The Wonderful Thing about English (Gender optional)

While surfing deviantART, I came across the journal of a wonderful artist from Denmark who was trying to help out an English friend. Apparently, the English girl was writing a story about a race of aliens who existed without gender. There are no boys or girls on this planet, thus, the native tongue--which is strikingly similar to English--has no 'he's or 'she's. This is where the friend met her dilemma. In the English language, it's nearly impossible to refer to others in the third person without using gender, so how were her extra terrestrials supposed to communicate? She came to the conclusion that the only solution would be to use gender neutral words from other languages, which is why her popular danish friend was asking her international audience if they knew of any such words. But while other people were asking "What about other languages?" I was asking, "What about this language?" Why would one want to learn a whole new language for the sake of being gender neutral when they can be gender neutral in their own language? I thought hard about what I know about, not only gender, but pronouns, words that can replace pronouns, and the flexibility of the structure of a sentence in the English language, and here's what I came up with:

There are, in fact, at least several gender neutral pronouns in the English language. "You" is gender neutral, as well as 'they', 'them', 'their', 'they're' and 'that person/those people.' I'll admit that there aren't too many I can think of, but those that I can have a multitude of uses. Trust me, you can get really far with a simple 'they'. I've found myself in many situations where I'm talking to or about a person who's gender is unknown to me for one reason or other and I've had to refer to that person as 'they' or 'them' instead of 'he' or 'she'. That trick has even been used on me on a number of occasions as well, since the screen names I use online (FoolsEnigma, SkyeLunus, SecretsForgotten, etc.) tend to lean to the gender-neutral side, and I've been mistaken for a boy on several occasions.

Using a person's actual name instead of 'he', 'she', 'they', or 'them' is also pretty effective, and even necessary in a situation where you are referring to more than one person at a time. For example, this is a normal conversation where gender is apparent:

Person 1: "Did you hear about Jordan and Kendell?"
Person 2: "No, what happened?"
Person 1: "Well, Jordan said that she wanted to [insert something here], but he didn't want to do that, he wanted to [insert something else here]. She got totally upset and yelled at him, and somehow 'accidentally' dumped her nachos in his hair!"

This is a conversation where the gender apparent words (he and she) are replaced with 'they', 'their' and other variations of those words.

Person 1: "Did you hear about Jordan and Kendell?"
Person 2: "No, what happened?"
Person 1: "Well, Jordan said that they wanted to [insert something here], but they didn't want to do that, they wanted to [insert something else here]. They got totally upset and yelled at them, and somehow 'accidentally' dumped their nachos in their hair!"

I'm sure I'm not the only one who thinks this conversation sounds pretty jacked up. It's impossible to tell who is being referred to now, to the point where it sounds like someone attacked them self with melted cheese. It would be impossible to follow a conversation this way.
Now here's the version with the names used in place of some of the pronouns.

Person 1: "Did you hear about Jordan and Kendell?"
Person 2: "No, what happened?"
Person 1: "Well, Jordan said that they wanted to [insert something here], but Kendell didn't want to do that, Kendell wanted to [insert something else here]. Jordan got totally upset and yelled at them, and somehow Jordan 'accidentally' dumped their nachos in Kendell's hair!"

A lot less wacked up than before, and still gender neutral. In fact, I used gender neutral names, so if I'd never specified genders in the first version of the conversation, it would be a lot harder to tell who's which gender, or even whether 'Jordan' and 'Kendell' are different genders in the first place.
Of course, it's not perfect, but that's why humans were given the power to revise.

Person 1: "Did you hear about Jordan and Kendell?"
Person 2: "No, what happened?"
Person 1: "Well, Jordan wanted to [insert something here], but Kendell wanted to [insert something else here]. Jordan got totally upset and yelled at Kendell, and somehow Jordan's nachos 'accidentally' ended up in Kendell's hair!"
Person 2: "Omg!"


It's not impossible to be completely gender neutral in the English language. In fact, it's kind of easy, and even necessary in some situations. I would even say one could write an entire novel about a gender neutral race that speaks in a language startlingly similar to English, with the exception of it's fewer amount of pronouns, without using 'he' or 'she' once, provided the author has enough patience.

And  that is all I know about writing without gender in the English language.