gender tagging on cosplay photo

post #8825295 is a cosplay video which features cosplayers of flandre and remilia scarlet from touhou kissing, and it is tagged with yuri at the source. however, it has sparked a debate regarding gender tagging on cosplay photos, namely - should the gender of the characters, or rather the gender of the cosplayers be tagged?

as we stand, the post was originally tagged with 2girls yuri on upload, however about 9 hours later, the post was updated to 2boys otoko_no_ko yaoi by another user. that is because the cosplayers present have posted progress photos that show them as more masculine earlier in their lives, and have been seen using crossdressing-related tags (里百合 refers to crossdresser-crossdresser relationships that "look like" yuri, as per https://zh.moegirl.org.cn/zh-hans/%E4%BC%AA%E7%99%BE%E5%90%88)

however, at the same time, one of the cosplayers states they're in the middle of HRT and RLE, suggesting they might potentially be transgender, instead. moreover, regardless of the cosplayers' identity, they do, ultimately, look like women in the post that sparked this conundrum

therefore, what shall be the solution?

Not a solution, but it's worth noting that a lot of cosplay photos tagged with crossdressing are of cosplayers of one sex dressed as characters of another and are tagged by the cosplayer's gender. post #1169805, post #214588, post #429858. ect.

In my opinion it doesn't make sense to tag by the character's gender because while some people are very convincing at "crossplay" for consistency and since the sex of the person depicted will matter to some users gendertagging by the model makes more sense.

I would appreciate that whatever is decided be amended to the cosplay_photo wiki.

If 2 ftm people were cosplaying as 2 male characters, with beard, mustache, muscled arms, very short hair, were kissing, would you tag it as yuri ?

I think tagging the cosplayer gender rather than the gender of the character who normally wears the clothes is pretty common-sense.

Concerning this particular post, taking HRT, voice training, and cosmetic surgery go a bit beyond what can accurately be called crossdressing, so I don't think 2boys + yaoi is right, especially since they tag their own images with yuri. Given the lack of a definitive self-identification as female, I think 2others + yuri makes the most sense.

my two cents: i don't think crawling through cosplayers' accounts to determine their gender is a very sustainable or efficient solution, doubly so in a case like this where there's a language barrier in the way. and what do you do in a case where there are no personal posts of that kind anyway, besides making a safe assumption?

redtails said:

If 2 ftm people were cosplaying as 2 male characters, with beard, mustache, muscled arms, very short hair, were kissing, would you tag it as yuri ?

i think i understand what you are talking about and what you intend on conveying, however your proposed example is about completely unambiguous transgender people. the remilia/flandre cosplayers advertise themselves as crossdressers, to an extent, yet i am also aware there are people who identify simultaneously as transgender and crossdressers, or at least participate in one community despite being another for greater popularity, or otherwise exist on the border. we cannot know those cosplayers' exact identities without them saying so outwardly, and asking them for clarification would be awkward at best, offensive at worst

fubuki128 said:

Concerning this particular post, taking HRT, voice training, and cosmetic surgery go a bit beyond what can accurately be called crossdressing, so I don't think 2boys + yaoi is right, especially since they tag their own images with yuri.

i have found no evidence of any of those particular remilia and flandre cosplayers participating in voice training (especially given a rather masculine voice in this video) or having undergone any surgery.

they tag their posts as sometimes yuri, sometimes 里百合, which that wiki classifies as "BL", therefore male-male

Given the lack of a definitive self-identification as female, I think 2others + yuri makes the most sense.

yuri -> multiple girls
2others -> other with other

i disagree with tagging it 2others, though i cannot quite put into words why.

Kaleidoscoped said:

my two cents: i don't think crawling through cosplayers' accounts to determine their gender is a very sustainable or efficient solution, doubly so in a case like this where there's a language barrier in the way. and what do you do in a case where there are no personal posts of that kind anyway, besides making a safe assumption?

i agree with this

sinfulporcupine said:

i have found no evidence of any of those particular remilia and flandre cosplayers participating in voice training (especially given a rather masculine voice in this video) or having undergone any surgery.

[...]

i disagree with tagging it 2others, though i cannot quite put into words why.

Remilia has posted videos with a feminine voice: https://x.com/TKNS_kanatsu/status/1877643818234728693/video/1
Flan mentioned facial surgery in the comments of a before/after pic: https://x.com/cai233QAQ/status/1775120463917899918/photo/1

I don't think either gender can be assumed. Neither of them clearly identify as a binary gender. They seem to switch back and forth on voices. Their tagging inconsistently switches between crossdressing tags and regular yuri tags. HRT is a pretty strong indicator of not identifying as male, but not necessarily that they identify as female. They seem to fall outside of the binary, and 2others covers ambiguous and non-binary cases.

