I really like both of my projects and I really like research and writing. Really like them. I like them when I am not torturing myself about them or allowing myself to be tortured in the rest of life. I like them when I look at them, not at my directors and detractors.
I am still amazed at how much my directors and detractors have always been engaging in simple gender harassment, not anything about me as an individual or about my work itself. I am still amazed at the extent to which I have traditionally taken such people seriously, trying to respect them and find substance in what they were saying, when in reality they were only looking to watch me jump and were trying random techniques to get me to do it.
I also note that I have had the distinct impression, since I started my first professor job over twenty years ago, that dealing with, accepting, and internalizing this kind of harassment and abuse was required in academia. That is why I always wanted to leave.
Yet what I was always told was, on the one hand, that I was not interested in writing and would not be able to do research, and I must force myself, force myself; and on the other, that my actually doing research and writing was hurtful, selfish, and unwelcome. I must stop myself, stop myself; I must dedicate that energy to the service of students and men because if not, I would be pushed off the island.
Someone said something to me once long ago, an expression of sympathetic pain, which landed like a curse. I am lifting its veil from me now.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
A lot of things going on in the text above — all solidly related to gender!
Don’t feel badly, because it is an exceedingly difficult task to separate one’s actual self and behaviour from the false self (intepellated by patriarchy) and falsely imputed behaviour (or behavioural motivations). Even I sometimes get confused when my identity is attacked in this way. Not least, because a lot of the attacks that patriarchy makes are seemingly carried out by innocents, who appear not to know what they are doing. The important thing is to be able to restore your actual self image before your eyes, so that you are not confused and distracted by the false image of you, as you appear to patriarchs. That takes time, relaxation, meditation.
2.
Writing is something that is actually coded as masculine, in this culture, so people who are conditioned by patriarchy will want to say that your writing must be false, or flaky, or falling flat, because you are not a patriarch or patriarchal adherent. And you, too, will sometimes feel that your writing is false, just because of this. And then, in certain (patriarchal) lights, it will seem to you that you have totally missed the boat, that you were writing in the dark, without any sensibility, and that your “essence” has betrayed you, leading to this. All patriarchal lies!
3.
In Mischa Merz’s book on boxing, she speaks about how masculine empathy is strengthening because it is stoical.
“I got knocked out. I froze”
“Don’t worry, it happens to all of us.”
Typical — by which I mean stereotypical — feminine empathy, however, can make things worse.
“I got knocked out. I froze”
“What happened? Were you suffering from PMT or something?”
So there are certain kinds of empathy that you should avoid.
All true and quite right on empathy — I hadn’t articulated that. Interesting that empathy men give women is often what you call “feminine” and is a put down in disguise.