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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/33893
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

While my knowledge of hebrew is exactly zero, my native language is also gendered and also uses the male as the "fallback" option.

10+ years ago, using the male would have been the normal and accepted solution. Recently, with the introduction of heavily gender-normaled language constructs, this might not necessarily go well anymore, especially if the character is later revealed to be female.

However, I personally agree with you that gender-neutral constructions are generally unwieldy and seem artificial.

In my language, in many cases you can rephrase a sentence and grammatically eliminate the pronoun. e.g. instead of writing "how is he/she?"" you could write "how are they?" with a false plural. You could also use the formal version of "you", which is gender-neutral in my language.

By thinking laterally, you can avoid the gender-specific pronoun in many cases. Check if such an option is available here, even if it means changing the actual sentence a bit. Translations do not have to be literal.

If there is no such way, I would also go with your initial hunch and use the standard fallback.

Original score: 9