- cross-posted to:
- programmer_humor@programming.dev
- cross-posted to:
- programmer_humor@programming.dev
Edit: As @bdonvr@thelemmy.club points out below
mascots gender says
It’s a fucking red panda.
Do they not have genders?
It uses qubits sorry. Get a quantum computer loser
Are telling me they fired the previous mascot to hire a gender minority? Smh
The old one was also non-binary. Prove me wrong.
(Honestly, I just don’t care. Load the web page and render some JavaScript already)
Just search for “Firefox Chan”. And maybe keep on SafeSearch too…
And maybe keep on SafeSearch too…
No, I don’t think I will
If you’ve found a non-binary one then I’d love to see what you’re running it on.
Old Russian trinary hardware? That would be quite an achievement!
Malbolge
Or analog computing with opamps
Waterfox needs to catch up with a gender-fluid fox
Waterfox used to have a fox in the logo but Mozilla didn’t like that so waterfox removed the fox after many threats from Mozilla
Wait, there is a Waterfox? Is there also an Earth and Air fox? Then we could have an AvatarFox!
Librewolf also needs to come up with something.
As someone who has both LibreWolf and Amarok pinned to the taskbar, I can definitely say the icon similarity is confusing.
@green_copper @ShinkanTrain @cannedtuna Librewolf needs to cut to the chase and adopt a furry mascot.

2Fast2Furry
I’ll switch to whatever browser that has a postgender mascot
Gender-free wolf
The gender orientation of the firefox logo is something I haven’t thought about ever.
What’s the point of this?
There’s no point. It’s just some dumb manager fixated over gender identity spreading their ideology
The point is that you’ve fallen for some idiots on X making up culture war bullshit.
Kit’s supposed pronouns aren’t mentioned by Mozilla anywhere in any Mozilla announcements.
One news site attributes this quote to Mozilla
Kit (he/she/they/them/it) is the user’s constant companion. Wherever they choose to roam, Kit will accompany and guide them with clever, playful encouragement and support — giving the user the confidence to run free.
That’s the one and only place that even remotely mentions it as far as I can tell. And it’s not even a statement that it’s NB or they/them… More like it’s a fictional mascot call it what you want.
Mozilla uses “they’re” to refer to Kit, but other than that there’s no explicit statement at all.
Kit is a companion, not a commentator. They’re not here to deliver punchlines. Kit shows up as a small signal that Firefox is working for you, then steps back so you can keep moving.
I used “they” etc. when I don’t know the gender of the person I’m talking about. I feel like that’s the safest assumption.
I just read the screenshot lol
True, it was just “a fox” for me so far. I didn’t really care about the gender of a drawing. I guess it is a good awareness move though
Feels like a publicity stunt more than a genuine attempt to include non-binary people.
It isn’t, though. They never said that the mascot was non-binary.
Awww bummer. I was excited for the NB fox.
The fox is schrodinger’s gender so… they/them until proven guilty?
Exactly this. It feels like some kind of nonsense spam or troll.
If I was to take the bait, I might say it was to cover for their CEO making some anti gay marriage political contribution. But that was like 15 years ago, I don’t even know if he’s still CEO or if anyone even remembers.
To me, this feels more like a PR move than an awareness move. Kind of like: “We don’t wanna do anything substantial so uuuuh let’s just make our logo non-binary”.
It’s a terrible PR move if you don’t say anything about it. They didn’t say “Hey, look! Our mascot is non-binary!” All they did was use they/them pronouns.
It’s a distraction from the real important issue, which is…
…what does the fox say? /j
Wha-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pow?!
Ring-di-ding-di-ding-di-ding?
Well, if I was creating a mascot, and I didn’t want to think about their gender orientation… they/them pronouns are what I would use. Mozilla actually didn’t announce the mascot’s gender. People just saw they/them pronouns and made the inference from there.
What’s more is the non binary fox somehow seems more binary.
