By framing an argument against semantics or social obedience, you're ignoring self-implicating behavior; you're intentionally ignoring people's needs.
Why not ask "What am I doing wrong?" instead of "Hmm ... what is the nature of empathy? How may a linguist view the word? What is it's function? Ah! Is there an interesting generalization I can find here? Wow, let us dig deeper, this is no time to consider how I treat other people."
The funny part is that if you care about a semantic argument I know you will care about how you treat other people, too.
It's the person who strongly insists to not discuss what words mean, who 9 times out of 10 turns out to be dangerous.
Because that's the first step to getting your needs ignored. And in conversations where "empathy" is brought up you're usually exactly one step from getting your needs ignored.
If you're doing something wrong, and I decide to do something about it, minimum decency dictates I make sure you understand what it is. Bringing into it some vague abstract notion that everyone with half a critical mind turns out to have a whole personal exegesis about, but I only know about it from everyone else? Now there's a clear signal that nobody in the room actually cares how people are treated.
When someone's being asked to have more empathy, they're probably in the middle of ignoring someone else's needs right then.
Yes, correct. That's exactly how abusers expect us to think things work.
The difference is whether the person asking you to be more X cares if you have agreed-upon criteria of what that even looks like.
Given how many people ostensibly driven by positive motivations seem to be rubbed the wrong way by "empathy", well...