>From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-neutral_language_in_English
>
>Pronouns [edit]
>See also: Gender-neutral pronoun
>The use of masculine pronouns to refer to antecedents of mixed or indeterminate gender, while traditional, is a target of frequent criticism by proponents of gender-neutral language. Critics of the use of the generic "he" argue that this usage was invented and propagated by men, such as Thomas Wilson and Joshua Poole, whose explicit goal was the linguistic representation of men's superiority.[18] The use of the generic "he" was in fact enforced by an Act of Parliament[19] and, despite its putative inclusiveness, has been used to deny women's entry into professions and schools.[5]
>Proposed alternatives to the generic "he" include "he or she" (or "she or he"), "s/he", or the use of "they" in the singular; each of these alternatives has met with objections. Some feel the use of the singular "they" sounds like a grammatical error, but according to some references, "they", "their", and "them" have long been grammatically acceptable as gender-neutral singular pronouns in English:


This is a very weird argumentation, and it shows how incorrect or irrelevant Wikipedia often is, (or at least the source they quote).
First of all, the use of the generic "he" has not been "invented" by these gentlemen, it is a cultural/linguistic development where certain words are used as placeholders as default for an unknown, and that long before those two people were even born. If you were to look for an "inventor" you have to go back several thousands years ago, because even in the Book of Genesis the masculine would have been used as default denominator for male and female:
In Genesis 5:2 for instance it says "Male and female created he them; and blessed them, and called their name Adam, in the day when they were created.

Secondly, only because bad people propagate an idea does not make the idea itself bad, this is a very uneducated way to deal with what is acceptable and what is not.

Notice that I do not criticize the issue itself, but I criticize the reasoning in this article, and we should be careful not to blindly accept things only because they are written in a "dictionary".