Such wildly fake outrage.
The real outrage should be that we care what the pronouns of any corporate mascot are.
They aren’t real. They aren’t able to feel. Corporations are not people.
“It” until you are open source and then we talk.
Same goes for Ronald McDonald.
imo even in socialist societies brands need some protection because it’s possible to have higher quality or “differently moral” products still where people can choose the cost trade-offs of the products they use which means one product shouldn’t be able to use the investment/differentiation of another product in brand (and to a point ux research as this disincentivises usability and feeling over brochureware and copying investment in non-tangibles) to pretend to be the different product
mozilla can be legitimately pro-foss-software in its mission and not include pro-foss-everything in furtherance of that single goal
even then though mozilla provides downloads of their kit assets
heck even marketing - to a point - is necessary to foss software… linux probably wouldn’t have taken off without the investments of microsoft and apple in making consumer hardware both usable (relative to early computers) and marketable
I have a friend IRL called Kit, who also happens to use they/them pronouns.
I never knew or thought about the old one’s gender.
Who cares? Are gonna label the Michelin Man next?
Hate to break it to you, but it’s literally in the name already
The gender orientation of the firefox logo is something I haven’t thought about ever.
What’s the point of this?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Wokeness and liberal brainrot. Everyone with more than two brain cells knows that there is only two genders.
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.
look i agree the x post is culture war shit, but mozilla does mention the gender of their mascot in their branding resources… but imo this is less of an explicit recognition about the mascot being non-binary and more a function of the mascot being able to be interpreted by humans however they like, and “it” being the term they seem to use simply to increase ambiguity and feelings of personal connection to the mascot for the most people
he/she/they/them/it
I think it’s more a statement that it’s not gendered
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.
which is from a notoriously “pro-conservative” twitter account, so safe is highly debatable given that the “conservative” label is often applied to provably false argumentsreplied to the wrong comment
Jesus, it’s Clippy all over again.
I just read the screenshot lol
which is from a notoriously “pro-conservative” twitter account, so safe is highly debatable given that the “conservative” label is often applied to provably false arguments
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
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.
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?
that’s exactly it: in context, kit is a feature intended to be interpreted by the user; not a representation of a sentient character having made a conscious choice to be non-binary simply because of mozilla’s chosen pronouns and lack of gender expression
Somebody at the Mozilla foundation justifying their pointless job.
There’s no point. It’s just some dumb manager fixated over gender identity spreading their ideology
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?
What’s more is the non binary fox somehow seems more binary.
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.
I mean the source is mostly ascii anyway.
fuzzy foxy
Does Firefox welcome input from non-binary and LGBTQ+ folks? Are they part of the Mozilla Board of Directors? If they truly believe in inclusion, it seems it would be pretty easy to prove it rather than a cheap, meaningless stunt like this…
What’s the stunt? All they did was use they/them pronouns when talking about their mascot. People made the inference from there and ran with it, and y’all are too lazy to do a web search and read the announcement.
This was an unnecessary addition to the culture war.
Apparently, it’s right-wing trolls who made up this non-binary thing. So, you are correct, but it came from the other side of the culture war.
nb(short for nota bene) would actually be a good name for a modern replacement for themancommand 😂Oh ffs we’re calling the word “manual” a micro aggression now?
Oh ffs we’re calling the word “manual” a micro aggression now?
sorry, did my comment trigger you? 🙄
nobody called anything a microaggression or said anything about the non-abbreviated word manual; jokes based on UNIX’s abbreviation of it being homonymous with the common noun man have existed since the
mancommand was created.
This would make life harder for me since I have this installed on my system.
all logos require genders
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/
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.
but that was again not about removing the dino as much as as it was about differentiating mozilla from firefox by taking the mozilla identity from firefox because mozilla is more than firefox and behaves differently to firefox, and giving firefox its own identity which is more friendly
Don’t tell the furries
Where do y’all take info on pronouns?
Haven’t seen anything in the official announcement: https://blog.mozilla.org/en/firefox/meet-kit/
Okay, don’t search for the word “binary”. Search for the word “they”.
Yes, really.
That’s all it took for people like this guy to freak out over wokeness gone amok and Mozilla is coming for your children.
Ah so it’s just more culture war bullshit from perpetually outraged rightoids and grifters. Nothing new then.
Yeah I noticed that too.
I found this quote supposedly attributed to Mozilla, as far as I can tell this is the whole issue, everything else is chuds on X running with it.
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.
