GentleButter
Digital Artist
I think a good rule of thumb is
"If you have to question whether or not its fetish, just be safe and label it fetish"
"If you have to question whether or not its fetish, just be safe and label it fetish"
Main Site Mature tagging for fetish art?
- Thread starter Lorel
- Start date
Troj
Your Friendly Neighborhood Dino Therapist
Valid! With the example you posed, I would hate for all characters with a particular body type or state--whether thin, or curvy, or muscular, or fat, or disabled, or pregnant--to be automatically classified or perceived as fetishistic, because that sends a pretty shitty message to the people who actually have those body types.
Personally, I wrestled with how to classify some of my stuff that featured guns or contained allusions to occultism, because I realize that the rating system on FA is mostly focused on sex-related content.
Pomorek
Antelope-Addicted Hyena
I feel you! I was avoiding Furaffinity for many years because of same reason. It was only when my friends moved their activity from Deviantart to FA, that I felt compelled to follow. Learned to navigate around stuff since then, mainly avoiding the main page and finding new art through the already-curated people's favorites. But with the add-on @Raever mentioned, the main page may become usable again, big thanks!
Completely agreed. Now I recalled that Deviantart has it like this for me for whatever reason, whenever I upload something it defaults to 'Mature' and I need to choose manually otherwise.
Frank Gulotta
Send us your floppy
I mean FA itself is a porn website to begin with. Most of the available submission categories are fetishes. (btw last time I checked, that's still in plain view of any minor using the site, not sure when/if they intend to ever fix that)
FluffyShutterbug
The Fox Is Back In Town!
I'm jumping in here kinda late, but I hope to god that this isn't connected to the "No Kink At Pride" debate. Because, uh... The whole "I didn't consent to see your fetish" rhetoric was used to arrest trans women for merely being trans in the past because people used to see "crossdressing" as a kink. Just be aware that some blockheads see the whole fandom and the whole LGBT community as "kink". That's all.
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CaitlinSnowLeopard
Well-Known Member
There's also, as mentioned, the fact that some things that are fetish or kink in some circles aren't in others. Some people who draw transformation art, for example, have it as a fetish, but others, like myself, just think it's a cool concept to explore. This could essentially force me to turn on NSFW art just to view my own artwork, and as a sex-repulsed asexual, I'd...rather not do that.
Pomorek
Antelope-Addicted Hyena
That reminds me of my own funny situation. I'm not at all interested in transformation, yet my art is semi-popular among the TF folks on Deviantart, of all places. Simply because my 3D happens to visually fall close to their photomorphs.
A fetish is not inherently sexual by definition. Yes, the term fetish CAN be of a sexual nature, but it can also be a term for a fascination or obsession (a TV show, shoes, collectable cards, a book series, etc.) or a sexual obsession. It's used loosely in both cases. Yes, an inflatable furry may not be normal and be kind of weird, and the idea of being a toy version of themselves may be a fetish, but that doesn't mean it's sexual by nature simply for the fact it is exists. It's a balloon creature. If it complies with the site ratings it's fine by me.
That said, some of your own concerns in this post are already addressed in the site rules. If you choose to read them, you can see we do take rate images with hyper bulges or content as mature, as well as images which focus on said content. You are welcome to open a ticket with any such content you feel submissions may have been misrated by the artist.
Further, the content we permit under general is (mostly) the same content you can find anywhere -- yes, even vore (ending scene of Shrek, Jurassic Park), inflation (Harry Potter, Scooby Doo, Space Jam), transformation (Animorphs, the Magic School Bus, also Harry Potter, Steven Universe), and weight gain (Disney cartoons, Tom and Jerry, Looney Tunes). If any of these the subjects is good enough for a Disney animated show I'm more than comfortable showing it on FA.
We will not be changing our policies regarding this. That said, our long term projects to implement a proper tagging and block system so if you do not want to see this content you will be able to do so. No, I don't have a timeline on it, but it is a high priority for us as we know it's oft requested by users.
