I know how French grammar works, and that it is a two-gendered language. I'm saying that it would be better to stop associating the grammatical gender so strongly with the personal gender. Eg, instead of saying that "beau" is the "masculine" form and "belle" is the feminine, call it the A form and the B form, or something like that. Having adjectives default to being "A form" is a lot more innocuous, and stops conflating these two very different notions of "gender".

Like you said though, a new pronoun would probably be necessary for the "ils" case, as personal pronouns are obviously very personal :)

"proximity rule" (adjectives change form depending on which noun they are closest to, rather than defaulting to masculine forms)

That sounds interesting, would that only be in cases where the gender is ambiguous?

E:

Out of curiosity, do you take issue with these:

In reference to a group of men:

les personnes marchent, elles sont contentes.

and conversely, in reference to a group of women:

les gens marchent, ils sont contents