It started out innocently enough. Someone made a comment about a theoretical alien who has one of seven genders and used the pronoun "he". So, I headdesked.

/u/TheF0CTOR replied, ready to make sure I knew that:

"he" is the most gender neutral when taking all human languages'.

A non-gender neutral pronoun in English, is the MOST gender neutral in ALL of human language.

Besides

"He" and "she" don't have as much relation to gender as they do with humans.

There are two ways to read that sentence. One, is that "he" and "she" are markers of being human and not gendered pronouns. The second, kinder way, is that "he" and "she" are only gendered pronouns when discussing humans. Either way.....wtf? I can't even...

Wait, there's more! Bring on the French explanation of English grammar:

Maybe I didn't explain well enough. Let's go back to French.

Il - he

Elle - she

Ils - they (M)

Elles - they (F)

Elles can only refer to a group of females. However, ils can refer to either a group of only males, or a group of males and females, thus it is more gender neutral.

Get it now?

No? Well, let /u/TheF0CTOR explain:

French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese are all Romance languages. Much of English is based loosely on parts of these four languages.

link

*headesks endlessly*