Bridget (GG Strive) gender

mongirlfan said:

You guys are forgetting that Hoshikawa_Lily is tagged like that for a very specific reason. See forum #152601, where it was discussed.

That entire thread is very similar to this case, is it not? It's weird how it's a "this decision only applies to this case" thing when it makes complete sense here to do the same. In most cases of Bridget's photos, there's no "visual context" suggesting there's a dick.

But that entire thread further goes to prove that this discussion has been going on for years now.

blindVigil said:

None of those posts are mistagged because the gender tags are being used exactly as they're supposed to be. One person has tried to deny Bridget is trans since this thread was unlocked. We're even explicitly trying to work out a way to tag her that doesn't render our tagging system into an unintelligible mess.

Your obsession with artist intent is frankly more problematic than us trying to maintain some level of useful tag consistency. You do not know those artists, you do not know what they're intent is.

The artist literally had the character in front of a transgender flag after the recent reveal. It's obvious what the intent is. You can go ahead and go to the original posts, even ask the artists yourself. Call me problematic all you want. It's obvious, clear as day.

And I wasn't only talking about this thread when it comes to denying Bridget being trans. There's no point in this discussion anymore, so I'm going to stop replying after this. I'm not wasting any more time on this.

All told, it just seems like there are folks here who want to reasonably update Bridget to 1girl and a trans girl, as well as those who would want to move the goalposts to keep as many Bridget posts as possible labeled 1boy and otoko no ko.

The parlance around Bridget has shifted dramatically with Strive. Are we just going to be left in the dust for fear of upsetting right-wing transphobes on this platform?

sadodere said:

The artist literally had the character in front of a transgender flag after the recent reveal. It's obvious what the intent is.

Good on the artist for sharing the evil meddlesome intent of the broadcaster. Meddlement to all.

blindVigil said:

My suggestion is this, because I think it satisfies the most people, without any sort of mangling of already existing tags. I'm also aware that's probably being too optimistic.

Go with option 2, tag Bridget as a boy by default just as we were doing before. Some people are gonna be pissed, but option 1 would just piss off a different group, so it's a lost cause trying to please everyone. Bridget is still biologically male, and you've already laid out all the problems with changing how we tag her. If a future canon story arc reveals she's actually transitioned to fully female by some means, then we can have another debate on what to do with that when the time comes.
[...]
For this reason, I again suggest something like trans girl and trans boy tags. They don't need to be "counter" tags, trans characters aren't that common. Just those by themselves would probably work in most situations. These tags would allow you to find trans characters based on how they identify, which the current gender count tags don't do, and can be paired with the gender tags to narrow the search to specific combinations of identity and physical appearance.

Yes, this is going to be canon tagging 99% of the time. Otoko no ko already usually is, and TWYS already takes a back seat when tagging characters like Bridget, because we all know she looks like a girl, and always has, but we've always tagged her canon biological sex unless it was shown otherwise.

+1

evazion said:

• Tag Bridget as a boy always.

Without repeating what I previously posted, just leave it as it is. Keep tagging him as male and otoko no ko (unless drawn obviously off-model). Regarding tagging him as transgender, unless it's explicitly confirmed by a developer, I reject the premise entirely.

No issues with option 2 or 3, though I prefer 2 just because it's less headaches for us, but having trans boy/trans girl/whatever means we'll have two more canon tags being tagged with nothing in the picture, so I'm not really a fan of that option. The transgender tag is currently being used for when transgenderism is actually in the picture and taggable, so it would have to be renamed to avoid confusion (we'll likely have to do this anyway given how insistent people are on mistagging it).

This kind of stuff is taking us dangerously close to e621's lore tags. Are we sure we want to go down that road?

sadodere said:

That entire thread is very similar to this case, is it not? It's weird how it's a "this decision only applies to this case" thing when it makes complete sense here to do the same. In most cases of Bridget's photos, there's no "visual context" suggesting there's a dick.

But that entire thread further goes to prove that this discussion has been going on for years now.

The whole gender discussion has been going for years, yeah, and in most forum topics about it, it didn't go nowhere unfortunately.

However, this is a pretty different case. Hoshikawa Lily is treated as female all the time by the anime itself, other characters, etc. The information that the character was born male is a spoiler, as decided in forum #152601.

Bridget on the other hand is a very established male character since his debut in Guilty Gear XX, with the character being born and identified as male, for two decades.

If we were to really compare both situations, Bridget coming out as female in one of the endings in Strive could be considered a spoiler.

Xarams said:
Are we just going to be left in the dust for fear of upsetting right-wing transphobes on this platform?

