They tested me, my first weeks on the squad, the same way a predator tests a potential victim in a bar: tossing out small stuff—worn-out jokes starting Why is a woman like a, comments about me being on the rag, hints about how I had to be pretty good at whatever I’d done to get this gig—to see if I’d force myself to laugh along. Checking, just like the predator checks, for the well-behaved one who’ll take the put-downs and the humiliation sooner than God forbid make a fuss; who can be forced, shove by shove, into doing whatever he wants. Deep down, though, it wasn’t about me being a woman.
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