It's not exactly news (especially for trans people), but the TSA is fucked up. Personally I paid the dignity tax to get Precheck so I only have to go through a metal detector.
Airport Body Scanners Have a Gender Problem
- Thread starter bulbasort
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It's not exactly news (especially for trans people), but the TSA is fucked up. Personally I paid the dignity tax to get Precheck so I only have to go through a metal detector.
Horrible. I've had my penis felt up more times than I can count because those machines are worthless.
I wouldn't expect anything less from the TSA.
I wouldn't expect anything less from the TSA.
ProPublica Article
OP
OP
Turns out this was adapted from a longer ProPublica article with more details and accounts.
I'm a trans woman and yep, it sucks. Earlier this year I got flagged and the TSA agent told me she had hit the female button and I need to go through again as male because they found an "anomaly"(genitals). I'm like ok whatever, went through again, and she said now there's an anomaly in the chest. So they had to do a pat down. It was with a male agent, but I didn't speak up because I just wanted to go. They did it right there. Then they let me through. It sucked, was dehumanizing, and made me feel like a weirdo. I had anxiety leading up to it and then had it confirmed so I think about it every flight. To be honest and candid, at least I got flagged female at first. I've had like 3 flights since then and haven't ran into this again, which is strange and makes me wonder. Are they flagging me as male from the start and just ignoring the chest anomaly? Or the other way around? IDK but it sucks.
On a slightly related note, having a drivers license that doesn't match really sucks too. Mine was a picture from 2015 and since then I've lost 140 pounds, changed name, and gender presentation. I look NOTHING like that and It's been a constant hassle. Fun encounters like being delayed while they decide what to do(which was always just kinda stare at the ID then decide to let me through) and then being told "go ahead, sir". Cool thanks for calling me sir. Always great to feel like shit after feeling like the other. Luckily I got my new license this week!
On a slightly related note, having a drivers license that doesn't match really sucks too. Mine was a picture from 2015 and since then I've lost 140 pounds, changed name, and gender presentation. I look NOTHING like that and It's been a constant hassle. Fun encounters like being delayed while they decide what to do(which was always just kinda stare at the ID then decide to let me through) and then being told "go ahead, sir". Cool thanks for calling me sir. Always great to feel like shit after feeling like the other. Luckily I got my new license this week!
Jesus H. Christ and here I thought it was bad when they opened a container of my sons baby food, stuck a cotton swab in it, then just put the lid back on and handed it to my wife and I.
...it's really hard for me to believe that they can't tell what these 'anomalies' are. that's fucking dumb.
I'm sorry you were treated like that.
Fuck these TSA staff making trans people feel less than.
I've always been relatively lucky in my airport experiences and hearing some of these stories reminds me just how lucky I've been.
Though I don't have "anomalies" to flag anymore I always always always opt out of the body scanners on principle. Only one I ever went through was last year in a foreign country because it didn't seem worth rocking the boat given the language barrier.
I've always been relatively lucky in my airport experiences and hearing some of these stories reminds me just how lucky I've been.
Though I don't have "anomalies" to flag anymore I always always always opt out of the body scanners on principle. Only one I ever went through was last year in a foreign country because it didn't seem worth rocking the boat given the language barrier.
you could have just stopped the thread title at "problem"
but yea im not surprised at all the machines aren't built to handle trans people nor are the TSA agents educated on how to deal with that situation. They barely know how to do their job at a base level to begin with.
i fucking hate TSA. In May i was flying home and i went to the airport in Sandals, columbia fishing shorts and a under armor synthetic workout short. IE the thinnest and most comfortable clothes i could wear. The machine flagged something on my left leg so they patted me down. the whole thing is just ridiculous.
but yea im not surprised at all the machines aren't built to handle trans people nor are the TSA agents educated on how to deal with that situation. They barely know how to do their job at a base level to begin with.
they threatened my wife with strip searching when we were traveling with your kids. we brought a bunch of formula and they wanted to open it and she said no you cant cause it will go bad. And they said well we have to open it to test it. Finally someone with a brain said we'll take the label off and scan it with the laser, but this was after they threatened to strip search her. I was already through security with the kids and was like WTF and turned around when i heard "strip search"
i fucking hate TSA. In May i was flying home and i went to the airport in Sandals, columbia fishing shorts and a under armor synthetic workout short. IE the thinnest and most comfortable clothes i could wear. The machine flagged something on my left leg so they patted me down. the whole thing is just ridiculous.
