When I went to school – a long time ago but not, as is commonly believed, when knights in armor pursued dragons – it was customary to use the pronouns “he,” “him,” and “his” to refer to a singular antecedent when the noun to which the pronoun referred was of indefinite gender.  Thus, we wrote, “Everyone who comes to the picnic should bring his own blanket” or “A doctor who treats his patients callously does not inspire confidence” or “Will anyone who is new please raise his hand?”

Then came women’s liberation and political correctness – and, with them, a concerted effort to “desex” the language.  Extremists wanted to modify anything that they believed even hinted at a masculine-gender bias.  Not satisfied only to abolish the gender-neutral masculine pronoun (a convention that had been honored in English grammar for centuries), they targeted other words.

In its most absurd manifestations, this movement advocated replacing “manmade lake,” for example, with “artificial lake” (even though the latter suggests a lake made of plastic or something like that).  They wanted to change “history” to “herstory” (ignoring that his in history has nothing to do with the masculine pronoun he).  They even tinkered with Scripture, trying to change “Our Father” to “Our Parent” or “Our Mother or Father.”  No, I’m not making this up.

Fortunately, few of these wacky ideas were adopted, except at the fanatic fringe of the language-neutering movement.  However, the idea of abolishing the use of “he,” “him,” and “his” as neutral pronouns to refer to an antecedent of either gender or both genders has become widely accepted.  We are now obligated to write, “Everyone must do his or her own work” and “A person must have a degree if he or she wants a good job.”  Whereas, in the golden age of common sense, “his” would have been acceptable in the first sentence and “he” in the second, such blatantly sexist usage is now condemned.  In a business today, if one were to write, “An executive needs to examine his priorities,” one would be promptly reminded that not all executives are men and that he or she should examine his or her own priorities.

No sooner had this principle become entrenched than everyone started using “he/she,” “him/her,” and “his/her” as shortcuts.  Never mind that those slashes were unpronounceable, and ugly to boot, slashed pronouns were regarded as a major sign of progress in the war against sexual discrimination.  For a short while, the abbreviation “s/he” was in vogue; however, in a rare triumph of sense over absurdity, it never took hold.

Actually, even the slashed pronouns have given way to another solution.  Since the use of correct grammar has been losing ground for decades, the easy way out – and therefore a very popular one – was to discard the rule for pronoun-antecedent agreement and replace “he or she,” “him or her,” and “his or her” with “they,” “them,” and “their.”  Thus, people started using “If a person wants a good job, they should have a degree” and “Everyone who wants a ticket should raise their hand.”  When this particular assault on correct usage began, most people probably justified it on the grounds that “a little bending of the rules” was appropriate when it accomplished the high purpose of avoiding sexism (or any suggestion thereof).  In due course, however, people began to think that the use of “they” to refer to “a person” was grammatically correct – or to believe that people who insisted that pronouns should agree with their antecedents were anal-retentive nitpickers.

Some among us believe, as I do, that proper usage is already being assaulted on so many fronts that we should not give ground on this one.  Many of us also feel that someone’s use of “he” to refer to a noun that could be either gender (or both) doesn’t mean that the person is discriminatory and sexist.  We are convinced, quite logically, that gender equality involves far more important matters than what pronoun we happen to use.  The battle for equal rights will not be won or lost on the basis of whether we use “he” or “he or she.”  However, if we permit the use of a plural pronoun to refer to a singular antecedent, we revoke a quintessential rule of English grammar.  What’s next – the acceptance of plural verbs with singular nouns and pronouns (“She are,” “My friend were,” “This company have done well”)?

There may be hope.  When I inform my students that they must use a singular pronoun to refer to a singular antecedent, they accept the news calmly – it’s just another rule that they have to learn to apply if they want to speak and write like educated people.  However, when I point out the ramifications – that they will need to use “he or she,” “him or her,” and “his or her” with a singular antecedent that is genderless, they balk.  “Why can’t we just say ‘he’?” they ask. “Why can’t we just say ‘she’?” proclaims a young lady in the back row.  “Because either one is sexist,” I answer.  And when I explain the whole situation, they think it’s silly.  And they are right.  So perhaps future generations, removed from the fanaticism of their predecessors, will return to using the gender-neutral masculine pronoun.

Before concluding, it is worth noting that gender in grammar and language has a long, international tradition of being unrelated to gender (or sex) in the real world.  This is more true of some other languages than it is of English, where only pronouns have gender.  In many other languages, nouns have gender too, as designated by the article preceding the noun or by an ending on the noun (or both).  And the gender of the noun may have nothing to do with what it represents.  In German, for example, the word for “girl” or “maiden” is neuter, the word for “dog” or “hound” (regardless of the gender of the animal) is masculine, and the word for “nose” or “snout” is feminine.  If other languages can manage with such arbitrary gender designations of nouns, English should certainly be able to handle “he,” “him,” and “his” as gender-neutral pronouns.

Footnote:  There are ways to get around “he or she,” “him or her,” and “his or her” without using a masculine pronoun or violating grammatical rules, but applying this solution requires considerable skill and sometimes means recasting of the entire sentence.  These techniques are described toward the end of the article on Pronoun-Antecedent Agreement in the Writer’s Guide section of this site.