CaitlinSnowLeopard
Well-Known Member
I keep finding ACTUAL NSFW marked as general. So far I've seen an anthro mightyena with an uncensored penis and anal sex with visible female nipples involved.
quoting_mungo
Well-Known Member
Sometimes it’s an honest mistake, sometimes a misguided attempt to get extra exposure by putting it in front of more eyeballs. Best thing you can do is report it for staff to deal with. Blatant violations like what you describe should in my experience be addressed pretty quickly (borderline cases or tickets with a very large number of links tend to take a bit longer).
FluffyShutterbug
The Fox Is Back In Town!
But that's not really the topic of this thread. What you mentioned is clearly adult art. But some people want inflation or fat furs, even if there's no sex involved, to have a mature rating.
FluffyShutterbug
The Fox Is Back In Town!
Who defines what is and isn't a fetish?
perkele
Bad Faith Argument
Presumably, whomever created the giant list of paraphilias. That might have been Dave?
It's up to the parents to monitor to what their kids are doing online. You can't expect us to censor galleries and filter everything when, say, sites like Twitter, Reddit, and 4Chan exist where literally anybody and everybody post the same content that's easily accessible by anyone. We already take reasonable steps to age gate content and require users manually enable access to mature content.
Besides, real talk: forcing anything viewed as fetish/kink (which aren't, by definition, sexual) behind filters can be easily circumvented. Build up all the walls and blocks you want, all it would do is make the site harder for regular users trying to post their art. You can have every conceivable filter in place you want... it doesn't matter. Why? Because people have the ability to lie. That's literally all it takes to get past the filters of any website site unless you're, say, manually verifying IDs.
I'd also like to note that if we catch people lying about their age we block their ability to view said content... and if they try to circumvent them we ban them.
We'll offer a tag and block system in the future. Users can decide what they want to see, but I'm not forcing anybody to filter their content beyond what our current rules say they have to.
If the idea of fat, inflation, slime, goo, transformation, merging, macro/micro, latex, pooltoy, or any number of other weird fetishes/kinks a problem for anyone being public perhaps FA is not the site for them.
Twopaw Tarnished-Silver
Nikonthrope
Having had some of my work described by others as 'hyper' by that definition, although the work was never intended to be as far as fetish/kink, is something that's come up for me more than once in the last year or so. Even if I don't consider the muscular or meatier characters I've drawn to be 'hyper', is the distinction validly up to the viewer (who might think so) as well as myself; hence a mature rating being demanded in fairness even though I would not myself consider it so?
I very rarely draw explicit genitalia- in fact, I can't clearly think of anything I have in my FA gallery that isn't closer than distantly suggesting female body-parts; I by choice don't draw penises or include drawings by context that would involve them- and I think the only blatantly mature/NSFW inclusion in my work with any frequency would be breasts or suggestive breasts. I don't draw sexual copulation or penetration between persons in my artwork, and while I draw plenty of footpaws, there is no sexual component to their inclusion in the work itself.
I try and be as honest as I can when it comes to selecting from the General/Mature/Adult ratings, both with my own intended genera and context as well as what someone else might infer by or take from seeing my work.
-2Paw.
ScaredStoked
Meros the Bun
Then how about there's a place where you can mark it as "Fetish Work" and then you have the option to either allow or filter out everything marked "Fetish Work" in your settings. Or just allow tag muting.
Foxridley
A fox named Ridley
I gave a "yes" here but it was a qualified yes. One idea that occurred to me is an intermediate level between General and Mature. It seems, as they're used, "Mature" is like an R rating and "Adult" is like an X rating, this would be something of a PG-13.
Though I can see enforcement of something like this being problematic, since the boundaries of what counts as fetish are can be pretty fuzzy if you'll pardon the pun.
Though I can see enforcement of something like this being problematic, since the boundaries of what counts as fetish are can be pretty fuzzy if you'll pardon the pun.
ScaredStoked
Meros the Bun
I think an easy way to think of what should be marked and what shouldn't is "if your boss or grandma walked in and saw that on your computer screen, how would they feel?" If they are disgusted or weirded out, chances are.... it's something that should be marked.
Lutro
Writer
That would apply to so much General content, though, which is why "how SFW is this" tends to be a poor barometer.