"He or She", "S/he", or "They"

Dear Dr. Plume,

      I am trying to write this English paper and I am having serious problems figuring out whether to write ‘he or she’, ‘s/he’, or ‘they’. Pronouns are soooooo confusing.

                                                                             -Kristie in Torrence, CA
Dear Kristie,

      When reading your letter, I was very much on board with you for that first sentence. Appropriate pronoun usage in our language can sometimes be a tricky thing.
      And then you lost me with your nearly delirious use of the letter ‘o’. It is a miracle that this email was not sent to me via text message accompanied by a bunch of punctuation representing idiotic facial expressions.
      Pronouns can be quite complicated, particularly concerning this rule, which has the unfortunate distinction of being marred by general ambiguity and the nonsensical hammer of political correctness. This problem is a huge salmagundi. (Salmagundi means mess, for those of you unfamiliar with 1920s vocabulary.)
      Earlier in this century, it was possible to just say “he” because as a culture we had an overt understanding that men are smarter and more important than women. This understanding has begun to be complicated by many women who profess its “inaccuracy.” I was quite happy with the old way, but modern feminism has really taken it’s toll on our language.
      In 2004, there was an agreement made by the Modern Language Association that just saying “he” is no longer acceptable. Here is my analysis of the alternatives, none of which have risen to total prominence:

      - “He or she”: This is just ugly to look at. Plus, you’re taking a pronoun and adding a conjunction and then another pronoun and calling the whole salmagundi a pronoun. It’s an additional five letters. That’s ludicrous. Almost as ludicrous as adding five additional o’s on the word ‘so’ just for emphasis. It’s far too long/dumb.

      - ‘S/he’: Frankly, that makes me frightened. What the hell is that? It reminds me of another word, my encounter with which I have often tried to burn from my memory. When this debate first began, I was phoned by the MLA and I suggested we use a new pronoun that I thought I had invented: ‘shemale.’ One of my teaching assistants at the time pointed out, correctly as I soon discovered, that, in fact, shemale was already a word that was being used, though in ‘other contexts.’       Being the good researcher that I am, I turned to Google for an answer to this.
      I…That day… Look, this was 20 minutes of my life that I am sure I will never forget nor recover from. If you don’t know what that word means please do the following:
      1) Set a video camera up on a tripod and face it towards you next to the computer. 2) Press record and go to Google and look up the world ‘shemale.’ 3) Since you won’t be eating a meal any time soon, get an envelope, take the video tape, and mail it to me so that I can add it to a montage I’m working on entitled “People’s Reactions When First Learning What the Word Shemale Means.”

      - ‘They’: This is the most ok for me, but the least correct because you are forcing the plural on something that is not a plural. I do not force things on unsuspecting, defenseless words and then pretend that they were “just asking for it.”

      As you can imagine, after the whole “shemale” salmagundi, I was quite hesitant to champion a new gender encompassing word for this purpose. But recently, I, after much thought and tinkering, have adopted a new term that I have been injecting into my scholarly research. Here is an sample sentence:
      “If you know someone who thinks Schopenhauer knew what he was talking about regarding metaphysics, tell hefemale to come find me so that I can slap some sense in to himfemale.”
      Catchy, succinct, and you won’t feel the need burn your eyes out with lye when you do a Google search for it.

                                                                             Very Truly Yours Me,
                                                                             Dr. Douglas H. Plume*