[pooper]

> I agree! But that's a terrible example of it, IMO. Singular they should be used when the gender is unknown or not stated, or at least that's how I use it. It flows rather well in speech too for the most part, but if you know the gender then it causes a bit of cognitive dissonance.

Yes, I got a little carried away. I was trying to say that there are cases where gender of the person is not important. I was trying to come up with a case where the person's gender was not important. In hindsight, since there have been no female POTUS I guess the gender is still relevant.

A little off topic, I respect Barack Obama (not being sarcastic at all even though I probably disagree with him on more issues than I agree with him) and can imagine where he is coming from.

In post-mortem, I'd imagine I was thinking in terms of something like an Overton window where I suggest something so outlandish hoping that we'd settle somewhere saner in between...