Thanks very much for your thoughtful and detailed reply, Barbara! I appreciate it.

I’ll say two things with respect to your question about the universal ‘he’ that, until recently, dominated writing in the Western world for millennia.

First, I have written about this topic elsewhere. Feel free to take a look at point #5 in this article. If you do, you’ll see I’ve elected to embrace the grammatically incorrect but politically inclusive singular ‘they’ whenever referring to what people commonly used to write as ‘he’, ‘she’, or ‘he or she’.

Second, for a long time I used the phrase ‘he or she’ because I didn’t want to unnecessarily discriminate against one or more groups of people by writing only ‘he’. For a while, instead of using ‘he or she’, I used ‘he’ in some spots and ‘she’ in others, self-consciously using ‘she’ a little more often than ‘he’ as I felt this ‘overcorrection’ was warranted. In the current climate, though, even single uses of ‘he’ (or, indeed, of ‘she’) can result in backlash and criticism from people who feel such language unfairly leaves them unacknowledged.

Grammatically, I really don’t like using ‘they’ as a singular. I can’t help feeling ‘off’ whenever I write a sentence like, “You must keep in mind the needs and wants of your reader, for they will only engage with your writing if they find it relevant and valuable to their own life”. From a technical standpoint, I’d prefer to use ‘he’, ‘she’, or ‘he or she’. From an ethical/political standpoint, however, I certainly don’t want to alienate anybody with my writing, which remains a constant possibility despite one’s best intentions.

So, whilst I worry about the potential for disputes about language to become so extreme that they enter in the territory of irrationality, I’m perfectly content to embrace the singular ‘they’ for the reasons articulated above.

Cheers :)