The Gender Inclusive Pronoun.

For those of you who do not know, in many languages, including English, when the gender of a particle subject (person) in a sentence is not known, it is the rule of grammar to use the gender inclusive pronoun, 'he'. This is not due to some strange patriarchal oppression of women, as any rabid feminist will immediately cry out, it is merely a law of grammar from a language that was influenced largely by Christianity, a religion that brought women to equal status in society. There is a similar concept in Chinese and Latin as well. (Hence prayers in Mass open with, 'fratres' or 'brothers'.)

Anyway, it irks me when people try to skirt around the laws of grammar to appease some flailing political machinery. So, here's Dr Petter Kreeft on the subject, from a footnote in his book, Socratic Logic:

The use of the traditional inclusive generic pronoun 'he' is a decision of language, not of gender justice. There are only six alternatives. 1) We could use the grammatically misleading and numerically incorrect 'they'. But when we say 'one baby was healthier than the others because they didn't drink milk,' we do not know whether the antecedent of 'they' is 'one' or 'others', so we don't know whether to give or take away the milk. Such language codes could become dangerous to baby's health. 2) Another alternative is the politically intrusive 'in-your-face' generic, 'she,' which I would probably use if I were an angry, politically intrusive, in-your-face woman, but I am not any of those things. 3) Changing the  'he' to 'he or she' refutes itself in such a comically clumsy and ugly revisions as the following: 'What does it profit a man or woman if he or she gains the whole world but loses his or her soul? Or what shall a man or woman give in exchange for his or her soul?' The answer is: he or she will give up his or her linguistic sanity. 4) We could also be both intrusive and clumsy by saying 'she or he'. 5) Or we could use the neuter 'it', which is both dehumanizing and inaccurate. 6) Or we could combine all the linguistic garbage together and use 'she or he or it,' which, abbreviated would, sound like 'sh...it.'

Gotta love Dr Kreeft.