“Anyone who has a question should raise his hand. Notwithstanding anything to the contrary, the usage of any pronouns are, to the extent the context requires, used in the generic form rather than the gender specific form.”
Problem solved. In a much better way.
Seriously, nobody is saying that the generic person is a man. There just has to be a generic form, and somebody I don’t know when started using the male form.
Maybe the english language used to have only a male form which was used for everybody (and naturally wasn’t male or female then), and then a female form was added but they kept the male form for generic use. I don’t know. Notice that English doesn’t have gender specific plural forms but other languages (hebrew) do. It’s a linguistic fluke. What’s the difference?
Why does this itch you so bad? Do you think men care that aircraft carriers and fighter jets are all female? I can tell you that it has never once occurred to me to care. (Although I tend to agree that Corollas are female.)
When someone says, “if anyone has a question, he should raise his hand” to a mixed audience–you assume he only means men should raise their hands? No. So what’s the issue?
And do you assume that my question in the previous paragraph is only asked by a man? No.