Most German job titles have a masculine and a feminine form. The masculine form can be used to refer to all holders of that job regardless of gender, while the feminine form can only be used for female people who do that job. I want to know in what kind of sentence I can use the masculine form when referring to a female individual:
Anna ist Arzt / Ärztin
Anna arbeitet als Arzt / Ärztin
Annas Beruf ist Arzt / Ärztin
Mein Hausarzt / meine Hausärztin heißt Anna
Anna ist der beste Arzt / die beste Ärztin unserer Stadt
In any of these sentences, is only one form considered correct? If not, is there a difference in meaning when using each form? Especially in the last sentence, I feel like "die beste Ärztin" is comparing her to other female doctors, while "der beste Arzt" compares to all doctors.
As an example of what I mean by "a difference in meaning": If Bob is a man and somebody says "Bob ist Ärztin", he is using the wrong word. Either he is wrong about what the word means, or he's wrong about Bob's gender, or he is trying to express some additional meaning beyond identifying Bob's job. My question is whether "Anna ist Arzt" carries the same weight, or if it's just a perfectly acceptable stylistic choice like using the generic masculine to refer to a person of unknown gender.
Since there are a lot of different opinions about gendered language, I'd prefer answers that can link to authoritative sources.
Are there, in fact, standard rules about such usages? What is accepted as the "norm" in such cases versus what is opinion?
This question has been marked as a duplicate of a question that essentially asks whether it is correct to say "ich gehe zur Zahnärztin". This is not a duplicate for obvious reasons: That question asks about a specific idiom, this one asks about the usage of generic masculine when describing a female individual.