Ratings and male characters

HowTo:Rate is supposed to be a ruleset for all post ratings, outlining what kinds of content are allowed for each rating. For most part, it does its job, though there is one quite glaring issue.
That wiki page barely mentions male characters at all. In fact, it only discusses their genitals.
Why is that relevant? First of all - due to a lack of a clear ruleset, users have to resort to rating without any guidance, leading to even less orderly results than with female rating. Additionally, societal standards regarding male exposure and female exposure are different - for instance, it is generally acceptable for men to walk around topless (at, say, a beach), while many countries outright ban similar exposure for women.

This thread mostly attempts to codify rules for G/S male focus posts, though there may be

The most relevant areas are, in my opinion:

• general musculature
• toplessness
• open shirts, jackets, etc with nothing underneath
• nipples

And to prove that yes, it really is worthwhile considering, please take a look at those posts that are currently tagged as "male_focus rating:g":
post #6219474
post #6225030
post #954358
post #5031366
post #3217797
(most of male_focus rating:g muscular_male tbh)

This is why we need standards.

KagayakuShiningGate said:
.
Why is that relevant? First of all - due to a lack of a clear ruleset, users have to resort to rating without any guidance, leading to even less orderly results than with female rating. Additionally, societal standards regarding male exposure and female exposure are different - for instance, it is generally acceptable for men to walk around topless (at, say, a beach), while many countries outright ban similar exposure for women.

This thread mostly attempts to codify rules for G/S male focus posts, though there may be

The most relevant areas are, in my opinion:

• general musculature
• toplessness
• open shirts, jackets, etc with nothing underneath
• nipples

This is why we need standards.

I know my standards are laxer than a lot of people on the site so maybe im not the best to weigh in, but so many mancho shirtless men are explicitly targeted at young people as children's entertainment. Think He-Man or Conan the Barbarian. Shirtless men aren't considered sexualized in the same way shirtless women are, it's a double standard, but unless it's 2 bara men grabbing at each other would anyone really think twice about most of those images?

The Cu one has the glove pull so I could see that argument, and anything suggestively posed should get a sensitive. But that dwarf is literally a E (esrb) rated fantasy class as far as I'm aware.

Currently, especially for topless pictures or ones including nipples, I just rate them as "s" to be extra safe. If a tiny bit of cleavage is enough to warrant a "s", I don't see why it should be any different for topless men, lol. It's one of those stupid double standards prevalent in many countries.

zetsubousensei said:

I know my standards are laxer than a lot of people on the site so maybe im not the best to weigh in, but so many mancho shirtless men are explicitly targeted at young people as children's entertainment. Think He-Man or Conan the Barbarian. Shirtless men aren't considered sexualized in the same way shirtless women are, it's a double standard, but unless it's 2 bara men grabbing at each other would anyone really think twice about most of those images

Well, a lot of children's cartoons (The Little Mermaid, Spongebob) portray bikinis, and yet they are still auto-S here - a lot of correctly rated rating:s posts are things you could safely show to a kid, but that's not the point. Our rating system is supposedly supposed to be decently puritanical, at least when it comes to rating:g.

It's just that we need a definition - "exactly how puritanical do we want to be about images that portray masculine bodies?".

I think with female characters, we have a tendency to assume the framing of a straight male viewer that's attracted to women, and that accurately represents a huge majority of what we have on the site. With male characters, you can't really have the same assumption, so it makes less sense to base ratings on which body parts are exposed.

For instance, post #954358 is nearly naked, but we generally understand that barbarians aren't hanging out in minimal armor for sexual reasons. The design is exaggerated to show his immense power, which is even more clear in his almost shapeless official art, post #934733. The single image directly sexualizing the dwarf (excluding ones that use him as a viewer self-insert) is post #1402235, and it directly comments on how non-sexually he's usually viewed compared to the other characters in the game. I would consider only the final image to be meaningfully rating:s.

On the other hand, post #6219474 is a fully clothed character, but we understand from context clues that this is bara for a gay audience. The "upshirt" and underwear peek are analogous to an upskirt. So understanding what is sexual and what is non-sexual with regards to men is going to require some nuance, and probably collaboration from people who understand bara and otome.

feline_lump said:

I think with female characters, we have a tendency to assume the framing of a straight male viewer that's attracted to women, and that accurately represents a huge majority of what we have on the site. With male characters, you can't really have the same assumption, so it makes less sense to base ratings on which body parts are exposed.

