I’ve started Audrey’s blog and finished yours but can’t completely finish because this needs a huge amount of thought. That said Maha I do not perceive you as patronizing at all. You ask honest questions and do not shy from open reflection. You take risks that a patronizing person would never dare to take from their position of hiding behind the separation they cultivate of being special and broadcast as smug superiority.

My psychologist says it all comes from fear (my own mess anyway) and I sure run from that concept. It confuses my tough “survive anything” self-image but it also releases me to really see what I’m dealing with inside and how I distort what comes at me.

Sorry if this isn’t clear yet… I do have a question though. My problems with my former chief oncologist appear to be gender based. Won’t explain except to say I may have bullied her entirely by accident and it no longer matters that I didn’t mean it or that someone else started it–it needs fixing so the drama can end. Are there any essays on gender coming between people you can recommend?

In 1974 my wife Leslie worked as an electronics buyer for Singer Business Machines in San Leandro California that was bought later by Texas Instruments. This “early on” the whole tech field was wide open and seemed way less gender specific. Same around 1985 in the tech courses I took on the west coast in Canada. Since then us men seem to have devolved or become scared of something we don’t know how to react to. Have you read the book “Dreaming in Code” by Scott Rosenberg?