as a trans woman this ended in a considerably more awkward way.
i told them before going through the scanner "I'm trans" that just seemed to confuse them.
And of course the highlighted area was my crotch.
A female TSA agent came over around I asked if I had anything down there and I said I'm trans I'm and she asked " would you prefer to be inspected by a man" which confused me right back and I said no.
they asked me if they could check me there in line in public or if I wanted a private room, I didn't want all of the additional awkwardness and possibility of losing a flight so I just decided to get It over with, they grabbed me and felt around, awkward as HELL, And then I was free to go.... I mean wouldn't it be a lot faster just to build a trans button into the machine instead of grabbing every trans woman by the junk?
I had to disclose to a new employer recently and he proceeded to ask if he's referring to me correctly, as he didn't want to "she/her" me if I didn't want that. Kind that he wanted to double check, cool that I pass well enough people think I'm going the opposite way, and a little annoying that trans men may not have crossed his mind.
like when I went for a urine test and the nurse handed me a plastic insert to put into the toilet and told me "wipe front to back" which to me means two things
1. she thinks I'm as dumb as mud
2. and I passed 🎉
thank you and I'm so sorry! 🫂
First of all a pharmacist should be educated better especially and secondly I would think hopefully a pharmacist would be smart enough to be able to freaking extrapolate 😂
Gosh I'm so sorry that happened to you! TSA can be so violating sometimes. Apparently pads or period underwear can trip the sensor too, and TSA has no problem patting down those either 😠Probably doesn't help you feel better at all, but it seems like not an uncommon cis woman experience, too, unfortunately.
Ugh admittedly I have no idea about airport security (especially TSA) so they have X ray machines now and look for "suspicious" stuff? That sounds unsafe if you fly often. I was under the impression that only metalldetectors were used, but I've only flown once and that was more than 15 years ago and it was from one EU country to another, eep.
From what I've heard on the internet, they can basically pull you over for anything to do a check-up. It sounds so humiliating :(
I'll give you the rundown, without getting myself into trouble for SSI:
In that picture, the scanner (this is an older scanner) is called the AIT. It's purpose is you see what you have on your person, from the surface of your skin to the outside of your clothes.
The AIT is not an X-ray, and it does not see anything under your skin.
In the comic, the AIT identified a GA (groin alarm). It's a yellow box with red around it, the red signalling that it's a "sensitive area". The funny bit is that the officer should have retrieved an appropriate officer to pat that area down, and by letting that person through he broke SOP.
Can an officer cite any reason for a check? Kinda.
We need to have an "articulable belief" to engage in any secondary search of any kind. If I see that your pocket has a bulge in it, I can articulate why I believe you have something in there, so I can pat that pocket down.
In this case, the machine told the officer exactly where the issue was, and that was an alarm that needed to be resolved
The old AIT has 2 modes, male and female. New eAITs just have a scan button.
We scan passengers "as they present themselves". Look like a woman? You get screened as a woman. Present yourself as a dude, you get a dude that screens you.
In the past, too many people asked for the opposite sex to touch them, big no no. Same sex touches same sex. I've sent passengers off the checkpoint with PD because of sexual assault.
I went to the airport wearing a t-shirt and jeans as I knew it would be a long day waiting for connecting flights and security.
generally people look at me and call me ma'am even in "boy" clothes, I'm very lucky, lots of trans women aren't it's just random chance.
so would you have me searched based on your guess of my sex or my clothing or what I'm saying? because all three of those could be called presentation but would lead to distraically different outcomes.
I'm very glad that I just read that apparently the algorithms have gotten more unisex so hopefully that means a lot less people making the kind of judgment and possibly judging wrong
Everyone goes through the scanner, no exceptions. It shows under your clothes and anything you might have on you. I think it can see ur genitals abt as much as an xray, so not much. I believe OPs comic has the genitals not matching, or they are wearing something akin to a packer.
Either way it flags them as having an unidentified concealed object, and then they have to certify what said object is before they can allow you through
yep they have a scanner which gets a pretty good look at when your body looks like naked, it's called a millimeter wave scanner. with the modern version all the TSA agents supposedly sees A warning indicating the system spots something being where it's not expected And it shows where the" foreign object" is found
Oh. Thank you for explaining. Now I understand it better, I'm not even sure why I immediately thought of x-ray. Maybe because of "papers please", an older video game (haha looked it up, it's from 2013) that portrays border control in an autocratic state
oh yeah I've seen playthroughs of that game
yeah not even in the dystopia of papers please do they have something as bad as this 😂
The system used to be less secure and also used to give people a look or A low res 3D image of your body.
You think they'd be smart enough to just brute force a trans mode.
push the male button: boobs get flagged
push the female button: junk gets flagged
story checks out 😂
I haven't been on a flight since I started transitioning, but my I'll be flying to Florida next spring for my partner's graduation. I'm not looking forward to this interaction at all.
I just looked it up and fortunately it seems like a lot of scanners have been updated since I went with algorithms that aren't as binary
you can sign up for TSA PreCheck, they gave you a background check and they basically pre-screen you, you could still be randomly selected for more advanced scanning but us if you've been pre-checked they'll just use the metal detector.
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u/12jonboy12 29d ago
as a trans woman this ended in a considerably more awkward way.
i told them before going through the scanner "I'm trans" that just seemed to confuse them.
And of course the highlighted area was my crotch.
A female TSA agent came over around I asked if I had anything down there and I said I'm trans I'm and she asked " would you prefer to be inspected by a man" which confused me right back and I said no.
they asked me if they could check me there in line in public or if I wanted a private room, I didn't want all of the additional awkwardness and possibility of losing a flight so I just decided to get It over with, they grabbed me and felt around, awkward as HELL, And then I was free to go.... I mean wouldn't it be a lot faster just to build a trans button into the machine instead of grabbing every trans woman by the junk?