Referring to chess players with the general "he"

It's more a habit and poor use of the english language, rather than the established patriarchy striking down on you poor western women. Maybe you could do a study about it and talk with the other humanists? Here we play chess.

How about "thon", Scottish for "that one"?

i don't believe the word "he" is inherently sexist just as the word "black" isn't racist... i think a lot of people will default to masculine form of words if the target gender is unknown, or they will use ambiguous words like "they" .. I think its unhealthy for people to focus on sexism, racism and other ism's because "they" tend to just focus on those things and the actual message gets lost as that person becomes enraged... too many people walking around that get enraged by words and that is never a good thing

The generic "he" has always been grammatically correct, and is considered inclusive. "They" is plural. Invented pronouns are garbage.

If you have to qualify the word "correct" with the word "politically," whatever you are saying is probably 100% ideology and 0% correct.

Take it as a compliment

As post 14 said, "he" is indeed the correct pronoun when referring to an individual of an unknown gender.
English has two gender forms in third-person pronouns: masculine (e.g. he, him, his) and feminine (e.g. she, her, hers)

"They", "them", etc. are all third person plural pronouns, and are thus inappropriate when referring to an individual.
"It" is not appropriate to use for humans. If the subject has a gender, then it* should be referred to as "he" or "she"

Ugly attempts to construct pronouns that include both genders end up being stupid. "He/she" would imply that both pronouns are applicable. "He or she" creates ambiguity-- are you distinguishing between two individuals, or two genders? "(S)he" and similar grammatical atrocities are pointless, since the whole point of parentheses is to seperate important information from less vital information. It's also important to note that an end parenthesis marks a break between words, so it would be pronounced "s-he," which isn't a pronoun.

In Modern English, masculine pronouns are the default. For example, it's perfectly acceptable (and common) to refer to a mixed group with the masculine "guys", but referring to the group as "girls" is not acceptable. This isn't exclusive to English, either. Compare the Spanish "nosotros/nosotras"-- masculine, if applicable, takes precedence.

The current movement away from the correct use of "he" in unknown gender circumstances only serves to obfuscate the language. This is, frankly, stupid, since the point of language is to aid in communication, not to emotionally placate one's conversation partner.

If you find yourself becoming offended by this longstanding custom, you can also think of it this way: "he(1)" refers a male, while "he(2)" refers to an individual of unknown gender. They can be effectively considered homonyms.

*Interesting point of discussion: should I have used "he" in this case?

@pylgrim Yes but these aren't pronouns which is what you would use later in a sentence after you've clarified that you're talking about white or black

@clousems Please go outside. "They" is universally accepted as a third-person pronoun at least subconsciously. Some people are just weird about it.

What sounds more correct, intuitively?

"Someone left their keys here. What were they doing here anyway?"

"Someone left his keys here. What was he doing here anyway?"

It's the first one unless you try to be weird and think consciously about it too much and try to argue about grammar.

#19:
Sorry, but no. "They" is a third person plural pronoun, not a singular pronoun.
Also, both those examples involve a sentence ending in a preposition.
As for your question, you actually illustrate the problem with using "they" as a singular pronoun quite well in your first example. "They" properly refers to the keys, not the owner.