Pronoun problem

For a long time, people have been searching for gender-neutral singular pronouns. How long? Consider this scene from Monty Python’s Life of Brian:

Judith: Any Anti-Imperialist group like ours must *reflect* such a divergence of interests within its power-base.
Reg: Agreed. (General nodding.) Francis?
Francis: I think Judith's point of view is valid here, Reg, provided the Movement never forgets that it is the inalienable right of every man--
Stan: Or woman.
Francis: Or woman...to rid himself--
Stan: Or herself.
Reg: Or herself. Agreed. Thank you, brother.
Stan: Or sister.
Francis: Thank you, brother. Or sister. Where was I?
Reg: I thought you'd finished.
Francis: Oh, did I? Right.
Reg: Furthermore, it is the birthright of every man ...
Stan: Or woman.
Reg: Why don't you shut up about women, Stan, you're putting us off.

The problem is you don’t always know whether your reader is like Stan or like Reg. Use masculine pronouns to refer to both men and women, and you risk offending Stan. Strive for political correctness, and you risk offending Reg.

One solution: Let gender-neutral plural pronouns do double-duty as singular pronouns. Traditionalists don’t like this solution. But they may be surprised to learn that this usage dates back to Chaucer, and that use of masculine pronouns to refer to both sexes is a relatively recent innovation—only a couple hundred years old. Language mavens Patricia O’Conner and Stewart Kellerman explain in this article for the N.Y. Time Magazine.

Comments

[Mister Thorne]

Which is correct?

"If anyone has a headache, then they ARE in need of an aspirin."

""If anyone has a headache, then they IS in need of an aspirin."

Should we conjugate the singular as singular?

[Ray Ward]

MT: I don’t know the answer to your question. But I will pass along something that Ernie Svenson posted on Twitter: “NOLA slang: ‘an dey put dat ten dollar in dey pocket’”

[Kasey Libby]

If I remember by study of Spanish and Latin correctly, the default gender value of an adjective when studying was always in the masculine. I am on the side of Reg. It is ridiculous to require a speaker or writer to constantly have to cover himself from the PC police by constantly referring to "he or she" and "him or her." The next complaint will be that "she" should come before "he" in the lineup because "he or she" assumes man always comes first. There is no pleasing such people, and if a person cannot figure out whether a person is referring to a generic person rather than only men based on the context, either the writer has made some other mistake or the reader needs remedial classes in English.

Likewise, why turn the whole matter over to plural so we can refer to "they," or to something even worse, "a person" or "one." It just makes the speaking or writing more cumbersome.