Would "it" not be singular gender neutral? (Destiny)

by red robber , Crawfish Country, Tuesday, September 29, 2015, 04:49 (3388 days ago) @ Cody Miller

I know we don't normally use "it" for indentifying people, but this seems like a good word for the description. Example: She saw the baby and picked it up.

Curiously this sounds weird when slightly changed: She saw the person and picked it up.

Why would one of these be wrong or even sound wrong when both are essentially identical. We don't know the gender of either the baby or the person. However we do define a person as specifically human where the baby could be another animal or even a seedling plant I suppose. I guess we would assume we know the gender of a person but a baby, whether human or animal, would be more difficult to tell on first observation.

I personally think the use of gender pronouns is more of a way of quickly identifying a person during communication, rather than trying to define who/what someone is. If we all refered to each other by a singular gender neutral pronoun, this would make communication very difficult. Gender is/was usually easy to identify visually, and thus the pronouns evolved.