Graduated early 2000s. Gender neutral “he” was taught as correct throughout primary and secondary school, neither “they” nor “she” was permitted. “She” didn’t b

Graduated early 2000s. Gender neutral “he” was taught as correct throughout primary and secondary school, neither “they” nor “she” was permitted. “She” didn’t become common in writing-in-the-wild until after 2010. You’d see it in academic writing occasionally before then, or explicitly feminist pieces maybe. “They” was more common but came off as very informal or low-register (to those taught the other way, at least). It did take me a long time to stop going “wait, who? I missed who we’re talking about” and start searching backwards in the text when encountering gender-neutral “she”. Did indeed make things hard to read for years.