likely yes. species in general are able to conceptualise gender because it’s necessary for procreation (keep reading; i promise this ends in a view that’s pro-trans but stronger because it’s harder to debate against)

homosexual behaviour in animals among complex species line anthropoids is at minimum of ~10%, so even accounting for preference imo it’s pretty clear mammals are able to conceptualise gender, since gender is about roles specifically rather than sex and this 10% number is about exclusively homosexual sheep (apparently the number is 25% among black swans where the number includes homosexual pairing/parenting/etc instead of just sexual relationships)

anyway, point being even among the most limited term animals tend to be able conceptualise gender

but that’s not at all what the character of a mascot is about: a mascot is inherently an anthropic projection of human behaviour onto an animal (thus basically why furries exist and are pretty closely associated with mascots)

imo firefox mascot can “somewhat legitimately” (and even perhaps “not uncharitably” - just ignorant maybe) be viewed either as less than 10% of animals displaying “transgender” behavour (ie the numbers displaying gendered behaviours that don’t match their sex - ignoring the concept of gender) and thus 10% of firefox mascots should be non-binary (yes i’m mixing those terms because remember this is the charitable but ignorant interpretation) and firefox doesn’t yet have 9 gendered mascots… or it can be viewed as 90% of mascots generally being gendered and thus a specifically non-gendered mascot in the “corpus of mascots” is warranted… but then it could be argued that actually the majority of mascots are non-gendered: perhaps not specifically, but implicitly simply because humans have grown to dislike misogyny and prefer female representation

i’m saying this not because i necessarily agree with the reaction, but because it’s important to understand the alternative viewpoint regardless of agreement in concept. it’s at the very least more complex than the simple argument acknowledges

imo representation is important, as we’ve pretty unambiguously agreed with female representation and even homosexual representation more broadly since about the 90s

he/she/they/them/it

I think it’s more a statement that it’s not gendered

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 arguments

It isn’t, though. They never said that the mascot was non-binary.

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.

but it’s not a PR move… their blog post lays out the reasoning: kit is intended to exist in the browser to make users feel good about using the browser. it’s a friendly “congratulations for interacting” and “we’re doing something for your benefit” (as an anthropomorphic representation of that behaviour) character, and a feature of it as an engineered feature is that the user can apply any gender they like. kit hasn’t made a choice to be non-binary; mozilla has made a choice to make kit specifically ambiguous both in aesthetic when drawn and pronouns when written about

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.

Ring-di-ding-di-ding-di-ding?

Yes, cool. It’s awareness.

I grew up in a very male-as-default English-speaking culture. Any animal, robot, or plant would be referred to as it or he, unless that creature/thing has additional female markers such as wearing pink, makeup, etc.

For examples look at the designs of Mickey and Minnie Mouse or Babs and Buster Bunny. If you draw a little blob with eyes, people will say “He’s/It’s cute.” If you put a pink bow on it, they will say “She’s cute.”

You can even look at the word “woman” itself. “Man” originally just meant any person, but “woman” was invented to speak specifically about a “wife-man.” Going to your German examples, why did they make special words for female bakers, etc. and none for male bakers? It’s because male is the default and female is a deviation from that norm. You don’t need a special word to describe the default assumption.

There’s this old riddle:

A father and son are in a car accident. The father dies at the scene, and the son is rushed to the hospital. When he is taken into the operating room, the surgeon says, “I can’t operate on this boy! He’s my son!” How is this possible?

It plays on one’s assumptions about gender.

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.

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.

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.

I meant that there was a different dino on the error pages in Firefox.

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?

[relevant smbc]

2Fast2Furry