To those who object to the prevailing use (except by stern TV journalists and nitpicking academics) of the plural pronoun following a singular antecedent, I say everyone should talk the way they want.

     Given this freedom, let us reword some proverbs:  Anybody who stumbles twice over one stone, deserves to break their shins.  A fool should not have their own axe.  Every person is the offspring of their own works.  Who spits against the wind, spits in their own face. If thine enemy hungers, feed them; if they thirst, give them drink.  Happiness belongs to them who earns it. And, of course, inevitably: A fool and their money are soon parted.

     Do these feel like sand in your teeth?  Do they make you cry out "Zounds! What abominations are these?"

    The reason behind this warp in pronoun usage is, obviously, the desire of the speaker (fearful of gender discrimination) to avoid doing the diligence of saying “he or she,” therefore causing a disruption in the flow of the sentence.  Used more than once, in fact, it could distract the listener from absorbing the message and cause them to fall face forward into their rhubarb pie.

     I would propose a solution, though I have no slightest hope of its ever catching on amongst the populace.  Let lawyers and writers carry on as they always have.  Upon those others, let us try to foist the term (which is already being bandied about) Shehee pronounced as written or written as she/he, an elision as musical and graceful as, say, Sh'boom. 

      See?  It is possible to avoid sexist language and not cause tics to develop in the face of the listener.     #