Most of the time that works fine and I type pretty fast so it isn’t that big a deal to use he or she or (s)he. What prompted the question was a fairly long response I left in another thread where I was defending someone else’s point. Because the screen name didn’t suggest a gender I ended up with an extraordinarily clumsy sentence or two that read something along the lines of:
“The gist of his/her point wasn’t that he/she expected his/her…” and so on.
In the past when this question has been considered it was largely for use in theoretical statements; those statements in which we are referring to a generic gender neutral individual for a hypothetical purpose. Since there aren’t many ramifications of this beyond a low background hum of sexism, it’s not something that was taken too seriously.
But online interaction changes the relevance quite a bit. Because we constantly (or at least increasingly) communicate with people without knowing their gender it inhibits our languages ability to be concise and quick.
Language does not grow by design but rather organically and many people have made the point that we cannot force the language to change. But organic growth begins when we respond to a need. The adoption of the word ‘an’ wasn’t decided in committee, but rather by individuals using it more and more. My guess is that many words will soon compete until one wriggles its way into the popular lexicon.