2others + other_with_other is probably better than yuri, true.

redtails said:

If 2 ftm people were cosplaying as 2 male characters, with beard, mustache, muscled arms, very short hair, were kissing, would you tag it as yuri ?

This. Plus, we already don't tag the respective *_(cosplay) tags for cosplay posts, instead tagging it as if the cosplayers are the characters themselves. I don't see any real problem with doing the same for charcounter tags barring any obvious discrepancies (in which case the appropriate genderbend tags should probably be used anyway).

ANON_TOKYO said:

This. Plus, we already don't tag the respective *_(cosplay) tags for cosplay posts, instead tagging it as if the cosplayers are the characters themselves. I don't see any real problem with doing the same for charcounter tags barring any obvious discrepancies (in which case the appropriate genderbend tags should probably be used anyway).

This is the exact thing I don't want, if we are tagging based purely on the characters gender you get tons of joke cosplay like post #320, post #654143, post #3129889, ect being tagged 1girl. I am very strongly opposed, even if it's convincing and not just a joke since I want consistency.

I like fubuki would tag 1other in the case of trans cosplayers, it's in-line with how we tag characters with gender ambiguity. Cosplay in general is borderline off-topic, and it's hard to encapsulate self-identity in a three category system not designed to factor in real humans.

zetsubousensei said:

This is the exact thing I don't want, if we are tagging based purely on the characters gender you get tons of joke cosplay like post #320, post #654143, post #3129889, ect being tagged 1girl. I am very strongly opposed, even if it's convincing and not just a joke since I want consistency.

I like fubuki would tag 1other in the case of trans cosplayers, it's in-line with how we tag characters with gender ambiguity. Cosplay in general is borderline off-topic, and it's hard to encapsulate self-identity in a three category system not designed to factor in real humans.

I directly addressed this in the second half of my reply.

... barring any obvious discrepancies (in which case the appropriate genderbend tags should probably be used anyway).

I would use 2others, as others have said. It's not clear how these two consider themselves based on what's on their social media, and that's something that I think is important to take into account when it comes to real people. In this case I think the neutral option is the best route.

They always say, tag what you see, not what you know.

While we do already make exceptions for stuff like "siblings" or "cousins". I guess it depends on how much people care if they are bamboozled by the cosplayers original identity. Personally I don't think it matters, just go with the visual depiction.

Unless they are clearly doing a genderbent cosplay, leaving that part out makes sense.

For cross dressing, these aren't characters but people, so we don't have character sheets to know how they identify anyway.

BUR #36697 is pending approval.

mass update id:8825295 -> -2boys -otoko_no_ko -crossdressing -yaoi -multiple_boys -male_focus 2girls yuri

perhaps a single post bulk update request is not proportional to the necessities of making this change, however this way we may be able to vote on this post's gender tagging

I downvoted cause this is a misuse of mass update.

Freshblink said:

I downvoted cause this is a misuse of mass update.

Yeah, I'm ambivalent to the change itself but a mass update for a single post is just silly.

I don't like cosplay photos and I think they should all be deleted.

However, if they are to stay, then tagging the gender of the character rather than the cosplayer is extremely stupid. Someone looking for cute or sexy photos of girls in cosplay is not going to be happy when they discover they've been salivating over a man in a dress.

AngryZapdos said:

I don't like cosplay photos and I think they should all be deleted.

However, if they are to stay, then tagging the gender of the character rather than the cosplayer is extremely stupid. Someone looking for cute or sexy photos of girls in cosplay is not going to be happy when they discover they've been salivating over a man in a dress.

Does post #8825295 look like men in dresses? If people care so much about what's in the cosplayer's (under)pants they should go to different sites where those parts are actually shown. I don't think it should be of concern to us what those people think.

ANON_TOKYO said:

Does post #8825295 look like men in dresses? If people care so much about what's in the cosplayer's (under)pants they should go to different sites where those parts are actually shown. I don't think it should be of concern to us what those people think.

Does post #8642409 look like a man in a dress? No, but we tag it that way anyway because that's what it is. We always have, and that shouldn't change just because it's a photo.

AngryZapdos said:

Does post #8642409 look like a man in a dress? No, but we tag it that way anyway because that's what it is. We always have, and that shouldn't change just because it's a photo.

By all accounts, the photo in question does not depict men. We do not automatically tag anything with certain gonads in a dress as male (eg. post #8481586).

fubuki128 said:

By all accounts, the photo in question does not depict men. We do not automatically tag anything with certain gonads in a dress as male (eg. post #8481586).

If we know a female appearing subject is actually male (yes, this contradicts twys), then we tag them as male unless we have a good reason to do otherwise. That's the whole reason otoko_no_ko exists. Futas are a separate fetish and can't be compared to real life people.