn't sound like the best terminology since it could be confused for flat_chested. But either way the argument stands, it's not a question of "feminine or masculine" that primarily determines whether a character is tagged herm or maleherm, only in some fallback cases when the chest is unknown/ambiguous.

watsit said:
Not sure what you mean. Intersex is only an umbrella tag, grouping herm, maleherm, gynomorph, and andromorph. Intersex should never be tagged on its own, it must be one of the four based on visible genitals/breasts. Nothing is lost by getting rid of it, only some convenience for having a tag that means one of those four (convenience which doesn't exist for any other group, like "maleherm, andromorph, and male" (the "masculine genders"), or "herm, gynomorph, and female" (the "feminine genders"), or "male, female, and ambiguous_gender" (the non-intersex sex tags), or "male and female" (the non-intersex non-ambiguous sex tags)).

Things that would not fit nicely into herm, maleherm, andromorph, gynomorph, male or female, but include visible genitals probably shouldn't go in ambiguous. There's not really a great alternative that's neither overly technical or overly specific- like I don't think prader_scale_stage_3 is a good tag.

regsmutt said:
Things that would not fit nicely into herm, maleherm, andromorph, gynomorph, male or female, but include visible genitals probably shouldn't go in ambiguous. There's not really a great alternative that's neither overly technical or overly specific- like I don't think prader_scale_stage_3 is a good tag.

what instances exist where a character has genitals but wouldn't fall under herm, maleherm, andromorph, gynomorph, male or female? do you have an example image or anything?

regsmutt said:
Things that would not fit nicely into herm, maleherm, andromorph, gynomorph, male or female, but include visible genitals probably shouldn't go in ambiguous. There's not really a great alternative that's neither overly technical or overly specific- like I don't think prader_scale_stage_3 is a good tag.

Would intersex_genitalia work for this?

regsmutt said:
Things that would not fit nicely into herm, maleherm, andromorph, gynomorph, male or female, but include visible genitals probably shouldn't go in ambiguous. There's not really a great alternative that's neither overly technical or overly specific- like I don't think prader_scale_stage_3 is a good tag.

Whatever problem this is, the intersex tag is not currently solving it, so that is not a reason to keep the tag

dba_afish said:
what instances exist where a character has genitals but wouldn't fall under herm, maleherm, andromorph, gynomorph, male or female? do you have an example image or anything?

Stage 3 in this diagram would be a real-world example. It isn't inconceivable that someone could (or has) drawn a character like this. Alien genitalia that are obviously genitals, but not clearly predominantly phallic or yonic may also fit. And intermediate stages of gender_transformation can have pretty ambiguous genitals.

munchmallow-frosty said:
I really hope I'm not necroing this thread too bad, but I feel like this topic is worth bringing back considering it's Pride Month now. I saw a post on my Bluesky timeline that reminded me of this debate, so I feel like we should give it another shake.

I feel like dualsex would be pretty good alternative to herm. It's not too crass, and it doesn't have a history behind it. Maybe we can even split it to fem_dualsex and masc_dualsex, kinda like how herm and maleherm are used now. We would also have to change the crossgender tags to reflect this, as well. For example, mtmh_crossgender would now be mtmd_crossgender. We could also maybe add sackless_dualsex for characters that have everything but balls. Additionally, I feel like the tag intersex is due for a bit of an overhaul, since the way it's used now is pretty inaccurate to real life, and may be misleading. I would have expected it to be used for actually intersex characters or characters with ambiguous genitalia, but that's not what it is. It's not even really supposed to be tagged on its own, but rather it's added by implications, which I'm not sure about how useful that is.

That just my two cents. Thoughts?

It's not a necessary change, the necro wasn't needed, the thread is already being derailed, and everybody and their mother has different opinions on how far the site should go in keeping tags the same or changing them.

If you talk to the average person and tell them that they can't classify a fictional character with a penis and vagina herm or hermaphrodite by physical features alone, they're going to look at you askance. I'm not using "average person" in the way that media uses it as a euphemism for "we interviewed some random bigot in a dive bar" - I'm referring to reasonable people who are already sympathetic to trans people, respect their preferred gender identity and pronouns, and want to uphold their civil liberties.

We added the lore tag section specifically for the purpose of respecting trans users and characters without breaking the existing TWYS policy that the site needs to function as a searchable resource. The average user isn't going to be enlightened by being told that they're suddenly problematic for using a more well-known and established search term for physical features that they get off to, especially ones that are already fully detached from the gender system. They're still going to call you by your preferred gender and pronouns regardless of the visible gender tag, so how does a short, familiar classifier that is based on the accepted scientific term for those physical features negatively affect you?

