In English, the singular "they" is gender-neutral.
I love it!
As for the claim that "literally" ever means "figuratively", I have never encountered that use - including in examples offered by those who claim its existence. Literally is sometimes used in figurative circumstance, but I would argue the use is hyperbolic - in the same way we don't say "'days' sometimes means 'minutes'" because people say "I've been waiting for you for days". I have never seen an example that would not have been understood to be figurative but for the addition of "literally".
Then again, I'm a grammatical traditionalist: I consider English to not have a male gender, but rather the three genders "inanimate", "female", and "animate".
The prescriptivists have lost this debate, comprehensively. There may be a language that lacks a gender-neutral singular "they", but it isn't English.
I think novelty is a bad choice of word here, as that has a connotation of being related to time and exposure, which makes your statement seem somewhat contradictory... I think the word "controversial" that Thomas uses is more appropriate. I'll continue as if you had used that instead.
I do agree, that length of attestation does not necessarily mean a feature is non-controversial. But I do think it is likely a prerequisite for being non-controversial, precisely because it allows the usage to be non-novel.
Ironically for a grammatical traditionalist making a comment about grammar, this sentence is not grammatically correct.
And you're completely ignoring my substantive point that the fact that someone is technically a criminal does not mean that he actually deserves the full force and power of the State to bear down on him.
From the same page: 'In some situations, an individual may be known but referred to using the pronoun they. This may occur because the individual's gender is unknown to the speaker, or because the gender is non-binary or genderqueer, so that they regard both masculine and feminine pronouns as inappropriate and thus prefer to be referred to as they.'
Mr. Wisenberg's gender is known and he presents as a man in his profile; there is no reason to use 'they' instead of 'he,' and thus it's simply wrong to do so.
I don't think you intended to be rude to him by failing to use the correct pronoun, but I believe you were.
And, again, you continue to ignore the substantive point.
† (in my case: I used "they" because I didn't know or care to learn the gender).
Singular "they" has been used for centuries. Chaucer used it. It wasn't always meticulously used to identify people who don't fit into traditional gender roles. "He" is certainly acceptable for "person without identifying gender," but so is "they."