If it played out like the write up said it did then the STSO fucked up big time.
This is always a tricky situation and the rule is to screen people as the gender they present as ... but there's grey area and the machine is basically designed to think male=account for the penis and female=account for the breast. Some people know this and will tell you which they want to be screened as regardless of how they present themselves.
There is really no simple fix for it that I can tell anyone that's gonna work 100% of the time ... cause the TSA employs a lot of dumb fucks with power trips and not every airport is a good as Ohare (my first airport. Sea Tec can suck a dick, I was improperly screened there and I worked for the TSA so I knew exactly what he should have done and told him ... and management ... and took it to our TSA FB group where I found out that yes, there's a ton of dumb fucks who improperly screen people because they don't follow SOP and think they can do w/e they want so long as they can make up an excuse for it.)
At Ohare most everyone I worked with knew to try their best to make this interaction go as smoothly and painlessly as possible. Now, that requires some "Here's the rules and here's what we actually do" on the part of the TSO doing things. Like the example I brang up earlier, I had a young lady in a skirt walk into the machine and when I instructed her to step on the yellow feet she told me to scan her as male. I went " ....Oh! Ok", pushed the male button, screen goes green and she's on her way.
It's actually a topic that gets talked about a lot on the floor cause despite how visible the topic is online you really don't come across many trans men or trans women at the body scanner in practice. Most TSOs share 1 common desire in that ... we really don't want to touch anyone.
This is always a tricky situation and the rule is to screen people as the gender they present as ... but there's grey area and the machine is basically designed to think male=account for the penis and female=account for the breast. Some people know this and will tell you which they want to be screened as regardless of how they present themselves.
There is really no simple fix for it that I can tell anyone that's gonna work 100% of the time ... cause the TSA employs a lot of dumb fucks with power trips and not every airport is a good as Ohare (my first airport. Sea Tec can suck a dick, I was improperly screened there and I worked for the TSA so I knew exactly what he should have done and told him ... and management ... and took it to our TSA FB group where I found out that yes, there's a ton of dumb fucks who improperly screen people because they don't follow SOP and think they can do w/e they want so long as they can make up an excuse for it.)
At Ohare most everyone I worked with knew to try their best to make this interaction go as smoothly and painlessly as possible. Now, that requires some "Here's the rules and here's what we actually do" on the part of the TSO doing things. Like the example I brang up earlier, I had a young lady in a skirt walk into the machine and when I instructed her to step on the yellow feet she told me to scan her as male. I went " ....Oh! Ok", pushed the male button, screen goes green and she's on her way.
It's actually a topic that gets talked about a lot on the floor cause despite how visible the topic is online you really don't come across many trans men or trans women at the body scanner in practice. Most TSOs share 1 common desire in that ... we really don't want to touch anyone.
They don't actually show it. It just marks the area with a box if there is a potential flag. This was originally a problem back when they were first introduced and the TSA got mad shit on over it. The first wave of them did actually show (very blurry/faded) genitalia graphics but the ones now don't actually show it. When you walk through them you can actually turn around and see what they see on the monitor.
If for any reason they ARE still the older model I would absolutely raise a complaint to their superiors.
This is precisely the kind of thing that worries me about my bestie flying up to Ohio to visit her family this December. Like me, she's a rather sensitive soul, so I'm concerned that encountering this kind of TSA bullshit could wind up being very traumatic for her. =(
If it wasn't probably traumatizing for the transwoman, the idea of TSA being all "Well, well, mind telling what this is?" and the transwoman just responding "my penis" would be hilarious.
OP
OP
I have a penis and breasts. What should I tell the TSA agent to prevent them from touching me?
In 2018 O'Hare had 83,339,186 passengers. Trans people are roughly 1% of the population. Doing some math, that works out to 2,283 trans people going through O'Hare per day. Now, we could say that half are arrivals and so don't go through security, and that trans people (being statistically poorer than cis people) take fewer flights. There are still going to be at least 500 trans people going through TSA scanners at O'Hare per day.
