An array of recent works in experimental psycholinguistics suggests that masculine gender with generic meaning in French is in fact first and foremost understood as a specific masculine, triggering a gender bias and influencing social representations of genders. However, there are reasons to think that the forces at play are more subtle. This paper identifies a number of theoretical and methodological issues in these works and suggests that their outcomes should be mitigated. It calls for finer granularity in the analysis so as to avoid missing the target of better inclusivity in the deployment of inclusive linguistic formats in French.