Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-1937970-20130409070503/@comment-7404610-20130614214154

What you've described is what many people do, in response to the misguided demands of feminists to dethrone the masculine pronoun from use for the singular person of indeterminite gender. They thought that convention somehow privileged men, but in fact the opposite is true.

The problem with your method is that "they" is plural, not singular. Others use "he/she", "he or she", or "s/he", while some have taken to randomly using "she" or "he" when the biological gender is unknown. Others use the stiffly-formal "one", as recommended above. At least it's unequivocally singular, and free from gender ASS|U|ME-ptions.

As I said, I'm old-school. I'll say "We don't know who he is" in both cases. The feminine pronouns indicate either that the person in question is known to be female or is very likely to be. THEY are special, while the masculine is general. But feminists don't like being special. They like being equal.

Having studied how other languages handle gender, I don't get too worked up with the fact that the German word for "girl" ("Mädchen") is gramatically NEUTER, not feminine.