Great piece, Heddy! I’m not Jewish, but I’ve often been the only woman in the room. My feeling has always been, “Yes, you’re often a victim of sexism, but you should never behave like you THINK you’re a victim.” It just doesn’t help improve matters. Not at work. I’m less tolerant out in the world at large, though not in scary situations like your cab ride. But your piece is very even and you shouldn’t feel at all weird about it. It’s the kind of thing that helps us all. I worked for a company in Potsdam, developing an animated TV series for kids, and found my boss to be completely tone deaf when dealing with the issues of women and minorities. I had to explain to him why he couldn’t name a Japanese character “Jap,” or a black character “Bunny,” and expect to sell the cartoon in the States. He loved to say, “I love to work with women, because they don’t have big egos like the men!” A compliment? And that guy was a mild case, his sexism/racism not really intentional. There have been many far worse, or more subtly mean. On the flip side, because I am as white as it is possible to be, crazy people have often voiced their most racist thoughts to me, some even telling me that they don’t like members of their own racial or ethnic group. That is more horrible than any experience of sexism I’ve every had.