I'd rather not cater to left-wing lunatics who call everyone transphobes just because they recognize that gender and gender identity aren't the same thing.

At this point, members who scream 'transphobe' to everyone who doesn't agree to their beliefs are going to be more problematic than the neutral members who tried to bring out the 'tag what you see' rule. I mean, why would you even bring out the artist's sex and gender identity to the discussion? Even if the artist was straight or trans, will it change whatever gender identity of whoever gets portrayed in their art, even if they're blatantly putting transgender banner on the background? The first rule is always 'tag what you see' not 'tag what you know'. 'Tag what you know' comes later, after scrunitizing things like the author's comments on the original source or what tags the artist put in the original image.

This will become an even more convoluted issue going forward if we're going to introduce new tags like trans_girl or trans_boy since we'll be looking at a hella lot of abused tags. Some male characters drawn in a girlish attire? trans_boy. A female flat-chested character wearing boy outfit? trans_girl.

I'd say, just keep the original biological sex separate matter from psychological sex. Unless it's EXPLICITLY stated in the source media (by either artists who drawn a genderswap or written on the artist's comments and tags), putting 'trans_whatever' tag should be prevented, especially in open-ended cases like Bridget which haven't been officially confirmed. You can see in the official character profile that nowhere it got mentioned that he was a trans, which we should follow.

Rathurue said:

At this point, members who scream 'transphobe' to everyone who doesn't agree to their beliefs are going to be more problematic than the neutral members who tried to bring out the 'tag what you see' rule. I mean, why would you even bring out the artist's sex and gender identity to the discussion? Even if the artist was straight or trans, will it change whatever gender identity of whoever gets portrayed in their art, even if they're blatantly putting transgender banner on the background? The first rule is always 'tag what you see' not 'tag what you know'. 'Tag what you know' comes later, after scrunitizing things like the author's comments on the original source or what tags the artist put in the original image.

This will become an even more convoluted issue going forward if we're going to introduce new tags like trans_girl or trans_boy since we'll be looking at a hella lot of abused tags. Some male characters drawn in a girlish attire? trans_boy. A female flat-chested character wearing boy outfit? trans_girl.

I'd say, just keep the original biological sex separate matter from psychological sex. Unless it's EXPLICITLY stated in the source media (by either artists who drawn a genderswap or written on the artist's comments and tags), putting 'trans_whatever' tag should be prevented, especially in open-ended cases like Bridget which haven't been officially confirmed. You can see in the official character profile that nowhere it got mentioned that he was a trans, which we should follow.

+1

Rathurue said:

At this point, members who scream 'transphobe' to everyone who doesn't agree to their beliefs are going to be more problematic than the neutral members who tried to bring out the 'tag what you see' rule. I mean, why would you even bring out the artist's sex and gender identity to the discussion? Even if the artist was straight or trans, will it change whatever gender identity of whoever gets portrayed in their art, even if they're blatantly putting transgender banner on the background? The first rule is always 'tag what you see' not 'tag what you know'. 'Tag what you know' comes later, after scrunitizing things like the author's comments on the original source or what tags the artist put in the original image.

This will become an even more convoluted issue going forward if we're going to introduce new tags like trans_girl or trans_boy since we'll be looking at a hella lot of abused tags. Some male characters drawn in a girlish attire? trans_boy. A female flat-chested character wearing boy outfit? trans_girl.

The whole reason otoko no ko (formerly "trap") exists is because people were tagging/treating girlish-looking characters as female.

So TWYS was explicitly ignored because we had to use outside knowledge (TWYK), i.e. "this character is actually an effeminate boy".

Your argument seems in bad faith. Just because we can introduce a trans-X tag doesn't mean that we automatically tag every character with them.

I'd say, just keep the original biological sex separate matter from psychological sex. Unless it's EXPLICITLY stated in the source media (by either artists who drawn a genderswap or written on the artist's comments and tags), putting 'trans_whatever' tag should be prevented, especially in open-ended cases like Bridget which haven't been officially confirmed. You can see in the official character profile that nowhere it got mentioned that he was a trans, which we should follow.

For the last time: Every ending in Strive is canon until proven otherwise.

Rathurue said:

This will become an even more convoluted issue going forward if we're going to introduce new tags like trans_girl or trans_boy since we'll be looking at a hella lot of abused tags. Some male characters drawn in a girlish attire? trans_boy. A female flat-chested character wearing boy outfit? trans_girl.

