Thanks for that, grelber!
> "The idea that he, him and his should go both ways caught on and was widely adopted."
That lacks context; "...was widely adopted" when or, as the case may be, during which time-frame?
> "This will surprise a few purists, but for centuries the universal pronoun was they. Writers as far back as Chaucer used it for singular and plural, masculine and feminine. Nobody seemed to mind that they, them and their were officially plural. As Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage explains, writers were comfortable using they with an indefinite pronoun like everybody because it suggested a sexless plural."
Did the authors document the convention's current SOP status, or, if it's not, what current SOP is? (For what it's worth, my 1967 Random House Unabridged calls that usage "nonstandard.")
Personally, my aesthetic sensibilities, and their simplicity and gruesome origins (Richard A. Lupoff's "Space War Blues"), draw me to "se" and "hir."
(This-all may induce me to look into SheepShaver to get my OED back up-and-running. )
