The call for a gender-neutral singular pronoun is a fight which has been backed by a number of different advocates for hundreds of years. Using gender-specific pronouns such as ‘he’ and ‘she’ have a number of different disadvantages, both from a linguistic and broader societal level.
On a base semantic level, ‘his’ and ‘her’ create unnecessary and inaccurate meanings to sentences. The Daily Mail named this example in a 2009 article: 'If an MP steals taxpayers' money, he or she should be ashamed of himself or herself.' The third person pronouns cause the sentence to be overstuffed and unspecific. This is just one sentence. Imagine a whole book or article written in a similar attempt to apply to both genders, and you will see the reason why huge numbers of writers are clamouring for change.
Another major driving force for the change is from advocates of those who do not identify with either gender. Lacking a gender-neutral pronoun means that those who see gender as a construct are forced to identify in language as a gender that they do not in actuality identify with. It also means that everything from articles, instruction booklets and recipes can come across as subtly exclusionary or gender biased, by the mere inclusion of a singular gender pronoun.
Over the years there have been a number of suggestions about pronouns that could fulfil this role. This enlightening blog by Dennis Baron reveals conversations about this subject dating back over 150 years, but it seems that we are little closer to having a uniformly accepted answer.
Ne, Ve, Spivak, Ze, Zie, Xe have all been suggested at one point or another with varying degrees of success. Recently some universities in America made headlines when they announced that they would be adding gender neutral pronouns to their registration process, and encouraging students to respect and use everyone's preferred terms. The University of Vermont has led the change, including "he," "she," "they," and "ze," as well as "name only" (for people who don't wish to be referred to by any third person pronoun, only their name) on their forms.
With continued pressure from writers, feminists, LGBT enthusiasts, no-atheists (who see their God or Gods as gender neutral) and various other parties, it seems that though the process of forcibly inputting these phrases into general conversation has been difficult, there might finally be some traction.
For those who are uncertain on how to approach gender neutral parties, the Trans Media Watch style guide suggest that “simply referring to people in the way they refer to themselves is usually the best way to accurately report their identity.”
