Really? Show this from the past. Just because it is mentioned in the 2017 AP stylebook does not mean it was never used prior to this.No. This is a recent thing in the past decade. Prior to this if there was a story about a driver of a car for instance the media would call the driver him. People in general did this as well.
Sarah just pointed out to me this form of conversation we've always had:
"The shopkeeper was mean to me" - "Oh, what did they say?"
That's just a natural way to speak in such a sentence, where the gender of the individual has not been specified. So it's what we've always said.
Now, it is true that we also have historically substituted "him" - but that is generally in situations when the person is probably male. The CEO of a company is probably male, statistically, so assume "him" until you hear otherwise. It's not that "him" is being used as a generic pronoun, it's that you are assuming their gender is male and using the pronoun you assume is correct. Just as if there is a story about a nurse you'll use "her" until someone clarifies that it was a male nurse - statistically a nurse is probably female so you assume that.
The big problem in all this is that the ruling class is trying to stir up division. A healthy society is one where people don't get overly emotive about little things that annoy them about each other (like what words to use), but let people think what they like provided they don't tell you what to do. This doesn't rock the boat. To upset this balance, the elite push hard on one side of the boat to rock it in one direction - e.g. "everyone must use they". What they are trying to achieve is a backlash, where the people who disagree swing to the opposite extreme - e.g. "nobody must ever use they", and try and tip the boat in the opposite direction. Then they can sit back and watch while the once-stable society tears itself apart, while they get busy doing whatever this was all distracting from.
You're doing exactly what they want you to do.