Racetaganon
Mon, Jan 09 '17, 19:05
On the topic of more controversial tags (i.e. ebony/black/brown/indian/native_american/etcetera) - Would love some input on this from the user/contributor base
I'm starting this thread as a continuation of the conversation from this post (thanks to aPM for being so understanding). I'm currently of the opinion that most users/contributors on here couldn't care less one way or the other so this discussion is only really for those that are at least somewhat bothered by the usage of these tags:

http://illusioncards.booru.org/i...st&s=view&id=4416

So what I'm curious about is whether tags like "ebony" or "dark_skin" or "black" offends some of the users on this site and whether we should use alternative tags. Obviously this discussion extends to other ethnic groups that are bothered by other tags that are currently in use/could potentially be used in the future.

There's a couple of reasons I want to address the usage:

1) as this booru grows, we're going to see an increase in traffic. I feel that someone somewhere is eventually going to feel a little bothered by some/all of these tags. So if possible, I want to nip the potential problem in the bud (i.e. correcting 131 ebony tags now is a lot easier than correcting 300+ ebony tags down the road).

2) for the same reasons we don't use the tags "Jap" or "Whitey/cracker/white" or "Chink" or "spic" to denote race. It's offensive and/or unnecessary.

3) cards featuring black people are the most common at the moment. Let's start from here. Considering creativity is the crux of this site, I'm sure we can pool together resources to come up with a majority's vote on the best/least offensive tags to use for each race.

Of course, we can always avoid tagging by race, but then we have the issue of tags like "white_skin" and "pale_skin" being in use and the tag "black_skin" is often not quite accurate for characters that have neither white nor black skin (hence the "dark_skin" tag - but that's also up for discussion).
helpful_forum_guy
Tue, Jan 10 '17, 11:57
Alright I did my research (and that basically means reading one discussion on Quora and cross-referencing Gelbooru's usage of these tags), and here's a recommendation that I feel could work:

Good read:

(https://www.quora.com/Why-is-it-politically-incorrect-to-refer-to-black-people-as-black)

1. We scrap tags like "ebony" or "black" or "chocolate"

- Believe it or not I've seen recommendations to use desserts (O_o)
- Obviously "colored" or "negro" are out, but I feel that even ebony or chocolate are bad because it feels awkward to describe someone with phrases like "the ebony man" or "look at that chocolate" (the fact that we have to use workaround words to describe somebody's skin color feels racist to me)
-It's similar to the use of the term colored as a descriptor of a person's race because it highlights the fact that he's not white and somehow his non-whiteness necessitates pointing out and labeling (see dictionary definition of racism)
- What about black? Well based on what I've read I think many black people of African/Jamaican/Caribbean/etc. descent are fine with it, but here I decided to reference Gelbooru and see how they used the tag "black". It turns out they use it primarily for artwork that contains a lot of the color black - yes I know black is not a color - and not for black people. And they certainly don't use ebony
- Since I don't think many people search for character models by color alone, I opt we skip using colors as tags (we already have color_skin/color_hair/color_eyes/etcetera tags for that)

2. We keep the tags "dark_skin" and "light_skin/pale_skin"

- I don't have a problem with the tag dark_skin as long as we don't reserve it exclusively for one group of people
- There are black people with light skin and white people with dark skin (and tons of other ethnic groups that have either light/dark skin), so as long as tags are used in that manner I think everyone should find it acceptable
- Gelbooru basically does just that (when in doubt I always check Gelbooru)

3. I think points 1 and 2 basically apply to other races as well

Anyways, that's just my (borrowed) opinion on the topic. I know I didn't cover everything there is to cover - and I know I don't have it all figured out yet either - so that's all I've got for now.
aPM
Tue, Jan 10 '17, 18:09
First let me say that that I'm inclined to agree with all your points, it's a reasonable idea. But let me play a devils advocate here for a second.

> I don't think many people search for character models by color alone

Yes, they do actually. There are entire communities dedicated to porn with black women and/or men. People are sexually attracted to some things, ethnicity among them, and those people don't deserve to be looked down upon. Let's say you come to this site to find some nice looking characters with $color skin. That's what you look for, your dick made the choice for you :) It's a sex game after all. Don't you deserve to be able to search the site by tags that describe what you're after? Those are tags. As long as they're accurate it's all that matters. But ok, let's make sure those are nothing more than descriptive.

I also want to point out that we're not describing people, but game characters.
The character has blue eyes? 'blue_eyes' it is. Red hair? Fine. Pink fingernails? Sure. Dark skin <gasp?!> Better search by pale skin, that's not offensive. <- that's some flawed logic in my opinion (generally speaking, I know that's not what you were saying)

We should come to an agreement and look for the best solution, absolutely. Find one proper tag to describe a corresponding property of any given character. Let's just not take it too far. We're playing a game where you get an achievement for making a girl your slave. Where you can attack (basicaly rape) her in a shower. Hit her endlessly with a whip while she begs you to stop. But it's a video game, so do that and move on, it's fine. You may want to do those things to a character that wears a collar, a hat, knee-high two colored socks, one ring in her left ear and is a green colored asian girl. If that's what your heart desires then that's what you should be able to do.

I just don't think that we would do anyone a service but getting rid of tags that describe race/ethnicity. As you can see I uploaded a few cards with girls that don't look asian. With all due respect their faces do nothing for me sexually. I just don't see the appeal, I can't help it. In real life it wouldn't matter to me, wherever you're from, whatever your skin color or language, we can do all kinds of stuff together. I won't think about it for a second.

