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Well, I've always written papers saying they, or you instead of he and she. Proper English says that a sentence is to be written "He or she", which is very tedious, especially when used many times in a short duration. "They" might not be proper, but at least it isn't tedious and everyone knows what you're talking about. Doesn't common usage become the rule eventually?
When gender is not unknown, I prefer to use the identifying term since it provides more information to whatever is being described. We know how men generally behave, and we know how women generally behave. If a woman robbed a bank, stole a car, and went on a high speed chase, I'm more interested to know it was a woman than simply a person as that is unusual behavior for a woman.
Can you imagine a 911 call where the operators first question "is the person male or female". Well, they haven't announced the pronoun I should use yet, so I'll have to decline to answer. Heck, they haven't identified a species yet either, so I can't even tell you they are human.
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