Here was a human being who spent a lot of time being very unhappy and a company that lost a great resource. In general, you should not wait for people to poll you for your opinion, for your status, for your needs and desires. You have to speak up and tell them yourself. This is practically a recipe for failure in the engineering workplace. You'll have a long wait.
Women tend to be more tentative.
Personally Men also take things a lot less personally. They will yell and scream and call each other bloody idiots over a technical point, then go have a beer together. The fact that someone doesn't like a particular idea of yours does not necessarily mean that they don't like or respect you . They just may lack diplomacy. If someone is in your face, it's probably because he or she feels responsible for but not in control of something.