A friend just passed on for comment this piece from last summer where New York Times opinionist Farhad Manjoo says:
It’s Time for ‘They’ –The singular “they” is inclusive and flexible, and it breaks the stifling prison of gender expectations. Let’s all use it.
But I think it better to go with the second sentence of his subtitle.
There is good reason for distinguishing between singular and plural references and we already have a perfectly good genderless singular pronoun. So why not use it?
In English it may at first sound heartless to refer to people in the same way as we do things, but the French and others have always done the opposite (which by reflexiveness of equality is of course the same).