Gender-Neutral Pronouns: the Writer's Dilemma

What's the best way to deal with gender in written English? I've tried a few different strategies over my life and career, with varying types of success.

• Traditional approach. This is what I was taught, and I stuck with it stubbornly for quite some time: if you're not sure of the gender, use the masculine as it implies both. Sounds reasonable enough to me, but I'm a man so I don't know that the 51% who are not would agree. When this technique is turned on its ear and the feminine pronouns are used as generic, I feel a bit left out, so this probably isn't very useful. I still use it sometimes, but it makes me feel self-conscious.
  
• Inclusionist. Using "his or her" and "he/she" in every instance. I don't know how said it, but "slashing isn't the answer, violence never is." This technique is grammatically correct but stylistically ungainly.
• Switch-hitting. This is the technique of deliberately alternating between the two genders throughout a document. As a reader it gives me the sense that the writer is talking about a new person; I find it distracting.
• Singular they. This used to be my absolute favorite solution to the gender-in-writing question; it's used informally quite widely and I believe it is the most likely form to become standard for the next generation. However, I share my life with an English teacher, and she's done an excellent job of making it tough for me to write formally with this informal style.
• Made-up words. There have been a couple of different gender-neutral pronoun sets proposed. I don't think the one that uses "ze" and such will ever make much headway, but the Spivak pronouns may have a shot. They're based on the singular they, and are formed by dropping the "th" from the plural pronoun. Since they're close to an existing informal usage, and are easy to understand, I wouldn't be upset if they gained traction.
• Neutralizing words. Having someone address the "chair" instead of the "chairman" really is quite silly. Converting other -man words into -person words is quite common, but it adds to the clumsiness of the language.

It's interesting that the many of the Romance languages ascribe a gender to every noun. I wonder how that particular practice got related to the word "gender" at all, being that most nouns don't describe things that could be tied to any masculine or feminine traits. Some blog comments I've read indicate that Hungarian doesn't use gender at all, so clearly the use of gender in language is all over the map.

Language is both a mold for and a reflection of culture. I want my writing to be articulate, smooth, and appropriate for its intended audience. I can't just default to "he" in the 21st century if I want to achieve those goals, and most of the available alternatives only replace one problem with another. I'm sure a gender-neutral standard will emerge, but language evolves based on the collective will of hundreds of millions of people, so that standard isn't going to be quick, and it isn't going to be forced. My fellow writers and I are just going to have to do our best until the fog clears.