Hi @itrekkie: "In your book?" Went to your profile but didn't see any reference...

@MikeSchinkel You sure had me confused! I didn't see any links in my post! "In my book" is an expression meaning something like, "in my opinion" or "in my experience"; here a bit of both.

Of course Spanish has the benefit of not requiring a pronoun at all.

In Spanish it is becoming increasingly politically incorrect to use "he" as a gender-neutral pronoun. It is also wrong that Spanish does not require a pronoun at all; it does in some cases, and not in some others. The issue of sexist language, and he/she pronoun usage is currently a big controversial topic in Spanish-speaking communities.

@CesarGon: also have this problem in French speaking communities (specifically in Québec). Many (government/school) texts start with a disclaimer stating something like "Use of the masculine form is only intended to lighten the text and encompasses both genders."

Although correct ("his" and "he" are the original gender neutral pronouns) it is becoming uncommon to see this deployed in practice - with a clear swing in academic papers to deliberate use of the word "her" instead. (e.g. The interested reader should continue her studies by doing the exercises at the end of this chapter).

It drifted into common use around the time Chaucer used it in Middle English, and so was already well established when Shakespeare and the KJV used it.

"In everyday speech I will unconsciously use singular "they". In my book, this has unquestionably drifted into very common use in all but the most formal situations." On discussing the subject, it is important to distinguish between a non-specific indefinite person and a specific definite person, though many people don't seem to realize this. Please read my answer(there are two answers of mine. I mean the new one) for the detail.

@AndréCaron, I've seen this in Québec but never in France. Québec seems to want to avoid political annoyances while preserving the grammar; the French seem to put grammar above politics.

As a native speaker of a rather conservative Latin language (Portuguese), I find it ludicrous that people still debate gender politics through the prism of grammar change. It suffices to teach children that the pronoun "he" doesn't mean male (sex/gender), but means "grammatically male". In English you can use "they" because it is by default gender-neutral; in Latin languages there are no neutral plural subject pronouns (just possessive). Children just learn at school that if you have 10 boys and a girl, the subject pronoun ("eles") is (grammatically) masculine.

In my opinion, 'they' is the only acceptable choice, even in the most formal of writing. 'He' is stuffy and outdated, and 's/he' and 'he or she' are eyesores.

@Nothingatall is correct. Using either "he" or "she" excludes non-binary people.

@Joseph The question is, why should the gender-neutral pronoun match the masculine pronoun?

That article adds nothing new. The question is why languages wanting gender-neutral pronouns invariably repurpose the masculine, never the feminine.

-1 for lack of supporting evidence. There is nothing that confirms the OP's statement that "he" is gender-neutral in the 21st century and is exclusively used in academic writing.

@Mari-LouA Yes, quite.