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E6/21 Day and Comments
3 months ago
June 21st is E621 day, because y'know, in the US the date reads as "06/21".
Hard times ahead for the E621 administration and staff, since Arizona's new law that requires ID for access to 18+ content websites hosted in the state is going to require them to move. Not might, will. This is because E621 cannot guarantee the safe handling of that kind of information, no matter the vendor of choice, and the decision to move comes with the knowledge that the next state they choose to host within will have fresh prying eyes that cast a shadow over everything on the website. Whatever the state they move to, it will incur costs that the organization alone probably couldn't handle. Much of the hosting and financials are handled by Bad Dragon, after all.
Without exception, a significant archive of the Furry Fandom and broader non-furry internet's content and culture is preserved on E621. This makes the organization and its operation worthy of public scrutiny over its policy though, E621 is notorious for using outdated terminology to refer to intersex and trans characters/individuals in the content it hosts. The 'tag what you see' rule comes with many compromises and harsh judgements, and ironically the slurs of 'cuntboy' and 'dickgirl' are far more visually oriented than fringe biology terms like 'gynomorph' and 'andromorph'. Both terms date back to about the 1970's, describing Animal Mimicry, a mating adaptation in which animals such as octopods mimic the sexed displays of opposite sexes so-as to get close to mating partners in a contested environment.
If that clinical description doesn't make your skin crawl yet, think about the context of applying it to another person: "you're dressing like a lady to get close to women". Sure, that might be true in some cases, but the obvious transphobic talking points write themselves. People express themselves through characters they draw, and bluntly, I think it is fucking inappropriate to describe that kind of expression with a term that itself is hardly used in evolutionary biology text! When I was studying EEB we'd usually just say 'sexual mimicry', because 'Andromorph' and 'Gynomorph' imply specific organism composition to mimic primary and secondary sexual features. I'd not even heard the term again for nearly ten years until E621 adopted them. That's my beef, without even touching the 'lore' conversation: we have meta-textual information required for many such hairsplitting conversations (EG: knowing who owns a character copyright). If you can do that, you can differentiate between transgender, intersex, nonbinary, and conventional heteronormative gender presentations without sounding like a fucking cunt.
I have more complaints about the old guard operating the website, such as their remarkable precision and imprecision in descriptions, my favorite being the 'animal humanoid' because it barely distinguishes itself from 'anthro' characters, meaning you get a lot of elf girls with horsecock and no offense elf girls but get your flat-faced monkey ass out of my goddamn dragon porn. Inconsistent tagging is of course a user problem and the volume is impossible for the moderation team (which is not paid, AFAIK) to keep up with, but I think the problem is all the more noteworthy when something's been up for a long time without tags that actually describe the content period. There's also inconsistent quality enforcement, some moderators apparently just hate my artwork (and the artwork of peers) while others rubber stamp low quality shitposts from popufurs. We also have that funny conversation about the 'young' tag and navigating the encroachment of obscenity law, but that's something I can only say so much on here https://cohost.org/RunawayDanish/po.....s-obscene-the" rel="nofollow ugc noreferrer noopener">seeing as the internet archive is hosting my old Cohost Essay on the topic. Despite FA reversing course on it's policy decisions in recent months, much of the wounds opened remain fresh.
E621 is not perfect, like most things, but it is a critical piece of infrastructure for queer expression and that warrants appreciation and critique. It's wild to me to consider that I'd written about current crises of judgement in 2023 with incomplete knowledge that the US political system would enter a catastrophe this year. Sometimes, calling it don't feel so good. Happy E621 day, happy pride month.
Oh and a late happy Juneteenth for my folks who appreciate the highlight, ya'll are special, thanks for being here.
Hard times ahead for the E621 administration and staff, since Arizona's new law that requires ID for access to 18+ content websites hosted in the state is going to require them to move. Not might, will. This is because E621 cannot guarantee the safe handling of that kind of information, no matter the vendor of choice, and the decision to move comes with the knowledge that the next state they choose to host within will have fresh prying eyes that cast a shadow over everything on the website. Whatever the state they move to, it will incur costs that the organization alone probably couldn't handle. Much of the hosting and financials are handled by Bad Dragon, after all.
Without exception, a significant archive of the Furry Fandom and broader non-furry internet's content and culture is preserved on E621. This makes the organization and its operation worthy of public scrutiny over its policy though, E621 is notorious for using outdated terminology to refer to intersex and trans characters/individuals in the content it hosts. The 'tag what you see' rule comes with many compromises and harsh judgements, and ironically the slurs of 'cuntboy' and 'dickgirl' are far more visually oriented than fringe biology terms like 'gynomorph' and 'andromorph'. Both terms date back to about the 1970's, describing Animal Mimicry, a mating adaptation in which animals such as octopods mimic the sexed displays of opposite sexes so-as to get close to mating partners in a contested environment.
If that clinical description doesn't make your skin crawl yet, think about the context of applying it to another person: "you're dressing like a lady to get close to women". Sure, that might be true in some cases, but the obvious transphobic talking points write themselves. People express themselves through characters they draw, and bluntly, I think it is fucking inappropriate to describe that kind of expression with a term that itself is hardly used in evolutionary biology text! When I was studying EEB we'd usually just say 'sexual mimicry', because 'Andromorph' and 'Gynomorph' imply specific organism composition to mimic primary and secondary sexual features. I'd not even heard the term again for nearly ten years until E621 adopted them. That's my beef, without even touching the 'lore' conversation: we have meta-textual information required for many such hairsplitting conversations (EG: knowing who owns a character copyright). If you can do that, you can differentiate between transgender, intersex, nonbinary, and conventional heteronormative gender presentations without sounding like a fucking cunt.
I have more complaints about the old guard operating the website, such as their remarkable precision and imprecision in descriptions, my favorite being the 'animal humanoid' because it barely distinguishes itself from 'anthro' characters, meaning you get a lot of elf girls with horsecock and no offense elf girls but get your flat-faced monkey ass out of my goddamn dragon porn. Inconsistent tagging is of course a user problem and the volume is impossible for the moderation team (which is not paid, AFAIK) to keep up with, but I think the problem is all the more noteworthy when something's been up for a long time without tags that actually describe the content period. There's also inconsistent quality enforcement, some moderators apparently just hate my artwork (and the artwork of peers) while others rubber stamp low quality shitposts from popufurs. We also have that funny conversation about the 'young' tag and navigating the encroachment of obscenity law, but that's something I can only say so much on here https://cohost.org/RunawayDanish/po.....s-obscene-the" rel="nofollow ugc noreferrer noopener">seeing as the internet archive is hosting my old Cohost Essay on the topic. Despite FA reversing course on it's policy decisions in recent months, much of the wounds opened remain fresh.
E621 is not perfect, like most things, but it is a critical piece of infrastructure for queer expression and that warrants appreciation and critique. It's wild to me to consider that I'd written about current crises of judgement in 2023 with incomplete knowledge that the US political system would enter a catastrophe this year. Sometimes, calling it don't feel so good. Happy E621 day, happy pride month.
Oh and a late happy Juneteenth for my folks who appreciate the highlight, ya'll are special, thanks for being here.
Yeah, most shit I see like that I go in and manually delete all the "humanoid" tags from images containing anthros, because people just...don't pay attention and put whatever. Makes it real difficult to utilize a blacklist when things are improperly tagged left and right.