Two of your beliefs about English are demonstrably wrong, in a good way. First, singular "they" isn't a recent construct: it goes back at least to Chaucer and n

Two of your beliefs about English are demonstrably wrong, in a good way. First, singular "they" isn't a recent construct: it goes back at least to Chaucer and never fell out of use. Second, it has never been "an established point" of English grammar to use generic "he"; that one was a prescriptivist construct, introduced by grammarians in the 18th century, most prominently by an author (and entrepreneur!) named Ann Fisher as well as by the perhaps aptly named Sir Charles Coote. You'll find many sources on all this if you plug "singular they" into HNSearch (or Google for that matter), but this article is good on Fisher: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/26/magazine/26FOB-onlanguage-t.html http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/26/magazine/26FOB-onlanguage-.... The point is that singular "they" is actually more authentic and more historical English than generic "he" is. That's why I said you were wrong in a good way: there's no conflict at all between inclusive language and good English, and never has been. The language has had an answer for this all along; it was generic "he" that was the interloper, and this was at least partly for ideological reasons—the British parliament even passed a bill in 1850 mandating it! So the ideologues and outrage addicts have been at this for a long time. They just switched sides at some point.