Bridget (GG Strive) gender

feline_lump said:

["Ladiva is not canonically a girl" count rises by 1]

Reading that thread now, a lot of the complaints about it being "a mess" are extremely vague. It seems like we were kicking the can down the road due to the usual issue of not being able to decide policy - or were there specific usability issues going on?

More about usability, what was being tagged, confusion about transgender and transexual, etc. So yeah, it got messy.

I'm not necessarily saying that because of it, the tag shouldn't be reworked, or the concept will never work. But two years ago, all of it was already discussed and a serious attempt at the tag's concept was made, so this thread feels like a deja-vu to me.

As this whole gender subject was already discussed in at least three or four past topics, and in most of them it got nowhere, we need to go back to see where we are going wrong.

nonamethanks said:

It's more of an issue for searching for posts with specific numbers of characters in romantic/sexual contexts, and for tags that derive from *boy/*girl. fff threesome/mmm threesome immediately come to mind.

E-Hentai has the FFT / TTF / MMT / TTM threesome tags.

Anonymaster said:

The idea of tagging Bridget as a girl if you can't see his willy and tagging him as a guy when you can is absurd. Anyone even remotely familiar with the character knows who he is and that he's a guy, so why would they want to see him show up in search results when looking for female tags? This only remotely makes sense if you assume it's purely a change made for people who have no idea who Bridget is and wouldn't know they're jerking off to a trap until they look through his character tag and oops, suddenly there's pictures of him with his dick out tagged as a guy instead.
And even without his dick out you have images like post #5576530, post #4147326, post #556520, and post #692499. How is someone supposed to tag these? Based on how masculine or feminine the person tagging them perceives Bridget's frame as being? That's hugely subjective and rife for conflicts in tagging between people who don't agree on it.

It's easy to see how this would be a problem elsewhere too. post #4520538 and post #4520546 for example. In the first post the character looks like a girl, in the second post the character is revealed to be a guy. It's part of the same set of images. Should the character be tagged as a girl in the first post and a guy in the second post? Of course not; that wouldn't make any sense, because it's a crossdressing guy and the context informs the first post even if the first post alone does not make that clear. Tagging Bridget as a girl in a given image just because you can't physically verify his penis being present is both ignoring his established character and impossible to keep consistent since hell, what if the image of Strive Bridget is supposed to be him before he decides he identifies as a woman in the arcade story mode?

And what if in a future game there's another plotline about Bridget deciding he's a guy after all? Or it turns out this arcade mode's other dialogue was indeed him deciding to be a guy and it was only the bad end where he decides to be a girl? What if the next game has a branching story mode where the player can choose to make Bridget identify as a guy or a girl complete with pronoun selection? Do we then need to go back and revise all the existing Bridget images a second time and invent a new tag for Bridget_(schroedinger's_penis)? How is it not obvious what an unenforceable clusterfuck this situation is and that the most obvious sensible solution is just leaving his gender tag alone? Certainly at least for the time being since we don't even know what to make of the differing arcade mode outcomes at this point.

Said it better than I ever could, this is the main problem with tagging gender instead of sex.

to see where we are going wrong.

Because you need to take a step back and ask yourselves:

Why?

What purpose does this serve? I think that you'll realize that you can't reach a consensus because there's no actual purpose for this tag. Most things are tag what you see, which is obvious and logical. But there are contextual tags that are important. The biggest one relevant to this is otoko_no_ko, except that serves a purpose. If somebody uses that tag, it's logical to assume that they want to see some traps. Maybe sexual, maybe not, but there's a common visual theme there: girly-looking male characters. Or something like incest, where the visual elements are secondary, but it's entirely carried by context, because the person has that fetish. Again, there's a purpose there.

What purpose does tagging characters as transgender serve? There's no visual element to consider, because there's no rhyme nor reason to it. You can have a character who looks like a boy, a character who looks like a woman, a character who looks like a woman but has a penis, etc. Even if somebody has a transgender fetish, it's likely that they'll get their dollar's worth with newhalf, because that's what it boils down to most of the time. This is an image gallery, not an encyclopedia. A character's gender identity isn't relevant to any purpose that's served here. Visually, there are other tags for it that can be used to describe the character's appearance. Contextually, it's entirely in the character's head. Unless there are people who just get off on the idea of a character being transgender, I guess, which I can't categorically deny but I've also never seen it.

Having read a few posts here, I'd say that for some people, the "why?" is purely moral grandstanding, which I don't see having any place here. But I doubt that's true for everybody, so please poke holes in my argument.

