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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/9453
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/9453
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Honestly, I can't tell if the _narrator_ is supposed to be male or female, but I do kind of get the feeling that the _author_ is probably male — especially if the narrator is supposed to be female. (And yes, I got that impression even before looking at your name and profile picture.)

OK, let me unpack that a bit.

In the first paragraph, what stand out (at least in the context of this question) are the mentions of scents and soft tactile sensations ("_breeze [...] softly caressing my skin_"). That doesn't necessarily signify anything about the narrator's gender — he/she might just be in a mood to notice such things. Still, there is a stereotype saying that women are _supposed_ to pay more attention to such things than men. It's quite prominent in popular culture and media; just look at the portrayal of men and women in advertising on television, for example.

On the other hand, another aspect of the stereotype is that _men_ are supposed to associate such things _with_ women: pay a bit more attention, and a lot of the ads featuring young women enjoying gentle sensations are actually aimed at least as much at male as at female viewers. So if I _had_ to guess the author's and/or the narrator's gender based on this paragraph, I'd guess that the author was a man writing about a woman, in a manner they've learned to associate as "feminine" from popular media.

The next paragraph also evokes a female stereotype: it deals with the narrator's emotions, which is something women are supposed to be stereotypically more aware of. On the other hand, the paragraph doesn't actually portray the narrator as being particularly well in touch with his/her feelings: it even explicitly says that he/she's "never been sure of" them. So all I'm really getting from this paragraph is that the narrator is being introspective, but not used to it (or possibly that they're used to being habitually confused about their own emotions).

On the whole of it, I'd take the second paragraph as (weak) evidence for either that the narrator is male, or possibly that they're a stereotypical female portrayed by a male author. Simply and rather crudely put, while I'm sure women can be just as confused about their emotions as men, I wouldn't expect most women in current western culture to _admit_ to it in quite those words, describing their lack of self-awareness almost as if it were something to be proud of.

As for the last paragraph, the only part of it that I find potentially gender-signifying in any way is the last word, "fuck", which in some western subcultures might be considered as a rather "unfeminine" term to use. Still, without further cultural context, that's hardly conclusive evidence either way.

All in all, I'm getting a rather strong impression of the narrator's mood and/or personality, but not much about their gender so far. Also, even if I might've occasionally sounded a bit critical above, from the excerpt alone I can't actually find any real fault in the characterization: if anything, the narrator sounds like an interesting character, and I'd like to see more of his/her personality.

That said, _if_ it later turned out that all those references to scents, flowers and emotions were there just to make the narrator seem stereotypically female, I _would_ feel quite sorely disappointed — especially since they don't even do that very effectively.

Anyway, I'd like to finish this with [a quote](https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/352821-a-man-once-asked-me-how-i-managed-in) from [Dorothy L. Sayers](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothy_L._Sayers) that someone else once brought up in a similar discussion:

> “A man once asked me ... how I managed in my books to write such natural conversation between men when they were by themselves. Was I, by any chance, a member of a large, mixed family with a lot of male friends? I replied that, on the contrary, I was an only child and had practically never seen or spoken to any men of my own age till I was about twenty-five. "Well," said the man, "I shouldn't have expected a woman (meaning me) to have been able to make it so convincing."
> 
> I replied that I had coped with this difficult problem by making my men talk, as far as possible, like ordinary human beings. This aspect of the matter seemed to surprise the other speaker; he said no more, but took it away to chew it over. One of these days it may quite likely occur to him that women, as well as men, when left to themselves, talk very much like human beings also.”

Original score: 5