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In [What differences should I look out for between male vs female
speech?](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/97/what-differences-
should-i-look-out-for-between-male-vs-female-speech), a lot of answers
explicitly mention that ending question sentences with の is feminine.

However, this makes very little sense to me, as my understanding is that の is
pretty much the go-to particle for forming questions with non-polite speech.

In general, か sounds pretty marginal to me with non-polite speech:

> (1) ｘ何をしてるか？  
>  (2) ｘ学校に行くか？

Sometimes, のか works:

> (3) ｘ何をしてるのか？  
>  (4) ○学校に行くのか？

(I think のか only fails when you have a 'question word' like 何, どこ, だれ, etc.;
it seems to make it sound rhetorical, e.g., 「彼女は何をしてるのか、僕は分からない。」)

And of course の always works:

> (5) ○何をしてるの？  
>  (6) ○学校に行くの？

And as far as I can tell, simply using intonation (or a question mark to
represent it) works all the time:

> (7) ○何をしてる？  
>  (8) ○学校に行く？

* * *

First off, my judgements here might be wrong since they are just my own.

But, if they are correct, my question is: if ending your sentence with の
really is feminine, what is the alternative to (5) in usual male non-polite
speech? Is (7) the only option?
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particle-の questions feminine-speech
Is ending question sentences with の really feminine?
I think that in some cases, ending a question in の is fine for male speakers.
For example, I hear

> え～、そうなの？

quite often from male speakers. I think, in general, we have that (all male
speech)

  * rhetorical questions are allowed to end in の, e.g. even if it is clear what the other person is doing, you may ask

> 何をしてるの？ or 何してんの？  
>  What (the heck) are you doing!?

  * questions as honest inquiries don't end in の, e.g.

> 今何をしてる？  
>  What are you doing right now?

  * か is usually used for rhetorical questions addressed to oneself, e.g.

> 行くか。  
>  I guess I'll get going.

  * のか is more for rhetorical questions addressed to other people, e.g.

> 学校に行くのか。  
>  I see, you're leaving now, are you?

Decidedly feminine is when you end a _statement_ in の, e.g.

> そうなのよ。  
>  知らなかったの。

with the male equivalent being either nothing (e.g. そう, 知らなかった) or んだ(よ) (e.g.
そうなんだよ, 知らなかったんだよ).

What male speakers would express as a clear statement (nominalized sentence
with contracted nominalizer and declarative だ) is softened in female speech by
omitting the "strong"-sounding parts, viz. の is left uncontracted and だ is
omitted.
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From John Hinds' _Japanese: Descriptive Grammar_ , p.16:

> Nonpolite questions ending in の are frequently termed "feminine" or
> "childish" sounding, since women and children use this construction. There
> are, as far as I know, no statistics on this, so I must simply point out
> that **males may also use this construction with impunity**. [emphasis
> added]

He gives a number of examples of actual usage spoken by males, so I think it's
safe for you to use it, too.
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answer
there is a very interesting semantics paper on -no and its meaning (no, gender
is not a factor). a bit too technical if you are not familiar with formal
semantics but the gist is probably accessible to all.

[https://www.ucl.ac.uk/~ucjtudo/pdf/BiasedQuestions.pdf](https://www.ucl.ac.uk/%7Eucjtudo/pdf/BiasedQuestions.pdf)
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