Bridget - Guilty Gear Strive

testament_(guilty_gear)'s old images are still tagged 1male and their new images are tagged 1other. Both are true in the moment the images were posted and tagged. So tag according to the current facts of the image. 1girl for strive and future games, 1boy for older games.

From another perspective, why are the gender tags so special that they have to be applied based on past info and immutable even in the face of new info? Let's say a character introduced with long_hair or a red costume, later appears in a sequel game with short_hair and a blue costume, we'd tag the relevant images as short_hair. Same thing here. Bridget used to be male, and now she's female, so tag accordingly.

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Argument: My example with hair is visually provable and Tag What You See. Rebuttal: fujisaki_chihiro which is not visually proven in terms of sfw art tagged based on what we know.

Argument: Tagging Bridget's art becomes confusing. Rebuttal: That's what the wiki is for, to explain how to tag things.

Argument: Finding images through tags becomes harder. Rebuttal: If you're searching for bridget_(guilty_gear) you'd just not add a gender tag and get all her images, and if you're searching 1girl why does it matter that old Bridget arts won't appear? The damn tag has 4 million posts.

Argument: This invites tag vandalism. Rebuttal: This is like saying robbery crimes are too high so we're gonna make robbery legal. Moderate against tag vandals, that's the point of rules.

I propose the third way out: Schrodinger's Gender.

Schrodinger's Gender: One character gender stays irrelevant if the artist themself didn't bring it in any way (gender flag, artistic comment) on the picture.
Same as real world, unless they asked specifically to be called in specific ways you default to he/she or him/her or any canon genders the character was set at creation, including story spoilers. If the character has some story development where he/she/it got a gender-change or genderbent event(s), then create a new tag for the character after that event happens.

Basically, just create a new tag for Strive Bridget to differentiate her from the earlier incarnations of Bridget, OR add new tags to show that the artist drew any characters in different genders. Example: Trans_(artist_mentioned_gender). That way tag war can be prevented because it's the 'official' word of mouth from the art creators themself and not somebody's opinion.

Mileavis said:

testament_(guilty_gear)'s old images are still tagged 1male and their new images are tagged 1other. Both are true in the moment the images were posted and tagged. So tag according to the current facts of the image. 1girl for strive and future games, 1boy for older games.

Testament has never had any forum discussion about their gender, I'd be more likely to believe that people just started tagging them 1other when the reveal happened, and no one cared enough to change the tags on older posts, or question why it was happening on newer posts. There's also the fact that a lot of their older posts are much more masculine in appearance than newer ones, so it could also be fair to say they're adhering to twys. Regardless, it doesn't seem like there was any actual policy change, just no one cared and people just did what they wanted.

Bridget has always had a feminine appearance, but was tagged as a boy because we knew that's what she was and because the character represented the otoko no ko trope, which often can't follow twys. Nothing visually has changed about the character. We do know, or at least can reasonably assume, she hasn't done anything yet that would change her body, she just identifies differently.

From another perspective, why are the gender tags so special that they have to be applied based on past info and immutable even in the face of new info? Let's say a character introduced with long_hair or a red costume, later appears in a sequel game with short_hair and a blue costume, we'd tag the relevant images as short_hair. Same thing here. Bridget used to be male, and now she's female, so tag accordingly.

Bridget was born male, and now identifies as female. That's not the same as "used to be male, and now isn't." This would be an entirely different discussion if she had in fact become a girl physically. If people are still drawing her as a boy, then we're still breaking twys just as much as we are now to start tagging her 1girl, and adding too many exceptions to when and why we tag her this or that gets exponentially more complicated with every relevant tag. It's more than just being confusing, people don't read wikis, especially if they're overly convoluted.

Argument: Finding images through tags becomes harder. Rebuttal: If you're searching for bridget_(guilty_gear) you'd just not add a gender tag and get all her images, and if you're searching 1girl why does it matter that old Bridget arts won't appear? The damn tag has 4 million posts.

I'm gonna ask this again, though I've mentioned it multiple times. If we start tagging her 1girl, how do we tag her if she's drawn with a dick? Is she futanari? Genderswap? Otoko no ko goes out the window. There's also the presence of other characters. 1boy 1girl becomes 2girls, suddenly only nsfw posts can be found in hetero or yaoi, assuming we continue tagging nsfw Bridget posts featuring a dick as male, but sfw posts are in yuri because clothed Bridget is a girl. Either the character ends up in a completely different set of searches from what people might be expecting, or the character ends up divided up between several searches, and results just get wildly inconsistent, especially if people start arguing that this clothed Bridget looks more like a boy, and should be tagged as one.

