A Thai speaker (I’m not sure about their fluency or what regional variants they use) told me that 1) the particles ครับ and ค่ะ are essentially only taught to foreigners and have very little usage among native Thai speakers and that 2) the idea that different particles are used by different genders is also false. It’s possible they actually meant that the use of polite particles (and gendered particles) is more like a regional variant, and is rare amongst native Thai speakers rather than nonexistent.
Discussion of these particles is so ubiquitous, I find it hard to believe they don’t exist at all, but I could certainly believe their significance is heavily exaggerated. On a continuum from “ค่ะ and ครับ are myths only taught to and used with tourists” to “the terms are ubiquitous in most Thai speech,” where does the truth lie? If they do exist at all, is there indeed a gendered divide in which particle is used?