> considerations of gender do not obscure and, in fact, have merit

I certainly think there is merit in making communication more accessible to everyone and that GN language can facilitate that. My point was that it isn't all that black and white. Clearly there are *some cases where GN versions do obscure the direct meaning or complicate matters (see above). Oh, well. Touchy topic, no doubt. I don't see all the advocates of PC and GN language come to the rescue when people get into linguistic quagmires over certain wording, but they come runnning when they find a combination of letters with 'man' in it though. Maybe we should just ban all but 'it' as a 3rd person next;-)