sexist pronouns can be funny

Of course, no one wants to be openly sexist. So, attorneys stray from the most concise and accurate way of saying something to avoid "sexist" pronouns. The "politically correct" solutions to this problem can be outright annoying: Solutions like "he or she" and "her or him" are distracting, "s/he" is unpronounceable, and "one" sounds stilted and produces clumsy repetition due to its lack of a plural form: "One trims one's nails."

An acceptable way to avoid sexist pronouns (so I've been told) is to simply replace "he" with "she." I sometimes use this method because it is the shortest way around the problem and doesn't force me to otherwise butcherize the language ("If a person does something bad, they should pay the consequences.").

Well, I have to laugh at the irony when the political-correctness effort backfires. I used the "she" solution in the following sentence: "The renter of a car asserts total control over the vehicle for a period of time and can surely be liable if, while driving, she gets into an accident." But it's a paradox -- is this sexist because it assumes that because there was a car accident, a woman was involved? Or would it be sexist to go ahead and use the old school "he" prounoun? When this issue came to my attention, I left the "she" in there because it's a mildly funny joke, albeit an inside joke with myself.

Really the issue here is are/should grammar rules -- and rules in general -- be open to interpretation? Or or they hard-and-fast? ("That's what she said. Or he said." Michael Scott.)

Also, this reminds me of the following sequence from the "Women's Appreciation" episode of The Office:

Michael: [Meredith parking the car] I don't think she's gonna make it. Don't think she's gonna make it - [metal scraping]
Meredith: It's a little too tight. I'm gonna find another spot.
Michael: Many women are competent drivers. [scraping] OK. Come on.

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