Yes the group becomes masculine no matter the distribution, this is also the case in Italian. If I remember this correctly, this is because the old Latin neutra

Yes the group becomes masculine no matter the distribution, this is also the case in Italian. If I remember this correctly, this is because the old Latin neutral gender, in those modern languages, has been assimilated into the masculine gender. (If you study Latin you might notice that in many cases the neutral terminations are more similar to the masculine ones so, in a way, it makes sense that at some point the line started to blur I guess).