Dunksmith said:

Because you need to take a step back and ask yourselves:

Why?

What purpose does this serve? I think that you'll realize that you can't reach a consensus because there's no actual purpose for this tag. Most things are tag what you see, which is obvious and logical. But there are contextual tags that are important. The biggest one relevant to this is otoko_no_ko, except that serves a purpose. If somebody uses that tag, it's logical to assume that they want to see some traps. Maybe sexual, maybe not, but there's a common visual theme there: girly-looking male characters. Or something like incest, where the visual elements are secondary, but it's entirely carried by context, because the person has that fetish. Again, there's a purpose there.

What purpose does tagging characters as transgender serve? There's no visual element to consider, because there's no rhyme nor reason to it. You can have a character who looks like a boy, a character who looks like a woman, a character who looks like a woman but has a penis, etc. Even if somebody has a transgender fetish, it's likely that they'll get their dollar's worth with newhalf, because that's what it boils down to most of the time. This is an image gallery, not an encyclopedia. A character's gender identity isn't relevant to any purpose that's served here. Visually, there are other tags for it that can be used to describe the character's appearance. Contextually, it's entirely in the character's head. Unless there are people who just get off on the idea of a character being transgender, I guess, which I can't categorically deny but I've also never seen it.

Having read a few posts here, I'd say that for some people, the "why?" is purely moral grandstanding, which I don't see having any place here. But I doubt that's true for everybody, so please poke holes in my argument.

Some people want to search for transgender characters, and there is currently no comprehensive tag to do that. Like you mentioned, transgender characters are split across multiple tags without rhyme or reason, and it's frustrating to not have a simple option. Even newhalf was never ideal since it excluded characters under a certain bust size (despite that never being a factor IRL), and it became even less usable after some people decided it was actually about whether the character has a visible taint.

Like, you can go to almost any other porn site and search for trans people or characters. Rule 34 even implemented "trans (lore)" before us. It's just user unfriendly.

punished_K said:

E-Hentai has the FFT / TTF / MMT / TTM threesome tags.

From Ehentai:

FFT Threesome: A threesome containing two females and a transsexual (futanari or shemale)

The T in this is not referring to characters who identify as a different gender as their biological sex, and is exclusive to their Female category, so it's essentially just a roundabout way of saying chicks with dicks. F for Futa obviously wouldn't work for the acronym.

Tagging Bridget with a tag like that would just needlessly fragment search results, again based on non-visually identifiable context.

feline_lump said:

Like, you can go to almost any other porn site and search for trans people or characters. Rule 34 even implemented "trans (lore)" before us. It's just user unfriendly.

I know Danbooru hosts pornographic content, and some users come here just for that, but Danbooru is not a porn site. It doesn't make sense to form our policies as if we were R34. I agree we should have a better categorization for trans characters, if for no other reason than to mitigate accusations of transphobia towards fictional characters, but if the reasoning is just so some people can get their rocks off easier, there are so many better sites for trans fetish porn than Danbooru will ever be.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9W5ezv_xxOk

feline_lump said:

Like, you can go to almost any other porn site and search for trans people or characters. Rule 34 even implemented "trans (lore)" before us. It's just user unfriendly.

blindVigil said:

I know Danbooru hosts pornographic content, and some users come here just for that, but Danbooru is not a porn site. It doesn't make sense to form our policies as if we were R34. I agree we should have a better categorization for trans characters, if for no other reason than to mitigate accusations of transphobia towards fictional characters, but if the reasoning is just so some people can get their rocks off easier, there are so many better sites for trans fetish porn than Danbooru will ever be.

I think it's worth to note that R34 is an enormous mess when it comes to tags. However, the "trans (lore)" tag actually came from e621's tagging system, which in some way is more organized but also more extreme on "TWYS".
For the record, a character that is an otoko no ko would get tagged there as "female" and "male (lore)", which is pretty weird from a Danbooru perspective.

Of course, I'm not at all saying "this is right because R34 does it", because that would be a pretty piss-poor argument for anything. The previous poster just seemed to be asking "do people looking for porn want this?", and yes, that would be one use case.

feline_lump said:
Some people want to search for transgender characters, and there is currently no comprehensive tag to do that

OK, if you think that's something that any significant number of people would have use for, then fair enough, that's your perspective. And if enough people share it, then that would prove me wrong. I just don't see any use in that, because there's no remotely identifiable unifying element there. The way I see it, it's like adding a tag for characters who are military history enthusiasts, because someone might like to see a collection of characters who share their hobbies.

