https://www.rae.es/espanol-al-dia/los-ciudadanos-y-las-ciudadanas-los-ninos-y-las-ninas" wrote:
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"Los ciudadanos y las ciudadanas", "los niños y las niñas", "los diabéticos y las diabéticas"
This type of unfolding is artificial and unnecessary from a linguistic point of view. In the nouns that designate animated beings, there is the possibility of the generic use of the masculine to designate the class, that is, all the individuals of the species, without distinction of sex: Todos los ciudadanos mayores de edad tienen derecho a voto (All citizens of legal age have the right to vote).
The explicit mention of the feminine is only justified when the opposition of the genere is relevant in the context: El desarrollo evolutivo es similar en los niños y las niñas de esa edad (The evolutionary development is similar in boys and girls of that age). The current trend towards the indiscriminate splitting of the noun into its masculine and feminine form goes against the principle of language economy and is based on extralinguistic reasons. Therefore, these repetitions should be avoided, which generate syntactic and agreement difficulties, and unnecessarily complicate the writing and reading of the texts.
The generic use of the masculine is based on its status as an unmarked term in the masculine/feminine opposition. Therefore, it is incorrect to use the feminine to jointly refer to both sexes, regardless of the number of individuals of each sex that are part of the group. Thus, los alumnos (male students) is the only correct way of referring to a mixed group, even though the number of female students is greater than that of male students.
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From a scientific, realistic, and professional point of view, there is no doubt:
In Spanish the masculine singular is used to refer to the generic, and you can use also the masculine plural:
ㅤEl hombre ha llegado a la luna, El hombre viene del mono,
ㅤEs importante que un diabético no coma jamón, mantequilla ni queso crema
or
ㅤ Es importante que los diabéticos no coman jamón, mantequilla ni queso crema
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In the same way, the use of Es mi dentista is just as correct as dentista es quien trata los dientes or el trompetista toca la trompeta, médico es quien practica la medicina, etc...
If we want to specify that we do not use the "generic" but specifically the masculine gender, we must lengthen the generic phrase:
El hombre, y no la mujer, ha llegado a la luna (The man, and not the woman, has reached the moon)
El hombre viene del mono, y la mujer viene de la mona (The man comes from the male monkey, and the woman comes from the female monkey)
Él es mi dentista (He's my dentist, a man), Un dentista es quien trata los dientes, exactamente lo mismo que una dentista (A male dentist is the one who treats the teeth, exactly the same as a female dentist) or
el trompetista toca la trompeta cuando es un hombre, y también toca la trompeta cuando es una mujer (the trumpeter plays the trumpet as a man, and also plays the trumpet as a woman).
And we can lengthen or retouch it as much as we want:
Es mi dentista, pudiendo ser hombre, mujer, de género fluído, y cualquier otra opción
El hombre, la mujer, los hombres, las mujeres, las personas de género fluído (...) vienen del mono, la mona, los monos, las monas, l@s mon@s, lXs monXs, les mones (...)
But because of non-scientific issues, it has been imposed to go against that rule.
Now we "must" say
ㅤqueridos alumnos y queridas alumnas
ㅤel dentista o la dentista
ㅤun o una dentista
etc.
As you can see, there are those of us who do not agree with this current option, but we are in the minority.