The category of linguistic representation of men and women is one of the universal issues of language structure and use. Languages differ not only in that what they can express but also in what they must express. In this respect. Czech deserves a systematic study: Czech must reflect not only the gender of a referent - and does so more systematically than other languages - but regularly also the gender of a speaker and an addressee. The gender analysis of Czech must be related to genre analysis. This article focuses on symmetries and asymmetries in how men and women are named, addressed and referred to. Czech manifests a strong tendency toward separate symmetrical terms for both males and females. Though the processes of derivation of feminine counterparts from originally masculine forms are almost unlimited in Czech, the frequency of derived feminines in texts is much lower. This is due to the fact that masculine forms are used as a norm in gender-neutral and gender-indefinite contexts. The linguistic interpretation of the opposite gender pairs has been formed by the general background of structuralist treatment of linguistic meanings and functions. The concept of markedness and unmarkedness has been acknowledged in Czech linguistics also with regard to the interpretation of masculine terms in their unmarked. generic function (this interpretation is, of course, more legitimate in some of the discourse genres and less in others). The article addresses the issue of the linguistic awareness of Czech speakers and its potential change. New discourse practice might have shifted such masculines from gender-indefinite to gender-definite sphere of interpretation: in some contexts, masculine terms seem to be interpreted in a more gender-specific meaning than their unmarked, „inclusive“ meaning would suggest. The article gives a tentative outline of the scope of sensitive contexts (referential vs predicative positions, contrasting male vs female reference etc.).