1. I had learned to repress my emotions from an early age, as per the dictates of my culture at the time, along with the pressures of my family circumstances. In later life, I therefore associated "emotion" with restoring what I'd previously lost: I associated it with strength of mind. For this reason, I don't consider views that attribute emotionality to me as automatically negative. Because I've worked very had to get in tune with my emotional states -- it took me more since '97 to '14 to write my memoir, for instance -- I'm pleased to have my successes occasionally recognised.
2. Whilst I enjoy receiving compliments of the sort described above, I'm also aware of their false character in quite a number of ways, especially and above all, if it is assumed that emotionality is at the core of my inner nature. Of course it isn't. There are a lot of situations where I don't "get" the point of doing a lot of things, like cooing over babies, or being concerned about how others view me. If they view me negatively, I'll take the knowledge they have to bestow and use if for whatever it is worth.
3. How I really am and how other people apply the category of gender to me, to make me seem very different from how I am, produced the gushing fountain of my irony: this ironic sense is, at various times, political, literary and/or directly social.
4. People are such apes.
2. Whilst I enjoy receiving compliments of the sort described above, I'm also aware of their false character in quite a number of ways, especially and above all, if it is assumed that emotionality is at the core of my inner nature. Of course it isn't. There are a lot of situations where I don't "get" the point of doing a lot of things, like cooing over babies, or being concerned about how others view me. If they view me negatively, I'll take the knowledge they have to bestow and use if for whatever it is worth.
3. How I really am and how other people apply the category of gender to me, to make me seem very different from how I am, produced the gushing fountain of my irony: this ironic sense is, at various times, political, literary and/or directly social.
4. People are such apes.
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