I don't know back in the day I used to have Link as an Avatar most of the time, so I don't know if he's specifically a character that girls like, I know that my friends liked to joke that I had a crush on Link, so like maybe that could've been a factor? But like someone would've needed to be one of my friends to be familiar with that gag and most people weren't.
I didn't have a crush on Link BTW, I just liked the Zelda games a lot, like back then I used to know everything there was to know about it.
Again Avatar used to be Link specifically, name also used to be different & I don't think as girly, though I guess most people called me Kale which while a plant I guess it sounds more feminine than masculine?
The new name thing was deliberate though, since it's been happening for a while I just decided to embrace it, went with Kae since it's phonetically the same as the letter K, which is the name of characters like K from King of Fighters & K AKA Joe from Blade Runner 2049 which are both fairly masculine but at the same time a girl's name, it's like basically an in-joke for myself only, I don't think other people would understand it unless I explained it, it also has to do with other stuff that I don't really want to get into.
Thinking back on it I guess I can think about a few things that might have given that idea, I guess back then I was pretty disgusted by the idea of sex, which like might have been seen as "innocent" or "pure" which I guess are traits more commonly associated with femininity, like I'd often check out or deliberately try to change the subject when that stuff came up, other stuff might have been the fact that I would often complain about unwanted romantic advances which again I think it's a problem that most people associate with women even if it's not exclusive to them and like other small stuff like that, I guess for all of these things it would require some level of familiarity with me.
That's like all I can think about, but even so, I think it's kinda weird that people decide to assign a gender to personality traits, like what makes something feminine or masculine doesn't make much sense to myself in general, but much less so with just personality traits.
Anyways I feel like continuing this discussion gets dangerously close to identity politics so I guess I'll stop as not to derail the thread, but that was genuinely what I thought in the shower, like it was a legit shower thought, I also feel I must clarify that it doesn't bother me at all, I've been joking about it for years but it's more that it perplexes me and I just don't understand it.