Some argue that for the modern world, a binary distinction between he and she just doesn't cut it. What about all those occasions where we need to talk about someone without mentioning their gender, perhaps because we don't know it? If someone mentions their friend Alex to you, for example, how will you know if he or she is in fact a he or a she?
Not only this, but think about the large number of people who don't identify themselves as either male or female. What are you supposed to do in that situation?
In fact, over the years there have actually been multiple attempts to introduce a gender-neutral pronoun, or one removed from traditional gender classification, into the English language. The truth, however, is that they have all perfectly and successfully failed. I will tell you why. First of all, the pronouns that have been proposed are truly ridiculous. In the 1800s, "thon", a contraction of "that one" was proposed as the pronoun that we have been missing all of these years. But honestly, can you imagine the reaction of that friend Alex of yours when he, or she, is called "that one"?! Soon enough, "je, ve, zhe, ze" followed as further proposals, but come on, hardly creative, are they? These are far too close to the original "he" and "she" that they sound like we can't speak properly rather than sounding genderless.
Secondly, the class of words that we call pronouns is actually closed for business. It is what we linguists call a closed category of words. No matter how hard we try to make a new pronoun, it will never become integrated into this category on a worldwide scale. Of course English still creates new words, new nouns and verbs crop up all the time, but pronouns? They never do. We can't create a new pronoun without widespread acceptance and a long, arduous integration process.
However, don't be alarmed, there can be a way that we refer to someone in a genderless way. In fact, we can cut out all the effort and use what we already have. Ok, I know most people won't approve of being called "it", and I'm not proposing that, but what we can, and in fact are doing, is to turn "they" into a singular pronoun. "They" is already in the vernacular, thus eliminating the need for an integration process, plus our good old friend Alex is much less likely to bat an eyelid at being called "they".
Therefore, do we need a gender-neutral pronoun in English? No, we already have one.
source: Original Guardian Article