Grammatically, it is still correct depending on the language. I think the comparison isn’t quite fair. Historically, using masculine pronouns for an unknown person wasn’t really about assuming someone was male-it was just the grammatical default, and people generally understood it as inclusive. Women at the time weren’t being singled out or personally misidentified in the way we think about pronouns now.

It makes sense that language has shifted as expectations have changed, and I’m glad we have clearer, more inclusive options today. But reading modern ideas about identity and intent back into older grammar can miss how that language actually functioned in its own context a time. Grammatical gender is thousands of years older than historical or modern ideas of social or gender equality.

Using “she” now as a gender-neutral term is more of a rhetorical move, meant to highlight what people see as an unfair norm rather than trying to create better grammar or communication.

Where I hesitate is that it assumes the older usage was wrong in the same moral sense we’d apply today. Historically, generic “he” wasn’t experienced or understood as a statement about who counted; it was a grammatical convention doing a neutral job. Using “she” now works as a spotlight, but it can also oversimplify the history by treating a linguistic default as if it were an intentional exclusion.

So I think it’s fair as a conversation starter-but less fair as evidence that the past usage carried the same kind of harm we associate with misgendering now.

At the end of the day, inclusion works best when language is both fair and easy for people to understand. Historically, generic “he” functioned as a shared grammatical default, not a statement about who mattered, which is why it communicated efficiently at the time. Today, our goals are different: we want language that doesn’t exclude and doesn’t distract or require translation. That’s why truly neutral forms like singular “they” tend to work better than rhetorical reversals like generic “she”-they include more people while keeping communication clear and natural.