I think using “deliberate” to refer to something that’s as collective and reactive as societal trends in language usage is misleading. The amount of personal agency involved, except in rare cases of people intentionally trying to cause a cultural shift, is pretty minimal.

Also you got me curious-- “peeps” comes directly from “people” as you might expect, and “folks” and “comrade” actually originally originate as terms referring to (among other usages) military groups. So I would say they are indeed gender-neutral, even in origin, unless you count gendered expectations of the military which I’m not sure carried over to later, more general usages.