In most NLP tasks, language–gender associations are grounded in the author's gender identity, inferred from their language use. However, this identity-based framing risks reinforcing stereotypes and marginalizing individuals who do not conform to normative gender–language associations. To address this, we operationalize the language-gender association as a perceived gender expression of language, focusing on how such expression is externally interpreted by humans, independent of the author's gender identity. We present the first dataset of its kind: 3,100 human annotations of perceived gendered style -- human-written texts rated on a five-point scale from very feminine to very masculine. While perception is inherently subjective, our analysis identifies textual features--expressive syntactic structures and lower emotional intensity--associated with higher agreement among annotators. Moreover, annotator demographics also influence perception—for example, women annotators are more likely to label texts as feminine. Feature analysis further highlights that perceived gendered style is shaped by both affective and structural properties of text. For example, neutral style is characterized by moderate emotional intensity. Our findings lay the groundwork for operationalizing gendered style through human annotation, while also highlighting the inherent subjectivity involved in this process.