The intent would be to only use them on canon trans characters, whether a licensed character confirmed trans in official materials or an OC whose artist states they're trans. Your examples would just be tagged crossdressing and otoko no ko, if applicable, and reverse trap and/or tomboy.

You can see in the official character profile that nowhere it got mentioned that he was a trans, which we should follow.

Probably because it's technically a spoiler? All of the trans dialogue, that you conveniently ignore, is in her endings. Why would they spoil that in any of her profiles? Notice how they also explicitly avoid using any gendered pronouns, besides one for Dizzy, anywhere in that profile? Super suspicious if she's defacto meant to be a cis boy in Strive.

punished_K said:

That's...why I said TWYS first, then TWYK second? To prevent situation like this?
Danbooru, as already stated before, is a VISUAL art gallery. Meaning whatever state of mind the characters drawn and stored here should have no meaning to the viewer, as they are not real. Introducing tags as trans-x poses no meaning both to the indexing services and to the viewer, as it doesn't change anything visually. Representation matters can be done somewhere else, like the original source for the art. Every ending is canon until proven otherwise, yes, but taking open-endings where the character didn't say anything explicit and just taking it as 'implicated/non-spoken fact' would mean you're using a headcanon to push the ending you want as the 'correct' ending.

blindVigil said:

If the tags will be used properly, I'd agree with the addition of those tags. But seeing we still have a tag war between 1boy and 1girl on Bridget I fear Danbooru still have a long ways before the members know how to use those tags properly.

You brought it up that Bridget (supposedly) coming out as a girl is a spoiler, and that's why we shouldn't use 'trans-x' tags. People come here to see pictures. Tagging system exists for helping people find pictures similar to ones they enjoy. Would putting a 'trans' tag amount to anything during search, other than knowing the character you're looking at was trans? If you want to see feminine boy, you have otoko_no_ko tag. If you want a crossdresser you have crossdressing tag. If you want a girl that looks like a boy you'd want to search tomboy or reverse_trap. So what would a trans-x tag net you? Only a knowledge that the character identifies as a trans? That, as I said before, won't help with indexing purposes and to the viewer, and will either be very unpopulated or abused in mistags. We already have a transgender tag, which can be used for ones who explicitly has gender reassignment surgery performed on them, so people can tag them with their actual biological gender to prevent the situations already posted here as example.

Tl;dr:
Trans tag to mention a character's MENTAL state changes: no.
Trans tag to mention a character's PHYSICAL changes: yes.

Note that the JP site does explicitly refer to Bridget as male. I'm not bringing this up as an argument against them being trans, but if official sources are comfortable introducing them as their original sex owing to the spoilery, late-game nature of the identity shift then I see little reason we can't do the same.

blindVigil said:

My suggestion is this, because I think it satisfies the most people, without any sort of mangling of already existing tags. I'm also aware that's probably being too optimistic.

Go with option 2, tag Bridget as a boy by default just as we were doing before. Some people are gonna be pissed, but option 1 would just piss off a different group, so it's a lost cause trying to please everyone. Bridget is still biologically male, and you've already laid out all the problems with changing how we tag her. If a future canon story arc reveals she's actually transitioned to fully female by some means, then we can have another debate on what to do with that when the time comes.

Option 3 seems like a much worse idea to me than it would seem at first glance. It gives too much room for subjectivity and would probably just essentially be option 1 except when her dick is out, and possibly even then, too.

Tagging her only with transgender doesn't really do anything to aid searches, and imo hardly does anything where the blacklist is concerned, since you'd be blacklisting non-visible information that wouldn't even matter to you if you weren't told about it. All it really does is appease the people that demand her trans nature be acknowledged (while also angering the people that demand it be denied). But at least it gives a user more to work with on this subject than exists currently.

If we were actually interested in making trans characters searchable, transgender + 1girl/1boy wouldn't work, because a trans person could look like anything, and it would include false positives and negatives because of other characters in the picture. Solo is an option of course, and complex searches might get decent results, but Members can't use either of these, and at a certain point it just becomes unreasonable even for higher level users.

For this reason, I again suggest something like trans girl and trans boy tags. They don't need to be "counter" tags, trans characters aren't that common. Just those by themselves would probably work in most situations. These tags would allow you to find trans characters based on how they identify, which the current gender count tags don't do, and can be paired with the gender tags to narrow the search to specific combinations of identity and physical appearance.

Yes, this is going to be canon tagging 99% of the time. Otoko no ko already usually is, and TWYS already takes a back seat when tagging characters like Bridget, because we all know she looks like a girl, and always has, but we've always tagged her canon biological sex unless it was shown otherwise.