There's no 100% answer that will always work. Between the 2 I'd say it may be in your best interest to explain your situation and ask to be scanned as male ... because the machine knows men can also have breast cause it happens with overweight men so MAYBE it wont alarm there. For women ... anything that draws too much attention to the groan area for that machine, be it fat or fabric, can set it off (which is why some older female TSOs will ask women to take a wider stance than they should if they're overweight or got big thighs. They're not supposed to do that but many Old People don't give a fuck and make up their own rules).
The machines are not 100% accurate or even consistent in it's own rulings so no one really knows fully what sets each off. You can scan a man as a woman and have them get a clear if the machine doesn't feel like what's in the groan area is big enough for example.
The over all BEST option to not be touched at the airport is to sign up for precheck. You're basically telling the Gov it's ok to do a background check on you and when you sign up It's not a guarantee that you will always get pre-check ... and even if you do get it the metal detector you walk through is set up to randomly select people for additional screening which can range from testing someone's hands to sending them to the body scanner to just checking their electronics. But with precheck you go through the metal detector.
Or, if you have a cat or dog, bring them with you. You will be asked to go through the metal detector with your animal regardless of if you're precheck or not. They will simply have to test your hands if you're not precheck.
Or, if you have or are just traveling with kids 12yo or younger just say that they're yours. Parents go through the metal detector with the kids, they're not separated unless there's a reason.
But yeah, under normal circumstances I'd say just explain your situation to them and ask to be scanned as male. If the TSOs have any common sense between them they will try the male button if ASKED and let the female clear any chest alarm if they do alarm as it's much easier for them then getting low and doing a groan pat down. The groan is the big deal for them, everyone wants to avoid a groan pat down.
Ohare is a huge airport and TSOs have to do a lot of different things. There's only 2 positions where you are asked to pat someone down, Body Scanner and Bag check (Bag check if someone ops out of the body scanner. If anyone's wondering why it may take forever to get someone to pat them down once they op out it's most likely because there's just no one free at the time).
So yeah, I may see a trans person ... when I'm at TDC, checking their boarding pass. Or I might see one in line ... when I'm doing DO or on X-Ray or at the mag.
When I was at the scanner I've noticed most trans women op out of the scanner in favor of just getting a pat down so as to just avoid the confusion.
I worked for the TSA at Ohare for over 2 years and only had to pat down 1 trans man that I can remember ( a teen with chest bindings that alarmed. Once they said bindings I realized what was going on, asked if they were ok with me doing the pat down, patted only enough to feel that "yup, that's bindings and breast" and sent him on his way).
A lot of this swims in gray for people because they're not exactly common. Plus they train men and women to do pat downs with out any consideration for cases like this. As a man I know what to feel for in a male groan pat down ... I've SEEN females do breast pat downs but that's not how you check a man's chest so I was never trained for that there for in the example above I just checked him the normal way as a judgement call cause that's what I know. Same goes for women which is part of why I've seen some few female TSOs who won't pat down a trans woman's goarn and instead ask for a lead or STSO to take care of them (they're not trained on how to clear a penis. Same thing applies to getting adults with diapers, if you don't feel like you can clear this area you bump it up to someone who gets paid more than you to handle)
What's far more common is ending up in situations where you have to make a call on someones gender when they don't clearly look male or female. There was new training about pronouns late last year because this is still something people need to learn about.
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Is the issue here that a woman TSA agent wouldn't want to palpate a penis? Do women TSA agents never pat down cis-men? If they don't, I can somewhat see the tricky situation here.
The fact that a penis had to be shown is absurd.
The fact that a penis had to be shown is absurd.
"Just explain your situation" can be really hard. I don't want to have to talk to a random TSA agent about my body or gender identity. I'd rather take my chances than have to do that. I don't even know what that'd do. I am visibly trans, the agent who gave me trouble knew what was up. If she didn't when she choose female she certainly did after. It didn't matter, they weren't going to use discretion and ignore the "anomaly".
There has to be a better way. It's especially annoying since we all know this is bullshit security theater.
There has to be a better way. It's especially annoying since we all know this is bullshit security theater.
Getting rid of the "male/female" button seems like a good start. Sorry you have to go through this.