Categorically false. 'He' was taught as a gender-neutral pronoun for an extremely long time.
Indeed. Of course, we don't live in the 1700's (or the 1960's). We also don't use "thee" and "thou," anymore, so appealing to traditionally usages of a word in one of the more fluid languages on the planet is pretty silly. It's not as if that usage wasn't also recognized to have short-comings, both culturally and technically, hence why it fell out of favor. It was also taught because, hey, the dominant cultures of the day were strongly patriarchal and men were the default people folk.
It's amazing how things change!
Your suggestion for an alternative is also lunky and pointless, and beyond the realms of how people normally speak. Just because you don't understand people's culturally backgrounds doesn't mean you are allowed to enforce your own.
Yes, please take a clearly flippant statement and try and twist it into some kind of message board imperialist screed. Ironic that you presume how people "normally" speak, and then accuse me of "enforcing" my cultural background. What is my cultural background by the way? You, of course, are making broad guesses to justify your weird rant, so keep on keeping on.
And hey, who are you to tell me how people normally speak! I am a people, too! Stop trying to enforce your culturally prescribed background on what is lunky (clunky?) and pointless on me!
Also, the 'singular they' is actually a standard part of English, despite how many try to teach "proper English". Culturally some people don't like using it, but it's most certainly not wrong to use, and I in fact prefer it.
You are contradicting yourself. The singular "they" is a part of colloquial English but is not technically correct (note - actually, that's in contention, as its use is not quite widely accepted, but it is gaining ground, and will probably end up being the defacto gender neutral stand-in, eventually). Yet, somehow you can denigrate "proper English" here, while simultaneously making an appeal to an even older, outdated "proper English" to bolster your initial point.
Coincidentally, I never said it was "wrong" to use, but rather "technically incorrect" - which it is actually taught as. Hence why I followed up that statement with a joke about people (in this very thread!) using "he" to apparently refer to multiple genders.
There are plenty of different alternatives people have tried, one of the most usable in writing is " 'e ", but ultimately changing how people speak and write is completely pointless when they are meaning 'he' in terms of the gender neutral form (as many standard education systems teach, and many people naturally use). Don't force your own views on the use of language on other people, they can say it how they like as long as they're understood.
"He" as a gender inclusive pronoun fell out of favor literally decades ago. Please explain how you know that people mean "he" in the gender-inclusive form, which hasn't really even been taught - other than a grammatical aside - since before most of the posters here (including myself) were born? Can you give some examples from these standard education systems? I'm curious because, by golly, I've been through quite a bit of the whole school deal, and most all of the current literature I read sure does avoid using the whole "he as a gender neutral" thing.
Anyway, the whole point of this grammar debate was because of the lack of clarity in language that was originally posted.
PS - I'm assuming your alternative is supposed to be "Ze."