This still doesn't make any sense, honestly. With the same arguments you brought up following this...
post #6074643 isn't even "nearly naked," yet it has to be S. Why? Because we assume most people are straight men? That isn't even what we were told, we were told we have to use these stupid views of modesty on an anime image website because of payment processers.

Many things that aren't even sexual are viewed as sexual on here because, as KagayakuShiningGate mentioned, things are very puritanical here and likely will continue to be. Many rules were made only with women in mind because a little bit of cleavage that isn't even suggestive is enough to make someone bust a nut...?

I don't understand what your point is, beyond complaining about evazion's request to keep rating:g as conservative as possible. We absolutely were not told that rating:g was introduced because of payment processors, and the introduction of a "general" rating was suggested multiple times before payment processors pulled the rug on us. I also had problems rating bara posts before the rating:g split due to the lack of guidance on male characters.

The fact that a lot of Ariel posts are considered "sensitive" here, but Ariel is considered a child-friendly character, does have to do with the primary audience of the site. Disney will absolutely never go harder than showing Ariel in a bikini occasionally, but fanart of Ariel on this site has to exist next to hundreds of thousands of sexual images of female characters, and it has to be viewed by the audience that that implies.

feline_lump said:

I don't understand what your point is, beyond complaining about evazion's request to keep rating:g as conservative as possible. We absolutely were not told that rating:g was introduced because of payment processors, and the introduction of a "general" rating was suggested multiple times before payment processors pulled the rug on us. I also had problems rating bara posts before the rating:g split due to the lack of guidance on male characters.

The fact that a lot of Ariel posts are considered "sensitive" here, but Ariel is considered a child-friendly character, does have to do with the primary audience of the site. Disney will absolutely never go harder than showing Ariel in a bikini occasionally, but fanart of Ariel on this site has to exist next to hundreds of thousands of sexual images of female characters, and it has to be viewed by the audience that that implies.

I'm saying your arguments didn't make any sense because the same could be said for female characters in media. If rating:g is meant to be as conservative as possible, this should probably apply to everyone and not only female characters. Should the audience seriously be taken into account more than the things present in pictures themselves?

The same cannot be said because Danbooru is dominated by men attracted to women. It is not dominated by anyone attracted to men, although there is a minority. As such, the artwork on this site trends towards sexual attraction to women (reflected in the rating guidelines that we have set up currently), but it has a mixed track record on sexualization of men. And if you want to determine whether or not men are being sexualized, you need to have awareness of what is and is not sexualization of men. Otherwise, you end up unable to differentiate between post #202204 and post #6230705.

feline_lump said:

We absolutely were not told that rating:g was introduced because of payment processors, and the introduction of a "general" rating was suggested multiple times before payment processors pulled the rug on us.

We absolutely were told exactly that. Yes, the addition of a fourth rating had been brought up multiple times over the years to address the disaster that was the old "Safe" rating, but it had always been shelved due to the overwhelming work implementing it would have taken. Then the issues with the payment processors started, forcing evazion's hand, though it was always something he had wanted to do. Evazion (or NNT) said exactly as much when General was implemented.

Why do you think the new puritanical rating was implemented at the exact same time payment processors started giving the site trouble, when the idea had been floating around for years?

blindVigil said:

Evazion (or NNT) said exactly as much when General was implemented.

Can you cite that?

evazion's reasons are listed in forum #215738. Let me rephrase - payment processors were not clearly singled out as the only, or even main reason why rating:g has to be conservative. It's a combination of user convenience and a much broader range of services that deny sexual content.

Can we get on-topic?

The problem at hand is not "why was rating:g implemented" or "why is it so puritanical". It's "can we codify rules for rating male characters".

My opinions on the elements I already outlined are:

• Topless male characters could be G, but only if they are chibi and/or not the focus. Otherwise S+.
• Similar for male nipples. I could see some further restrictions like limiting them to simple "dot" ones.
• Musculature is indeed hard to gauge, as depictions vary from more neutral to intending to be at least slightly tillitating... I don't feel confident enough to comment on it. Elements like skin-tightness also come into play.
• (I didn't mention it before but) crop tops/stomach-only exposure should be auto S+. I think crop tops are around as socially acceptable, if not less, for men as/than women. I would even consider them to be somewhat flamboyant.
• Even if men's stomachs could be considered acceptable for G, I think trails of male pubic hair on the stomach should be S+ regardless.
• Open shirts with nothing underneath - S+ for similar reasons to point 1).