This would be a lot simpler to manage if 1boy to 1girl was the only change that needed to be made, but it's not. She'll stop appearing in multiple searches, and start appearing in others, and we need to decide which of these results are the best way forward. This is being discussed because we don't just want to do whatever and cause a tagging nightmare. It's not as simple as "just do this" or we wouldn't have several threads just on this one topic alone.

The real answer is that the site's boy/girl tagging system is completely broken.

Bridget IS a girl
thus
Bridget LOOKS like a girl (because she is one)
thus
any post containing Bridget should TAG her as a girl (yes, even if she's drawn with a dick)

Some girls have penises. Some don't.
Some girls have vaginas. Some don't.
And, of course, the same can be said for boys.
Also, intersex people exist along with plural systems, genderfluid people, and more. (and that's inviting a conversation that even I'm not ready for)
These are all true in both the real world and also in the art that people create.

"But people searching for 1girl want to see..."
Yeah, that's the point. There's too much wrapped up in that tag and what it implies.

To keep tagging and labeling trans characters as a gender they aren't is a hateful act.

I don't have a solution to suggest myself because this is a fundamental flaw in core tags that are used on almost every post on this site.
Any "fix" for this situation should involve finding a way to update those tags and prevent this problem in the future.

Actually, I can give an extreme suggestion: Delete all of the boy/girl/other tags completely.

Probably the easiest solution would be to create a "transgender" tag for characters who canonically no longer views themselves as the sex they are born as. (The only problem I see with this solution is people retroactively applying it to older images)
Politics be damned, Bridget was born a boy and still is a boy in Strive so he should still be tagged as 1boy in any depiction of him unless the image clearly shows otherwise, regardless of his identity in Strive.
We shouldn't have to complicate existing tags or how to tag simply because one views aren't correlating with another.

as a side note for Testament, apparently they've always been non-binary (specifically an androgynous/bigender person) in japan, according to the devs, at least. (translation here) so if danbooru wanted to ignore the translation changes the stupid baka gaijins did, they could theoretically be tagged with 1other in every pic.

back to bridget, if danbooru is insistent with keeping the "tag the biological sex" mentality, I don't think it's a bad idea to bring back the transgender tag in some sort of way. maybe even like a "trans girl" and "trans boy" tag if that would make sense. despite my personal feelings on the matter, I think at least having some kind of trans tag would be a good compromise. Seeing 1boy on strive Bridget is one thing, but seeing 1boy and nothing else on pictures of Bridget celebrating her transness is especially weird.

Regardless of whatever the official bios or developers are saying, look at the current collection of pictures for Strive Bridget and it's indistinguishable from prior depictions of the character or that of any other trap, especially the NSFW ones. "Gender identity" is utterly meaningless in the context of picture tagging without breaking a lot of searches and not just for hetero fans. Really just read blindVigil's post he words it really well as well as how it fails to work with related tags, and again, look at the current artwork and keep in mind, tags help inform what shows up in searches and are not statements about a character any more than 1boy is for a genderswapped Touhou girl.

DeinGott said:

Bridget's a girl, so she should be tagged as one. Seems simple to me.

Either y'all gotta kick the bigots out and update your tag names/definitions to deal with characters and subjects in a way that's respectful or you'll end up a terrible fascist spawning ground.

Why don't we go the opposite way since its people like you who are messing up the gender tags. He's a dude, tag as a man.

Saladofstones said:

Can't we do something like a tag for biological sex and one for gender identity?

morriganaensland said:
if danbooru is insistent with keeping the "tag the biological sex" mentality, I don't think it's a bad idea to bring back the transgender tag in some sort of way. maybe even like a "trans girl" and "trans boy" tag if that would make sense. despite my personal feelings on the matter, I think at least having some kind of trans tag would be a good compromise.

There have been attempts to implement solutions like this on other boorus, notably e621 with its transgender_(lore)/trans_(lore), trans_woman_(lore) and trans_man_(lore) tags, but while I absolutely think there should be a way to search for transgender characters, in the context it's been suggested it's only a bandaid solution. After all, on e621 searching trans_woman_(lore) solo you can still find posts tagged 1boy. A transgender tag should be a complement to a tagging system that can actually account for it.

To quote myself from the last thread:

...the gender tags are used for, at minimum, three similar-yet-different ways: a) canon-tagging/gender; b) aesthetic (masculine/feminine/androgynous, and in-betweens for each, like effeminate); and c) genital/sex (penis/vagina/both/neither). This is, obviously, without accounting its purpose of numbering how many of a given person there is in the image.