But when I sit down and launch Honey Select or just watch porn to have a good wank, I'd like western looking face on my girl because that's what get's me off. I don't feel horrible because of it. You just don't choose what you're attracted to.

helpful_forum_guy
Tue, Jan 10 '17, 20:26
First of all, let me thank you for engaging me on this discussion aPM. I've read and reread your post a few times to make sure I didn't miss any points you were trying to make.

I absolutely agree you on the point that tags should serve their purpose - helping people narrow down their search and getting what they want. I'm all for making the tags as useful as possible. I also have no interest of judging people by their sexual preferences/fetishes. As you say, whatever gets them off gets them off right? :)

You're right in that we are tagging game characters and not real people - but the thing is, these game characters are being used by real people, and that's the part that I'm concerned about. Some of these character models are made to resemble actual people of a particular race, and some are very good replicas - so when we start attaching tags that have racist connotations to them (especially to describe a character model that looks like a person from a certain ethnicity), it could very easily offend someone of that ethnicity (or anyone really). Some might consider this too PC, especially for a game of this nature, but I see it as coming from a place of wanting to be respectful to all our user/contributor base (I don't feel we should simply write-off attempts to be correct just so we can be rude - yay free speech and all). I'm sure we can all easily enjoy this game without going to a racist/derogatory place.

Then, what if somebody is interested in finding a girl with black features? "Asian" and "Caucasian/western" are currently in use to describe models with facial features from those ethnic groups. I'm all about fairness here, so if we group all black people of African/Jamaican/Caribbean/etc. descent under the one tag "black", then we should also group Asians under the tag "yellow" and Caucasians under the tag "white" (and so on). But that's obviously going in the opposite direction of making the tags more useful, because not all people of Asian descent are yellow skinned, and not all people of Caucasian descent are white/fair skinned. So then we'll have tags like "Asian", "Caucasian/western" and "black/ebony" - do you see the problem that Racetaganon pointed out? This is also why I addressed the "light_skin"/"dark_skin" tags earlier, because the latter has been used historically in a derogatory manner to describe black people, but having just the light_skin/pale_skin tags alone doesn't cover all the spectrum of skin colors (obviously) - which is why I suggested that we include it (merely as a skin-color descriptor).

But that still doesn't address the problem of tagging characters with certain racial features.

To be honest, I'm not even 100% on board with using the tags Asian/Caucasian/Western because it feels a little too generic to me as tags (but I don't really want to start tagging by country - Japanese, American, African-American, Mexican, Indian, etc. - unless it's a pre-established background for that character - because that might be getting a little too detailed; I want to help keep the tags useful but still relatively simple to use).

Well, you said you prefer western features right (it doesn't necessarily have to be girls that are from western countries)? How about the following tags then (tags specifically for features)?

Caucasian_features
Asian_features
African_features
Caribbean_features
Indian_features
Middle_Eastern_features
South_American_features
Aboriginal_features

I think that covers most of the world (some may be redundant)? Let me know if I missed anything.

Maybe for aborigines we can also tag by tribe? I haven't really come up with a good one for this.

Also, I kind of want to introduce these tags as well (since we already have so many tags describing body types):

prominent_nose/protruding_nose
flat_nose
high_nose_bridge
low_nose_bridge
large_nose
small_nose
small_eyes
large_eyes
big_lips
small_lips
illusioncards
Wed, Jan 11 '17, 15:24
So what I'm curious about is whether tags like "ebony" or "dark_skin" or "black" offends some of the users on this site and whether we should use alternative tags

I can understand wanting to avoid using black, but 'ebony' seems to have enough usage in other areas of the internet to justify using it here (also, the ~1K images I added before telling anybody about this booru were kinda of my private collection, and I don't care nearly as much for consistent tagging with that as I do this booru, I just never got around to changing the tag before uploading all the images).

That being said though, I believe the best format for tagging skin color would be to use objective descriptors just like we do with eye color/hair color/etc. No tags like redhead or brunette, just red_hair or brown_hair, with the idea being that carries over to skin color. Instead of ebony, brown_skin or dark_skin.

Plus, if we do it that way, it stops an inconsistancy from arising with skin color tagging. Since this is a "video game", there's some pretty exotic stuff. Mythical creatures, girls fashioned after inanimate objects, xenos, etc. Those kinds of cards have tags like 'blue_skin', 'red_skin', 'purple_skin', or 'black_skin' (and I mean like, actual black. See post #1267 or #1285 for an example of what I mean), and using 'ebony' like we're doing right now breaks the pattern of '<color>_skin', which I would like to maintain wherever possible (including tags not related to skin color like '<size>_<bodypart>' e.g. large_breasts & small_breasts or large_ass & small_ass or '<color>_<bodypart>' e.g. blue_hair, green_eyes, brown_skin).
flashk1ll
Thu, Jan 26 '17, 13:33
ebony is probably on good for porn related 'racial' skintone catagory. I would just use the N word straight up. Black, African-American would suffice. Labelling "light" skin and etc.. just waste of time. If you're gonna label just label hair color like, "brunette", "blonde", "redhead" etc...

I wouldn't mind labelling "chinese", "korean" and "thai" for a distinctive ethnic asian looks. Sorta like there's Hollywood and Bollywood fashion etc... It's only hilarous when Americans tend to label every asian as japanese etc. I know Americans would get "triggered" at this but we asian just get a little chuckle.
BluShinobi
Sat, Feb 11 '17, 16:42
The only people offended by the word "Ebony" are white liberals. The people who most commonly use the word ebony(by far) are black people themselves. I'm not too sure I've ever heard a white person use that word.

Though I think "Dark skinned" makes more sense, as 99% of the darker skinned characters I've seen on here do not look black(as in African). They all have Asian features, so calling them "Ebony" or "Black" would only make sense if they actually look African - which they never do.
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