Ratings Guidelines Revision - Please give feedback

We’re in need of feedback on improvements to the guidelines for rating images; don’t be afraid to be a bit harsh, just make sure it’s constructive.
 
Current draft of revisions
 
Existing guidelines
 
Background on this is that we as staff have had some problems describing why an image is a rating (even to each other sometimes). Nothing too major, but it comes up a lot, hence a change was needed.
 
The main focus is on suggestive and questionable, making it easier to determine if an image fits in one of the two. There’s also some additions of missing info such as for semi-grimdark and, in general, a lot of wording clean-up.

If there’s nothing more sexual in the pic I’d tag x butts suggestive at most.  
Yank prudishness be damned.

The mods are nazis!
 
Alright, with that out of my system:
 
Simplistic anuses
 
Are we talking about like they do in certain cartoons/animes in which they simply use an x on an animal’s posterior to signify that it is its anus? In that case that should be safe but dangling on the suggestive line, in my opinion.  
I guess context is important.
 

 
Also, herms/futas.

@Background Pony #F12D  
Also, are pubic hair what much of an issue? I mean in the sense of it being present but not the dick/vulva, is there even that many pics like that?  
And it’s not clear whenever just sheath without penis proper visible should be tagged as questionable or explicit. On this topic, there’s no mentions of balls unless they fall fully in “genitalia”, and tagged explicit whenever any dicks or hermginas are present.

@Mr.Skeleton  
Yes. It seems like this is a common feeling on the matter, so I’ll update the draft to allow for simplistic anuses to be as low as safe.
 
@Background Pony #F12D  
Pubic hair might be. We want to limit nudity to an extent to the higher ratings and I thought suggestive was sufficient for it. Sheaths in the old guidelines were questionable, but are safe in and of themselves in the revisions, I guess the mention in Explicit confused matters. Would it be sufficient to just leave it off?  
Genitalia includes balls, I’ll make sure to call that out.
 
EDIT:  
Updated the draft, hope it helps.

There are different types of “rape”.  
Here is two examples:
 
the one started as technically nonconsensual (maybe even as part of etiquette for ladies or part of traditional dating games) and continued with pleasure for all parties
 
And the second one, with tears, traumas, blood and pain for the who is being raped
 
I suggest avoid engraving rules which treat these two types of situations as equally grimdark. There should not be automatic implying rules, which depends on ambiguity what is rape and what is part of sex games, or porn logic, or violence, or etiquette. tags “rape”/“grimdark”/“semi-grimdark” should be independent, and defined by mods/watchers/uploader. That helps for those who uses filters, both ways (for those who are into grimdark rape fetish porn, and those who want to avoid it)
 
Same thing for mind control, we can see mind control even in the MLP show performed by Starlight Glimmer and other unicorns.

@Princess Luna  
Yeah, not sure how I feel about pubic hair being lumped into suggestive. Body hair and armpit hair, perhaps, but when I think of the tag “pubic hair” it’s mostly referring to the bikini zone. I could see where you’re going maybe with a tuft of pubes sticking out over the top of underwear/swimsuit, but that is an entirely different animal.
 
Something else that’s sort of lost in this revision is what to do about nearly-visible sexual acts, eg. having sex under a blanket. That was previously covered as “Sexual contact with genitals or anuses (even if not directly visible)” but according to the revised guidelines, implying shoving something up a butt as questionable is the only mention of obscured contact.
 
Beyond that, it looks good.

@xbi  
Rape play is not technically rape, may just need more explanation on the guidelines. Good point on mind control, perhaps it’s not the best to call it out in grimdark.  
As far as ‘obscured contact’, that’s covered by sex. Might just need a bit more explanation.
 
EDIT: Updated draft to clarify what rape means and that sex need not be visible.

@xbi  
I could see an exception made for rape play, where all parties involved are in on the fantasy, but when it comes to “it started as rape but it’s ok because of stockholm syndrome” I think I’d prefer it stay as it is. Granted that’s purely a matter of personal opinion, but I don’t make a distinction there. To me, retroactively giving consent is just as problematic as retroactively withdrawing consent, but I’d rather not derail this thread.

@WingbeatPony  
In the case of captivity, that’s already grimdark (slight oversight that the draft didn’t spell that out), so I think we’re actually covered fine this way, but I could be wrong on that.  
Don’t worry too much about derailment, this is very much on-topic as far as establishing definitions; hard to have guidelines work if people don’t understand what they mean.

@Princess Luna
 

 
@WingbeatPony
 
Yes, this is very ambiguous territory, and because of this I suggest to remove automatic implication of tags. If you don’t want to make distinction and want to avoid , filter the “rape” tag.
 
Actually there is distinction at least for porn - the one cause arouse boner and other is bone killer for some people.
 
