A few years ago, I was in a touristy public park with my mom. A youngish guy with a bike was hanging around nearby. I felt his attention on me and I tried to do the dance of ignoring his interest while indicating polite awareness of his existence so he wouldn’t get angry – ladies, you know? Then I took out my phone to take a photo of my mom. That’s when he took off on his bike, reached out his arm as he swooshed past me, and stole my phone right out of my hand.

I was so ashamed of myself for misinterpreting that threat. Felt incredibly stupid when it became clear what had actually been going on. But the thing is, by that point I had so many decades of being trained to expect to be a victim in one way that I totally missed the possibility of a different kind of crime.

Street harassment has been part of the fabric of my life since I was 11. Yesterday I automatically did the math on whether a sidewalk was wide enough for me to be out of grabbing distance from a guy walking the other way; nothing happened, but I was ready. A couple weeks ago I got unusually brave (for me) and yelled at a business-district patrol guard, of all things, for his comments on my yoga clothes. On and on.

I’m lucky that sexual harassment hasn’t been a factor in my career – not since a couple of really icky high school retail jobs, anyway. But I guess my point is that there is an app in my brain that is constantly in threat-monitoring mode when I’m outside my home or work spaces, constantly calculating how to avoid and defuse and keep moving forward. Is that typical of other women? Not sure, but it’s what the Weinstein headlines bring up for me. Yup, he deserves what he’s getting. But you won’t see me celebrating victory just yet. I’ve got an app to run.