When we dead awaken  

I hadn't intended to write another post on this, but Hei Lun over at Begging to Differ has gone and called my pet option - ie using she as the unmarked third person pronoun - "butchering the English language". First of all, this has become standard in a lot of social science literature, so it's not really surprising that Hei Lun's professor used it. But the fact that it was used in reference to a hypothetical president makes all the difference - this is precisely the context where it's important.

Most people would accept: he/she = unmarked/marked. The problem is that he also has a marked sense in other grammatical contexts, so there's the danger that he will be seen as exemplary rather than gender-neutral. Using she as the unmarked form has precisely the same problem, except that there's a benefit too. He/she = unmarked/marked is dangerously close to male/female = unmarked/marked. Using she offsets the language from that underlying conception. When you're talking about the president, the underlying idea we (or at least I) don't want to match with our language is that a woman couldn't be the president. Saying he reinforces it.

By the way, I should say that I'm not at all opposed to the use of they in this context. My sense is that even without all the historical and reference book evidence people have cited, it's clear just from the variation that we're in a period of linguistic change on this point. I have no doubt that eventually they will be standard. I just don't see anything wrong with using language to encourage social change in the meantime...

MORE: BTD Greg points out (in comments) that Hei Lun wasn't referring to presidents generally, but past presidents, who are all male. And Will Baude emails to say that Shakespeare uses they even in cases where the antecedent has a determined gender:

There's not a man I meet but doth salute me,
As if I were their well-acquainted friend.