Discussion about IRL situations is very flame-provocative, and easily can be avoided in this topic, because we are talking about pictures only.

@xbi  
Now this is getting a bit outside the scope. Anyways, people just need to be careful on going around tagging things “rape” when they really aren’t.

@xbi  
Is “surprise sex” what you were talking about, then? That’s a horse of a different color (if you’ll pardon the expression), I’m cool with the definition as it now stands.

@Princess Luna
 
Term “rape” is ambiguous (what is rape and what is not, and all this time dependency of “consesuality”), and automatic implication or use of the term in rules makes “grimdark” tag ambiguous too. Different people to different meanings of the word. It is ok, until the word used in rules or automatic system.
 
Wording “character is mentally suffering because of the sexual contact” is better than ambiguous word

@xbi  
That’s basically what it has now: “Rape (not simply surprise sex or rape-play, receiving party is very not okay with it)”.

@Princess Luna  

 
Does that mean bare butts are only suggestive now?

@Princess Luna
 
 
Yes, the part in the parenthesis is fine (except for the “receiving” , it is not always clear who is receiving in mare+mare situations, and not needed for grimdark definition). But the word “rape” still leave room for ambiguity.
 
I have seen similar discussions in picture comments, so it is good time to remove the ambiguity. So sorry for my stubbornness in this topic, better here, than arguments in picture conments.
 
You know, tsundere Rainbow Dash never give explicit consent on sex, and sex with RD who is talking “actually I don’t want it” is techically rape because of technical non-consensuality. but still this situation can not be considered grimdark. Also sex of Maud Pie with non-speaking but living rock is non-consesual too. There are tons of similar situations, when rape in porn context is not grimdark thing.
 
But “grimdark” is not about con or non-con. It is about suffering or the “receiving party is very not ok”. Also it avoids difficulties with definitions what is “rape play” and what is not. Or what is “surprise sex”. Or should characters give consent explicitly in bubbles with text. And in most cases emotions of character are more easily to derive than consensuality.
 
So I suggest to remove the word rape from rules and automatic tags implications. At least, from rules, (because changes in tags can cause technical difficulties)

@Background Pony #19FF  
I’d imagine this means in the sense of, say, Coppertone ad parodies.

Could “sex toys” in Questionable be clarified to with a “presence but not use of”? Or is that explicitly being removed?
 
Should “Sexual acts with things representing genitals” explicitly exclude dildos/sex toys in “things representing genitals”?
 
In questionable is “Implicit insertions”, intended to cover non-sexual insertions? (Is this for enemas used in a medical rather than sexual/fetish sense?)

@Background Pony #19FF  
As long as those buttcheeks stay together…  
@WingbeatPony  
Yeah, if they’re human or anthro or such. If they’re ponies, however, well, in the words of Twilight Sparkle, “[ponies] don’t normally wear clothes” (see also the Tree Hugger ep for when the show actually did something like a Coppertone ad joke with ponies).
 
@xbi  
Word/phrase (clarification on meaning) is used all over the guidelines as a structure to allow for easy remembering and skimming without being super ambiguous. Just to be clear, the word does not override the stuff in parenthesis, the word is just a starting point to get the main point across quickly.
 
@Exedrus  
Sounds like that part needs to be written more clearly. The idea is that if you stroke/lick something as if it were a penis, that’s questionable regardless of what it is and sex toys are questionable just by their very presence (and licking them like cocks is of course questionable too).  
Explicit covers putting sex toys to their intended use with anal/genital stimulation.  
Implicit insertions is supposed to cover fetish stuff like inflation as part of it, the point is that the insertion isn’t itself sexual. This part clearly needs a rewrite.

@Princess Luna  
But why the sudden change for butts?

@Background Pony #19FF  
The impression I’ve gotten is people don’t think butts alone are questionable and it makes for some ratings pain for them to be (since pony butts are safe and also sideboob is only suggestive). So, makes images easier to rate without causing problems.
 
Also, I’ve updated the draft to try to make it clearer that sexual acts with genital representations doesn’t include actual sex, and similar for implicit insertions.

@Exedrus  
I think the difference between a phallic symbol and a phallus is also exactly the difference between questionable and explicit…

In questionable, should “nipples” under “Sexualized touching of the following areas:” be broadened to “breasts”? (I’m not sure about the tagging history for this.)
 
Should “descriptions of sex” in questionable and explicit also include descriptions of genitals/anus/cum? I imagine those could get pretty sexual as well (for instance descriptions of genitals after sex or heavy arousal).
 
@Princess Luna  
Alright, that makes sense.
 
@WingbeatPony  
Yep, seems that way.

@Exedrus  
On both accounts, that’s covered in suggestive (uncovered breasts and references to genitalia) and they were not previously called out in the guidelines, but unwritten policy was that they were suggestive.