These three ways have, for all intents and purposes, always been at odds at one another. B and C are what 'tag-what-you-see' concerns themselves with, and A's 'tag-what-you-know' nature steps in to seal the deal, because what people want out of the gender tags is an easy and simple way to search for heterosexual characters, especially traditionally female ones. As a result, we have to make additional tags to compensate for the weaknesses this system leaves us with, especially when it comes to anything that deviates from the status quo, even aesthetically - otoko no ko for those who want effeminate men, futanari, newhalf, and co. for those who want penises on traditionally female bodies, etc. And often, these sorts of tags necessitate 'tag-what-you-know' knowledge, because otherwise effeminate men would be tagged as girls.

We're stuck with the system we currently have though, because putting in place a new one that's more flexible would not just take immense effort, it would also likely make it harder to search for it simply: "If I can't search for a female character that I am 100% certain does not have a penis, what's the point?!" Especially keeping in mind the two-tag search limit for most, it would be an immensely tough sell.

It doesn't help that the arguments pointing out how the *boy/*girl are intended to be for sex and not gender don't account how, while they are true, they are surrounded by tags which imply gender in one way or another, the best example being genderswap, which is for sex changes (because the term was originally coined when it was common practice to equate sex and gender with one another), ending up making holes in the discussion.

Even as I personally believe Bridget should be tagged as a girl (same for any other transgender character's identity), I think it's worthwhile to have this discussion on how to better tagging more generally, especially since they can help introduce functionally useful tags gradually. For instance, we currently lack any tags for feminine/masculine/androgynous/etc. aesthetics, and that has had a knock-on effect where we don't have any tags for when any character that's typically depicted femininely or masculinely are depicted in the opposite fashion.

Bionicman76 said:

Why don't we go the opposite way since its people like you who are messing up the gender tags. He's a dude, tag as a man.

Do you have *any* arguments aside from "lol chromosomes"?

sadodere said:

Do you have *any* arguments aside from "lol chromosomes"?

Do you have any besides "They were lying literally every other time they self-identified as another gender previously to this singular instance"?

sadodere said:

Do you have *any* arguments aside from "lol chromosomes"?

Chromosomes ARE concrete, and unchanging. Do you have any arguments besides make-believe?

This isn't twitter or reddit, dropping smartass one liner epic dunks on people won't make numbers go up in here, if you have nothing to contribute o the discussion just leave, otherwise all you are gonna accomplish is a ban and getting the thread locked (again).

(and that goes to both sides)

Mexiguy said:

This isn't twitter or reddit, dropping smartass one liner epic dunks on people won't make numbers go up in here, if you have nothing to contribute o the discussion just leave, otherwise all you are gonna accomplish is a ban and getting the thread locked (again).

Second this. I'll summarize my views so I'm not completely just wasting everyone's time. Please note some of these points have already been mentioned in this conversation and previous ones as well:

1. It sounds like this could be considered a spoiler in regards to Bridget's story for new players - although I'm not too sure about this still. This makes me lean more on simply tagging Bridget as 1other (I am aware "that isn't what the tag is used for", but it could serve as a happy medium) or to go with what Achelexus stated in forum #221402:

Either way, it's gonna be decided based on the artist, I suppose. Many japanese artists might simply choose to keep drawing Bridget as a "femboy", like they have been for the past month. In this case, there'd be no need to change anything. Checking the tags on the original source and whatever other insinuations the artist said must be enough.

It may get disorganized, though. This would work on websites such as Pixiv that normally tag gender on there, but could get complicated on sites like Twitter where gender isn't usually tagged. That would ultimately lead to this conversation taking place again.

2. When it comes to NSFW images showing dicks, it's probably better to tag as 1boy or even 1girl futanari. We are well aware that having a dick doesn't disprove a transwoman's identity as a woman! But it would help make tagging easier here. However, as mentioned prior to this thread, most people agree on this point. The main problem people will run into this problem is...

3. SFW images. Bridget looks feminine. Even people who stand by the belief they're just an otoko no ko are aware of this, because that's the whole point of the otoko no ko tag. Personally, I don't think tagging them as 1girl would be an issue here, so long as it's purely SFW and doesn't even show a bulge! This could be complicated though, and that''s why I think most people are iffy on it. This isn't about "chromosomes" because this is a fictional character, I'm viewing this moreso on a purely appearance standpoint.

"But Astolfo" - before you make a point like this, keep in mind that Astolfo has never identified as a girl. He is completely irrelevant to this discussion. No, this wouldn't apply to all otoko no ko... it would purely apply to Bridget and other characters who identify as female, I guess?