+1

Options 1 and 3 are definitely non-starters

Rathurue said:

If the tags will be used properly, I'd agree with the addition of those tags. But seeing we still have a tag war between 1boy and 1girl on Bridget I fear Danbooru still have a long ways before the members know how to use those tags properly.

People misuse tags all the time, it's not the end of the world. It's annoying but it's not hard to fix. Vandalizers get banned.

You brought it up that Bridget (supposedly) coming out as a girl is a spoiler, and that's why we shouldn't put trans-x tags on the posts. People come here to see pictures. Tagging system exists for helping people find pictures similar to ones they enjoy. Would putting a 'trans' tag amount to anything during search, other than knowing the character you're looking at was trans? If you want to see feminine boy, you have otoko_no_ko tag. If you want a crossdresser you have crossdressing tag. If you want a girl that looks like a boy you'd want to search tomboy or reverse_trap. So what would a trans-x tag net you? Only a knowledge that the character identifies as a trans? That, as I said before, won't help with indexing purposes and to the viewer, and will either be very unpopulated or abused in mistags. Trans tag should only be used for ones who explicitly has gender reassignment surgery performed on them, so people can tag them with their actual biological gender to prevent the situations already posted here as example.

Danbooru only cares about spoilers that haven't already become common knowledge to everyone even if they haven't played the game. Literally everyone knows about Bridget's scenario now thanks to all the controversy and discourse. It would be like saying Vader being Luke's father is a spoiler. Technically, it is, but it's also one of the most parodied scenes in all of pop culture. It makes sense that official material wouldn't spoil Bridget's scenario, but that doesn't mean everyone else hasn't already. Absolutely no one has treated it as a spoiler in any of the discussions on this site, it's far too late to care about that now.

A lot of people care about trans characters, it would be useful as a way to search for them. We might have a "List of Trans Characters" wiki somewhere that could serve that purpose, but 99% of users are never gonna find that, and it has to be manually updated. Tags are more immediately obvious, easy to add/remove, and the people that care will populate them. I don't see a tag for trans characters being an underused tag.

It's also something you can blacklist if you just despise the idea of transgender characters. Plenty of people have outed themselves on this matter, and assuming they don't just go and vandalize any such tags (which would have the unintended benefit of getting them banned), they'd have something to blacklist.

blindVigil said:

People misuse tags all the time, it's not the end of the world. It's annoying but it's not hard to fix. Vandalizers get banned.

Danbooru only cares about spoilers that haven't already become common knowledge to everyone even if they haven't played the game. Literally everyone knows about Bridget's scenario now thanks to all the controversy and discourse. It would be like saying Vader being Luke's father is a spoiler. Technically, it is, but it's also one of the most parodied scenes in all of pop culture. It makes sense that official material wouldn't spoil Bridget's scenario, but that doesn't mean everyone else hasn't already. Absolutely no one has treated it as a spoiler in any of the discussions on this site, it's far too late to care about that now.

A lot of people care about trans characters, it would be useful as a way to search for them. We might have a "List of Trans Characters" wiki somehow that could serve that purpose, but 99% of users are never gonna find that, and it has to be manually updated. Tags are more immediately obvious, easy to add/remove, and the people that care will populate them. I don't see a tag for trans characters being an underused tag.

It's also something you can blacklist if you just despise the idea of transgender characters. Plenty of people have outed themselves on this matter, and assuming they don't just go and vandalize any such tags (which would have the unintended benefit of getting them banned), they'd have something to blacklist.

+1 to this too

Diet_Soda said:

Note that the JP site does explicitly refer to Bridget as male. I'm not bringing this up as an argument against them being trans, but if official sources are comfortable introducing them as their original sex owing to the spoilery, late-game nature of the identity shift then I see little reason we can't do the same.

Okay, but does it really? Cause MTL gets a hodgepodge of male and female pronouns, which normally suggests that pronouns were omitted altogether, as is typical in Japanese. You can't count the beginning bit talking about being born as a boy, because the English site says the same thing.

You can't just link a site most of us aren't going to be able to read and just make claims.

blindVigil said:

Okay, but does it really? Cause MTL gets a hodgepodge of male and female pronouns, which normally suggests that pronouns were omitted altogether, as is typical in Japanese. You can't count the beginning bit talking about being born as a boy, because the English site says the same thing.

You can't just link a site most of us aren't going to be able to read and just make claims.

It's not phrased as "he was born a boy". A literal translation of the first sentence would be "Bridget is a boy who was born into a wealthy family, received special education, and was raised as a well-mannered daughter".