It is in a way funny, how long it has taken me to face this question. It is rather simple. The foxes need two genders to survive, procreate and flurish - and this applies to Firefoxes too. Our Firefox, is it a male or a female?
For French (le renard), German (der Fuchs), Spanish (el Zorro) is a male. On the other hand for Italians (la volpe), Portuguese (la raposa - not sure) and Slavic languages (e.g. Russian, Bulgarian, Croatian, Serbian, Macedonian and my mother language Slovenian) fox is lisica, i.e. it is neither it, nor he. It is a she, i.e. female.
So there's a non.negligible group of languages where the gender difference is still present and where the female alternative (for a change) prevails and where foxes, Firefox included, are ... ladies.
Here's now the text I had to localize for Firefox flicks:
You're impossibly fast and strong. Your fur is soft and warm... and bright orange.Your eyes are kind and you're always thinking of others.You're never closed and you never compromise.
... and then comes the scene, where the girl says to the man off-screen - and I kept typing -
Please don't make me choose. Because it'll be her.
Oops, the English source says
him! I quickly corrected "her" to "him" in the translation and then said to myself: what a nice, surprising gotcha. What a double-entendre... Then I had a laugh, drew a deep breath and repeated: Firefox is a man, is a man, is a man. Firefox is a man!
In Slovenian, and probably in other Slavic languages, a "he-fox" is "lisjak", so theres a way out of the bind. Except that, at least in my mother language, "lisjak" has a questionable sound to it, like cunning, double-dealing, Artful-Dodgerish.
Remember Josephine in
Some like it hot, repeating "I'm a man, I'm a man..."? Pretty similar situation: Firefox is a man, is a man, (sigh) is a man!
But then, nobody is perfect.