I didn't mean to refer only to pornographic content, if it came off that way. But it's always a major factor.

And as an additional note, adding tags introduces ambiguity and makes it more likely for things to be tagged incorrectly, because most people don't have an encyclopedic knowledge of every tag and their uses. Having to rely on a small number of people who do to clean everything up isn't great. Take a look at VNDB, for example. That site's tagging is fantastically in-depth, but you need to be a master of arcane knowledge to even begin to be able to use it properly. That's an extreme example, of course.

blindVigil said:
to mitigate accusations of transphobia towards fictional characters

That premise, however, I reject entirely. Those people can't ever be satisfied. You will always do something wrong in their eyes. If a tag is to be added, it should be only because it legitimately serves a purpose. Not because of blowhards on the Internet.

People aren't even capable of adding extremely common tags like long_hair, breasts, or even 1girl/solo. We can't always cater to the lowest common denominator. Avoiding creating new tags because some people won't use them properly means nothing will ever get done here.

Dunksmith said:

I just don't see any use in that, because there's no remotely identifiable unifying element there. The way I see it, it's like adding a tag for characters who are military history enthusiasts, because someone might like to see a collection of characters who share their hobbies.

We already have a tag like this; it's virtual youtuber. But people want to be able to find vtubers, so we keep it.

Talulah said:
Avoiding creating new tags because some people won't use them properly means nothing will ever get done here.

Not avoiding making new tags, avoiding frivolously adding new tags. Much less ambiguous ones that don't serve any purpose.

We already have a tag like this; it's virtual youtuber. But people want to be able to find vtubers, so we keep it.

That's more like a general trope tag, isn't it? Like witch or soldier. Though I guess there isn't really some kind of set of common defining features for VTubers, so fair enough. As I said, if there's enough demand for a thing, then I'm wrong.

Dunksmith said:

And as an additional note, adding tags introduces ambiguity and makes it more likely for things to be tagged incorrectly, because most people don't have an encyclopedic knowledge of every tag and their uses. Having to rely on a small number of people who do to clean everything up isn't great.

It's not great, but it's exactly how danbooru already operates. We have thousands of users, but how many do you think actually do anything productive around here? Even I don't do much more than fix tags here and there, most users have never even touched the Edit button, if they even know it's there. The actual problem isn't that there are too many people that don't know what they're doing, it's that 99% of tagging is handled by a handful of users that think they know what they're doing, none of whom have a flawless record. I guarantee every single one has completely ruined a tag at some point, some of which may still be ruined to this day.

All of this is to say, operating on the premise that more tags means more mess is an argument in favor of nuking tags altogether, rather than rejecting the creation of one or two new ones, because even the people trying to keep the place clean can't be trusted not to make the mess worse.

blindVigil said:

All of this is to say, operating on the premise that more tags means more mess is an argument in favor of nuking tags altogether, rather than rejecting the creation of one or two new ones, because even the people trying to keep the place clean can't be trusted not to make the mess worse.

The difference with these tags is the obvious outside moral/philosophical baggage that they carry. We’re kidding ourselves if we think these won’t start fights all across tags like tomboy and otoko_no_ko. Or people fighting over tagging 1girl on transboy posts because of transphobia.

I'm not dogmatically opposed to something like transgirl and transboy, but acting like it’s not opening a unique can of worms is naive at best.

A part of this issue that has my head somewhat in a twist, is that in reading a lot of the threads around this subject the rule Tag What You See is often used. However it seemed that allowances are made for certain characters. post #5388235 has a character that if I showed people not familiar with Fate as a woman. People have mentioned tagging the character's gender differently if genitals are shown but that post and similar ones like it are marked according to outside knowledge. Images of flat_chest futanari are marked as such despite not having either genitals or secondary characteristics to differentiate them at a glance from what we would tag as male. If allowances are being made through knowledge of the character or information from an artist then I think that obviously runs against the "tag what you see" and we start going based of assumptions of what people are searching for.

Will a person searching for yaoi or more broadly 1boy be confused at seeing someone who appears to be a woman if we assume their gender. We assume people looking for art of Bridget will be looking for a boy wearing women's clothes because that's what it's traditionally been, but also people looking for Bridget may be looking for a woman in the future (or the now) and if they have certain tags blacklisted they might not find anything.

