= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
I'm not a statistically significant study, but given "The agent's husband stood up from the table," I would expect pretty much everyone to assume without much effort that the agent was female, but given "The agent led his husband onto the dance floor," I'd expect most people to become confused, and some to assume a gay male agent, and very few to assume a female agent.
That suggests that the "his" gets treated as evidence of the referent's masculinity strong enough to override a strong prior in the other direction.
= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
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That doesn't fix the "flow" issue. When I'm writing, the last thing I want to do is to be flipping through my files, looking for the bit file, etc. etc...
Couldn't you just default to "he" when writing, then when finished, flip a coin (or refer to whatever randomized gender generator you prefer), and go back and change the gender if need be? It wouldn't interrupt the work flow; it would just be a little work after to revise.