The article analyses the use of GFL in a corpus of 187 academic texts created by pre-service teachers. It reveals how participants reached a balance between the recommendations of GFL guides and the standard normative grammar included in the school curriculum. The study shows that although future teachers are aware of GFL and sensitive to discrimination, they used a combination of the generic masculine with GFL recommendations when deemed necessary. This has great pedagogical potential for the Spanish classroom, together with the potential to transform language and society.