Most people default to “this entity is male” without more context. I do it too, it’s a bit of an issue I try to be aware of but regularly fail. Male is default, female is marked; that’s why the stereotypical “girl” character in video games is just the “boy” character but with eye lashes and lips and maybe high heels. (And non-binary doesn’t exist, obv /s)
So I can see this as making the non-genderedness explicit.
Edit: I don’t have the spoons to elaborate on “male is default”. Can someone else maybe jump in? Thx.
Its a fucking cartoon logo, I’ve never once thought about its gender identity or called it any gender for that matter. I click on it, and that’s the extent of my interaction or consideration.
Yes, cool. It’s awareness.
Most people default to “this entity is male” without more context.
I have a hard time wrapping my head about this sentence. I don’t think about the gender of any entity without more context because it’s usually completely irrelevant.
Male is default, female is marked
So, I didn’t grow up in an english speaking country, but if I hear “the baker” I don’t automatically assume it’s a man. I think it’s a person that bakes bread and pastry. The same with “the mechanic”, “the engineer”, etc. It’s all - by default - a person.
Now, if we were to talk german, there is actually a difference. As “the baker”, for example, we have “Bäcker” as Male and “Bäckerin” as female. The reason why male is “the default” in german is because it’s shorter. That’s it. If you say “Der Bäcker”, it’s as you’d say “the baker” in english, you don’t automatically make an assumption about the gender. If you say “Die Bäckerin”, you are referring to a female baker specifically.
So I can see this as making the non-genderedness explicit.
Honestly this feels more like a mockery of people that identify as non-binary than raising any kind of awareness. Kinda has some “apache combat helicopter” vibes.
They’re not talking about language with the male-as-default, but rather for example this:

The depiction with less discerning features is what we assume to be male. If you want to express female, you have to add a dress or long hair or curves etc…
There’s actual scientific research on this bias existing, although I don’t know in what way this extends to animal depictions.
And non-binary doesn’t exist, obv /s
If not binary then how made of 1s and 0s?
Have you ever seen 1s and 0s out in the real world, outside your smarty-pants books? Thought so. Maths don’t real, checkmate atheist.
to be honest, 99% of people don’t even think about gender at all without being prompted to. especially when it comes to mascots like the firefox logo. its a browser.
this seems like a PR move by mozilla and nothing more.
That highly depends on the language.
Example in Czech: Generic Fox (Liška) is a girl Generic Wolf (Vlk) is a boy
Because our words themself have genders. Fox: Liška (girl) Lišák (boy) but default if you don’t knoe the sex of the animal is in this case the girl version.
This differs per language. And in german (if I’m not mistaken) fox is Der Fuchs, so boy.
I’m using boy/girl instead of male/female, because … I don’t know, that is how I think about it.
And in german (if I’m not mistaken) fox is Der Fuchs, so boy.
That’s true, but the grammatical gender has nothing to do with the actual gender. Nobody thinks that all foxes are male, just as nobody thinks that spoons (Der Löffel) are male or the street (Die Straße) are female. They can also change depending on the amount. For example, if we take “Haus”, which means house, we say “Das Haus” if we talk about a single house, which would be neutral, but refer to multiple houses as “Die Häuser”, which would be female. Nobody thinks houses become female once there’s more than one tho.
Removed by mod
Edit: this post is literally not true Mozilla didn’t say any of this it’s just a hoax.
Somebody at the Mozilla foundation justifying their pointless job.
What if… hear me out… what if we remove the focus on gender altogether? What if we stop engendering things that don’t have genders? Like logos… and behavioral attributes…
Since Mozilla actually didn’t and the post is based on a lie, I’ll say congratulations, your reaction is almost certainly what they were hoping for
You don’t think people childishly over-anthropomorphize a lot these days? Cause I do, and that’s what my comment was about.
I mean, if you can provide data which shows that anthropomorphisation - specifically the unwarranted attribution of gender to things which are genderless - is on the rise and can demonstrate, or even articulate what the real-world harm of this is, then maybe I will agree that ranting about it in response to a tweet from an anti-woke twitter user lying about it in order to stir up tired “culture war” arguments isn’t silly
Perhaps we should also rant about the erosion of male-dominated spaces into spaces which are “lame and gay”, given that there are now women who play Warhammer?
