A pause from the political to ponder language:

An article from Vocabula review posits that perhaps we ought to legitimize in formal writing the informal practice of using "they" as a singular pronoun referring to sex-indefinite antecedents. [link] The author poses two sentences and asks what third-person reflexive pronoun readers would use to complete the sentences in speech versus in writing:

"Everyone saw me before I saw ____."

and

"It's annoying when someone constantly pats ______ on the back."

The first sentence demonstrates the absurdity of denying the singular "they (them)", since it would be unnatural to say "everyone saw me before I saw him", not to mention that that phrasing introduces an ambiguity in the sentence -- did everyone see me before I saw a specific, though unnamed, third person (the "him" in question), or did each person in the group see me before I saw that person?

The second sentence shows the implicit sexism in the use of "himself". It is annoying when someone pats himself on the back, but what about when someone pats herself on the back? Using "himself or herself" to fix the problem still sounds awkward, and the implicitly hyphenated "him- or herself" is no better. In common use, interestingly, the author noted that most respondents in her survey filled the blank with the seemingly incongruous "themself". While awkward looking, she noted, the majority of respondents seemed to think that it fit, the rules be damned.

One solution that the writer did not discuss, interestingly, was wholesale revision to both sentences ("They all saw me before I saw them" and "It's annoying when people pat themselves on their backs"). Revising the sentences to make them plural would preserve their meanings but avoid the gender problem at the same time.

This latter advice is the advice that I try to follow in my formal writing, at least until there is a consensus among linguists that is both gender-neutral and widely accepted.

Sure, it's the coward's way out, but better a gender-neutral coward than a sexist brave soul, right? Everyone prefers it that way, don't they doesn't he (ahh, screw it).