This isn't an issue specifically because we treat physical gender and gender identity as entirely separate, and there was never the slightest inkling of disparaging intent behind the tags in the first place. Nobody walking on the street is going to address you as the terms "male" or "female" either unless they're a weirdo, but we're not going to do away with the tags and use something more obscure simply because they have the potential to be misused by bad actors.

regsmutt said:
Stage 3 in this diagram would be a real-world example. It isn't inconceivable that someone could (or has) drawn a character like this. Alien genitalia that are obviously genitals, but not clearly predominantly phallic or yonic may also fit. And intermediate stages of gender_transformation can have pretty ambiguous genitals.

Additionally, where would these fall?

post #5586120 post #5109003 post #1884264

song said:
It's not a necessary change, the necro wasn't needed, the thread is already being derailed, and everybody and their mother has different opinions on how far the site should go in keeping tags the same or changing them.

If you talk to the average person and tell them that they can't classify a fictional character with a penis and vagina herm or hermaphrodite by physical features alone, they're going to look at you askance. I'm not using "average person" in the way that media uses it as a euphemism for "we interviewed some random bigot in a dive bar" - I'm referring to reasonable people who are already sympathetic to trans people, respect their preferred gender identity and pronouns, and want to uphold their civil liberties.

We added the lore tag section specifically for the purpose of respecting trans users and characters without breaking the existing TWYS policy that the site needs to function as a searchable resource. The average user isn't going to be enlightened by being told that they're suddenly problematic for using a more well-known and established search term for physical features that they get off to, especially ones that are already fully detached from the gender system. They're still going to call you by your preferred gender and pronouns regardless of the visible gender tag, so how does a short, familiar classifier that is based on the accepted scientific term for those physical features negatively affect you?

This isn't an issue specifically because we treat physical gender and gender identity as entirely separate, and there was never the slightest inkling of disparaging intent behind the tags in the first place. Nobody walking on the street is going to address you as the terms "male" or "female" either unless they're a weirdo, but we're not going to do away with the tags and use something more obscure simply because they have the potential to be misused by bad actors.

Literally the moment the thread became active again, people were already getting off-topic. I tried to redirect back to my suggested rename, but everyone kept ignoring my suggestions and derailing.

Just because a slur is more searchable and widely known, that doesn't mean it should be kept. We obviously don't refer to Black characters on the site as the n-word, so intersex characters should be given the same grace. We even aliased away c-boy and d-girl to less offensive sounding tags. I don't understand the hesitation here.

I don't understand how the lore section is related to what I brought up. I was just trying to suggest alternatives for an intersexist slur.

munchmallow-frosty said:
Just because a slur is more searchable and widely known, that doesn't mean it should be kept. We obviously don't refer to Black characters on the site as the n-word

I think it is time to take a break from the internet if you are equating the use of the tag herm to describe a character who is physically hermaphroditic as even remotely similar to calling a black person the n-word.

Herm as a tag isn't a slur. It just isn't. It can be used that way when some asshole walks up to a trans person and calls them that, but if a character has both sets of genitals, then most people aren't going to bat an eye if they're clinically referred to as a hermaphrodite by their sexual characteristics while still using their preferred gender when talking about them otherwise. Likening it to c-boy and d-girl is also a poor comparison since those never had any basis in scientific description, were always ambiguous by their names alone, and were always designed as crude porn names.

munchmallow-frosty said:
Additionally, where would these fall?

post #5586120 post #5109003 post #1884264

I mean, the easy answer is: if they've got male external genitalia and female external genitalia the character would be either herm or maleherm.

song said:
I think it is time to take a break from the internet if you are equating the use of the tag herm to describe a character who is physically hermaphroditic as even remotely similar to calling a black person the n-word.

Herm as a tag isn't a slur. It just isn't. It can be used that way when some asshole walks up to a trans person and calls them that, but if a character has both sets of genitals, then most people aren't going to bat an eye if they're clinically referred to as a hermaphrodite by their sexual characteristics while still using their preferred gender when talking about them otherwise. Likening it to c-boy and d-girl is also a poor comparison since those never had any basis in scientific description, were always ambiguous by their names alone, and were always designed as crude porn names.

Yeah, I probably do need a break from the fora for a while. I still 100% disagree about herm not being a slur, but I feel like keeping the argument going will just be a waste of everyone's time. Sorry for necroing the thread, goodbye for now.