Of course, even if we take a laxer approach to rating men than the one I suggested, otoko no ko characters should still be mostly rated "like women".

Visible pubic hair is already automatic Q, regardless of who it belongs to.

I can't really support rating men the same as women, though. As has already been mentioned, male bodies are not viewed the same as female ones. Male nipples are not sensitive content to the average person in the majority of cultures. It's going to be an uphill battle trying to convince everyone that comes to this site that a shirtless dude should be rated the same as a shirtless woman, when the real world doesn't treat them that way.

Except that is not what I am suggesting. Topless women are generally Q+ outside of specific instances, men would be S+.
While it's more socially acceptable for men to parade around shirt-free, it's not like you can see them absolutely everywhere (at least, not in my area). Those situations are mostly limited to visiting the beach/pool or certain sports events, like bodybuilding competitions. I would consider those analogous to situations in which real-life women may be wearing bikinis and such. Which is why I would consider those suitable for S+.

Also, when it comes to pubic hair, here's what's its wiki says:

Visible pubic hair should usually be rated E, or sometimes Q, but rarely S.

Either howto:rate or pubic hair's wiki needs to be fixed.

Kinda off-topic but I feel like howto:rate doesn't outline how to rate furry/pokemon as well.

feline_lump said:

The same cannot be said because Danbooru is dominated by men attracted to women. It is not dominated by anyone attracted to men, although there is a minority.

It’s dumb to say that just because the majority of the userbase is looking for females that we shouldn’t enforce the same rules on male characters. No bare shoulders allowed but then male nipples in G is okay? It’s like saying we should only tag Hatsune Miku songs but not Kaai Yuki songs because she’s not popular and no one cares about her anyway.

feline_lump said:

And if you want to determine whether or not men are being sexualized, you need to have awareness of what is and is not sexualization of men. Otherwise, you end up unable to differentiate between post #202204 and post #6230705.

We already end up unable to differentiate the degrees of sensitiveness of female characters like post #5677242 and post #6239193 because they all end up in S. Don’t see why we’d treat male characters different.

magcolo said:

It’s dumb to say that just because the majority of the userbase is looking for females that we shouldn’t enforce the same rules on male characters. No bare shoulders allowed but then male nipples in G is okay? It’s like saying we should only tag Hatsune Miku songs but not Kaai Yuki songs because she’s not popular and no one cares about her anyway.

We already end up unable to differentiate the degrees of sensitiveness of female characters like post #5677242 and post #6239193 because they all end up in S. Don’t see why we’d treat male characters different.

You worded how I feel perfectly. Plus not everyone is even straight men? It's a weird argument, lol. I'd say just anything you'd wear to some church you should rate G, everything else is probably S. At the end of the day it's just pixels anyways. Most things on this site should be S at minimum.

EDIT: Looking over the howto:rate wiki again, I think the fact it uses "characters" as a vague term is pretty telling that we should be treating everyone the same regardless of sex?

magcolo said:
We already end up unable to differentiate the degrees of sensitiveness of female characters like post #5677242 and post #6239193 because they all end up in S. Don’t see why we’d treat male characters different.

At least with a female character you can point to very specific elements like upskirt or midriff peek, and even though I disagree with how wide the net is cast, grabbing innocent pictures too, there are very specific elements that are being pointed too.

What rule would separate these two? post #5687309 and post #5203843 why should one be rated sensitive and the other general? I'd even argue that since both depict characters from fighting games where it'd be reasonably assumed the men would be topless most people wouldn't find them sexually suggestive even if nipples are drawn.

Most bara art designed specifically to titillate other men has guys in tight shorts, loincloth, bulges, ect. So you can point to those as rating reasons, but often it just comes down to how someone "feels" like post #6225030 from the op. At that point you're punishing artstyle and not the actual content of the image.

I still maintain though that unless the guy is posed suggestively, or its a case of fethisized hyper muscles, societally it isn't considered sexual and a topless male shouldn't be a mark against the image.

zetsubousensei said:

post #5687309 and post #5203843 why should one be rated sensitive and the other general?

To be honest, post #5203843 has more distinct lines going down to the groin area on the front and pants are pulled down enough to show the side of his leg.