Why would I have an issue with women playing warhammer?
I’m explicitly saying that I think assigning warhammer as being for either men or women is stupid.
The issue I have is everything being put one of two categories that are irrelevant.
Gender is far less relevant than people make it.
It’s a mascot, not a logo. So it having a gender isn’t strange.
Also, since its pronouns are (quoting the announcement blog post) “he/him, they/them, she/her, and it” that is very open and not rather post-gender, in my opinion. The focus in the announcement is not on thee mascot’s gender in fact.
Any and all other identities as well. It’s a never ending ad nauseam non evidence based, non measurable and inconclusive debate.
Like we’re in The Beasts’ castle. Sometimes a candleholder is just a candleholder.
By the way this is NOT a new Firefox logo. It’s just the fox mascot drawing that may be used in other parts of the UI like the welcome screen after a new install, or on social media.

The actual logo remains unchanged.
On top of that nowhere in the announcement are the supposed pronouns mentioned: https://blog.mozilla.org/en/firefox/meet-kit/
Actually the whole thing may be bullshit. Literally the only Mozilla reference I can find to Kit’s pronouns is a statement given to like one or two blogs, and it says that any pronoun is acceptable.
Kit (he/she/they/them/it) is the user’s constant companion. Wherever they choose to roam, Kit will accompany and guide them with clever, playful encouragement and support — giving the user the confidence to run free.
That’s attributed to Mozilla here: https://www.neowin.net/news/firefox-has-killed-its-old-mascot-heres-what-the-new-cute-one-looks-like/
All other references seem to be chuds on X claiming that it’s explicitly they/them and acting like Mozilla is making a big deal about that. As if it matters either way.
If you had some kind of reaction to this post you’ve fallen for culture war bullshit propaganda, congratulations.
Its to funny how whenever a Mozilla brand related thing happens its clarified that the firefox logo is not being changed. In no other context of a product receiving a new mascot would a clarification be needed that the logo is still the same.
Solid sleuthing there. Edited the post to include your context.
Not on topic but sure do wonder why they silently pulled the Dino 2 years (I think?) prior and made the browser look boring. I guess it was apart of the master plan to shove a new mascot there and make media attention, + furry bait.
The dino represents Mozilla, not Firefox itself. And yes, for a while, Mozilla didn’t have the dino in its official branding, but it’s now back in there. The flag is a dino head. As per usual, significantly more drama was made about them “removing” the dino than it was worth.
I meant that there was a different dino on the error pages in Firefox.
It’s a fox. I like the fox.
Its actually a red panda iirc
Firefox is another name for the red panda, but the Firefox browser has always used foxes as logo/mascots. Before that it was called Phoenix, maybe that’s why they decided to just use another fire-related animal name without thinking about it too much.
Firefox is now exclusive to ternary computers.
No, Mozilla has seen the future of computing. (CS/CE/IT, don’t watch if you don’t want to be frustrated.)
does this mean nonbinary
peoplefoxes/red pandas have fire bending?That’s stupid, it was genderless before until they brought it up.
Mozilla didn’t bring it up. The story is made up by right-wing trolls.
Isn’t the old mascot/logo completely non-gendered already?
There was nothing like that with the old fox-that-is-on-fire, so I guess mozilla is making a statement by pointing it out.
Except there’s basically nowhere that Mozilla actually does. The post is misinformation
Except it’s not pointing it out, OP is
I kinda wish that they had pointed it out, but they didn’t.
Because it was what before? Why do we care about the gender identity of the fox mascot of a web browser?
Don’t answer, please
This story is made up by right-wing trolls.
The joke is that computers use binary.
Thanks captain obvious
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I never knew or thought about the old one’s gender.