4. And the most important point: not everyone will be happy no matter what decision is made. Seriously. You tag them as 1girl, people get mad. You tag them as 1boy, people get mad. You could tag them as nothing, people get mad. Using 1other could be a compromise, but people would still get mad on both sides. There's no right or wrong in this scenario, pushing morals and personal beliefs aside.

At times like these, a poll option would be incredibly helpful...

Lets drop the talk of genetics and chromosomes from this discussion, it's not relevant to the discussion on hand. Fictional characters don't have genes and rather few series provide that kind of actual information about their characters. Genotype also isn't something to base a tagging system that predominately relies on phenotypic information. Furthermore, a character's phenotypic sex is determined by more than simply whether they have XX or XY chromosomes, as you can have XX males (see XX male syndrome) and XY females (see Complete androgen insensitivity syndrome).

As for the subject matter on hand, the fact that they have made canon this decision in their series will mean that future games will reflect this change and future audiences will be presented with a Bridget who will only be presented as a female character. Given this, I think it is unavoidable that Bridget will eventually be tagged using the #girl tags for SFW depictions. The choice here will only end up determining whether we make this change now or kick the can down the road.

DeinGott said:

The real answer is that the site's boy/girl tagging system is completely broken.

Bridget IS a girl
thus
Bridget LOOKS like a girl (because she is one)
thus
any post containing Bridget should TAG her as a girl (yes, even if she's drawn with a dick)

Some girls have penises. Some don't.
Some girls have vaginas. Some don't.
And, of course, the same can be said for boys.
Also, intersex people exist along with plural systems, genderfluid people, and more. (and that's inviting a conversation that even I'm not ready for)
These are all true in both the real world and also in the art that people create.

"But people searching for 1girl want to see..."
Yeah, that's the point. There's too much wrapped up in that tag and what it implies.

To keep tagging and labeling trans characters as a gender they aren't is a hateful act.

I don't have a solution to suggest myself because this is a fundamental flaw in core tags that are used on almost every post on this site.
Any "fix" for this situation should involve finding a way to update those tags and prevent this problem in the future.

Actually, I can give an extreme suggestion: Delete all of the boy/girl/other tags completely.

That's fairly pointless overall. This isn't the game, whatever the developers "confirmed" matters not at all. If many people prefer to draw Bridget as a boy, then he's a boy. You can't say that their drawing is "wrong". At the same time, if they want to draw Bridget as a woman, with breasts and such, then they're free to do so. This is how it's always been for every character, so it's pointless to change it now. Let the artists dictate their what's in their work.

Achelexus said:

That's fairly pointless overall. This isn't the game, whatever the developers "confirmed" matters not at all. If many people prefer to draw Bridget as a boy, then he's a boy. You can't say that their drawing is "wrong". At the same time, if they want to draw Bridget as a woman, with breasts and such, then they're free to do so. This is how it's always been for every character, so it's pointless to change it now. Let the artists dictate their what's in their work.

you could use that excuse for jp artists, but I believe most western artists are now subscribed to trans girl bridget. even if they draw her in her current body with no breasts and stuff, they are drawing her with the intent of her being female. I mean all of those trans pride posts aren't drawing bridget with visible breasts, they're drawing her as she normally looks in game. what do we do then? go against the artist's wishes because bridget doesn't have certain female features?

DeinGott said:

Bridget's a girl, so she should be tagged as one. Seems simple to me.

Either y'all gotta kick the bigots out and update your tag names/definitions to deal with characters and subjects in a way that's respectful or you'll end up a terrible fascist spawning ground.

Seconded.

Rathurue said:

Bridget was born male, and now identifies as female. That's not the same as "used to be male, and now isn't." This would be an entirely different discussion if she had in fact become a girl physically. If people are still drawing her as a boy, then we're still breaking twys just as much as we are now to start tagging her 1girl.

See what I mean about associating genitalia with gender identity? You're just saying this because Daisuke Ishiwatari hasn't come forward in a Developer Backyard saying "oh, by the way, Bridget also got gender reaffirming surgery!"? It doesn't matter what genitals a character might have, it is completely and absolutely different from their gender identity. (Again, Kainé from NieR is a character that bends and proves this, she was born as a hermaphrodite, and has a penis. Not for that anybody started tagging her as 1boy or 1other.)

Kommandant said:

Politics be damned, Bridget was born a boy and still is a boy in Strive so he should still be tagged as 1boy in any depiction of him unless the image clearly shows otherwise, regardless of his identity in Strive.
We shouldn't have to complicate existing tags or how to tag simply because one views aren't correlating with another.

Far right much?