It seems like we are willing to bend the rules or break them when we assume that's what people want them broken and not when we assume people don't want that. But that's just people guessing at what many of the users want. I admit to being a lurker on these forums but this conversation seems to come up again and again and If eel each answer is another kick of the can until some other character that doesn't fit the tagging method of gender.

ShadowbladeEdge said:

The difference with these tags is the obvious outside moral/philosophical baggage that they carry. We’re kidding ourselves if we think these won’t start fights all across tags like tomboy and otoko_no_ko. Or people fighting over tagging 1girl on transboy posts because of transphobia.

I'm not dogmatically opposed to something like transgirl and transboy, but acting like it’s not opening a unique can of worms is naive at best.

You're not wrong, but that's not what my comment was about. People already engage in tag warring and arguments over how to tag trans and genderswap characters, but my comment, and my interpretation of the one I was replying to, were focused on the general ignorance of taggers, not users intentionally making a mess and starting fights because they're mad that certain characters are being tagged certain ways.

Hi everyone !

So, I read what everybody has to say.

To me it looks like we are fighting over some fundamental rules. Some say "TWYS" and others point out that this is not used correctly everytime.
We are debating over different perspective but it really looks like we cannot resolve this alone as every side has some fallacies and biases.

But at the end of the day, we are either talking for the visitors of the site OR for how to solve transgender tags on sites.

But we are prone to error and I ask this : a GIANT poll, accessible for every user (logged or not) of the site, that lasts one week or even one month where we ask a simple question, that can be debated obvioulsy but along the lines of :
"How should we use the transgender tag", answers being something like : "Keep it the way it is", "Put it on non visible genitals" (more strictly would be good), "Use it as the original creator of the character intended", "Use it as the original creator of the image intended, if not possible then original author"

And having a sort of well organized blog where each side can explain their point of view.

I propose this because :
-Democracy is cool.
-We are just not heading anywhere.
-It does not go against any rule that I know.

It might be a bit hard, but at last, those that want the best for users will be satisfied. Those that want a fair result will be a bit more satisfied than what we do now.

So, what do you think ? (For those saying this is impossible to do, I remember one time where there was a poll on the main page that not everybody could access I think ? So, I don't know but it seems like a fair answer)

blindVigil said:

You're not wrong, but that's not what my comment was about. People already engage in tag warring and arguments over how to tag trans and genderswap characters, but my comment, and my interpretation of the one I was replying to, were focused on the general ignorance of taggers, not users intentionally making a mess and starting fights because they're mad that certain characters are being tagged certain ways.

Maybe I read your point too broadly. I was thinking people that have a pre-existing notion about a character that contradicts our policy wandering in here and making a post would be considered ignorant. And my point was in many cases I suspect that such people won’t react like some goob that’s made some needless combo tag. Though people that are active trouble makers will be an issue as well, obviously.

Canti said:

It seems like we are willing to bend the rules or break them when we assume that's what people want them broken and not when we assume people don't want that. But that's just people guessing at what many of the users want. I admit to being a lurker on these forums but this conversation seems to come up again and again and If eel each answer is another kick of the can until some other character that doesn't fit the tagging method of gender.

To this point, no tag(s) or other solution will fix this. Every character with a non-obvious or even fan questioned gender identity will be argued over. Likely recurringly.

Linking these together, my broad point is that no matter what we decide, it won't really resolve anything. It will be a topic that is constantly religtaged at every level. So anyone hoping for any finality on this isn't going to find it, and I don't think it should be a part of our consideration.

We should do whatever we think works for now for this character and just deal with the next thing when it comes up. That's what we're going to do anyway, new tags or no.

CGrascal said:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9W5ezv_xxOk

Apparently, Bridget will only acknowledge themselves as a girl IF you lose a round to Goldlewis before you fight Ky. Don't lose a round to either of them and the dialog is different. Now, Ky talks about how he thinks Bridget has the strength to follow their own path and just needs to believe in that. Bridget doesn't mention anything about seeing themselves as a girl in this dialog.

+1

CGrascal said:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9W5ezv_xxOk

Apparently, Bridget will only acknowledge themselves as a girl IF you lose a round to Goldlewis before you fight Ky. Don't lose a round to either of them and the dialog is different. Now, Ky talks about how he thinks Bridget has the strength to follow their own path and just needs to believe in that. Bridget doesn't mention anything about seeing themselves as a girl in this dialog.

Yeah, there's a clip where Bridget says he's a man too: https://twitter.com/Furious_blog/status/1556734225831063552. This meltdown is pretty funny at this point.