Funny, I read through the article and didn't even notice that it barely addresses "Why It Is Important". I wonder if the author took it for granted and overlook

Funny, I read through the article and didn't even notice that it barely addresses "Why It Is Important". I wonder if the author took it for granted and overlooked the real justification part. I did find it a useful little article for people who are already on-board with the idea, though, especially the discussion of "themself", which I've been uneasy with. My take: There's no good reason for English to require you to specify gender in certain grammatical forms, and there are plenty of real-world situations where it is either awkward or nonsensical. Sometimes it's a hypothetical person who obviously doesn't have a gender, sometimes it's one of a group of people of mixed gender, sometimes you can't visually tell the gender of the person (and obviously you can never visually tell what pronoun they prefer), sometimes all you have is the person's name, which often isn't enough to know gender. For most people and in most situations, it's usually not a big deal (though it's a little extra unnecessary overhead and chance for awkwardness), but for some people, it's repeatedly disheartening when others misgender them. A singular pronoun for "that person" is a completely valid concept, and more than deserving of a word in English, and I think English would be a better language if that was the default way to refer to people.