Why Women Make Good Spies

Yesterday I felt like a spy because I was doing a lit drop and had to get past the guards. I'm very sneaky about it. I wear stuff to blend in with the crowds, trying to look like I work there; I choose an entrance that's not directly in line with the subway to distance myself from all the other lit-droppers; and I try to walk in just ahead of a group of people so they'll be less inclined to make an issue of checking my bags. I am careful to adopt a slightly bored, this-is-routine expression as I dump my (zipped-up!) bag on the x-ray. I avoid eye contact with the guards, like I'm not expecting any confrontations with them, and I pick up my stuff from the belt without waiting for their permission, as though I'm certain it won't be a problem. The moment I'm through, I don't waste time getting away from the guards by taking the elevator to the top floor in the building, never mind where I am actually heading - I sort that out later. On the top floor, I duck into a bathroom to organize my stuff, where I'm less likely to be caught by a guard roaming the halls. Sometimes my destination is not even in that building, but once I'm in, I can take the underground passage to any of the buildings in the complex.

All these precautions are probably unnecessary, but after a guard caught me last year and really reamed me out, I'm terrified of confrontations. It felt so horrible when she was yelling at me. It's not illegal to distribute literature. But some guards seem to think it is. It's funny to me that I often enjoy being places I'm not supposed to be (gardens at night, the cathedral towers). I've often roamed around forbidden territory where I would have been in trouble if I was caught, and I liked feeling like a spy. I wonder why I dislike it so much in this context. It's either because I actually did get caught once (whereas I've never been caught in other places), or because it's something I have to do for work, not a choice I'm freely making. The forced risk feels bad to me.

Temple Grandin, who writes about animal cognition, says that animals never forget bad experiences. No matter how many times they have a good experience in the same situation, the good stuff just overlays the bad stuff, it doesn't cancel it out. They'll have the residual fear forever. So it's really important not to scare or upset an animal on their first experience with something. I'm that way with lit drops. I've done many since that time with the guard, and never had any problems, but I'm still freaked out and scared.

Oh but back to why women make good spies. It's because, I think, there's a higher threshold at which women are perceived to be a threat. So they can get away with stuff where a man would have been challenged or where at least his actions would have aroused some suspicion. Especially if the guards are male, they respond to women with openness, at a subconscious level. Unfortunately for me, though, you can't fly under the radar when the guard is another woman.