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Transgender and gender nonconforming people say they have been pressured to expose their genitals during TSA searches at airports
Link information
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- Title
- TSA's Body Scanners Are Gender Binary. Humans Are Not. - ProPublica
- Authors
- Lucas Waldron,Brenda Medina
- Published
- Aug 26 2019
- Word count
- 4293 words
It's so dumbfounding how this is an issue at all. First off, not everyone goes through the backscatter. What if someone was directed through the metal detector? There's clearly bias in how people are screened.
But perhaps more importantly, what explosive would be the size of a non-erect penis that's been on HRT? Or a packer if they're a trans male? No explosives or weapons of any concern are really this size. More importantly, no explosives or weapons of this size look like a penis on a backscatter.
I'm more curious about how often terrorists try to smuggle explosives/weapons aboard, by disguising them as a penis, and by putting said fake explosive penis on
an otherwise female-presenting persona person who otherwise appears female.Because that sounds like the sort of silliness that transphobic people might come up with, to justify the harassment of trans people: "Just say that you are trans and they won't do a thing to you,
trans peoplegender non-conforming never get singled out or harassed!"Edit: thinking about it, breast forms would be much more concerning. Breasts weight in the kilos, gynaecomastia is common, and breast cancer - requiring a mastectomy - is also far from rare.
A terrorist not made of straw might decide to put explosives inside breast forms. A terrorist not made of straw would also put those breast forms on either an overweight man or a woman. But I can understand why terrorists made of straw can be scary. They are a fire hazard, if one that only burns gender non-conforming people.
A pliable explosive or a package of drugs could be any shape, no?
(For the record, I'm not defending the TSA here.)
TSA officers are only supposed to search for weapons or other dangers to the flight, not drugs. They have to report drugs if they see them, but they don't look for them.
Huh, didn't know that. So who does the busts on the drugs, then? I've never been searched by a customs officer.
Though it doesn't really matter I guess, a suspicious package is a suspicious package - apparently even if it's just a very large penis (I can't find it right now but there was a reddit post or AMA way back about a guy that always gets his junk searched because of the unusually large volume).
About the size of this blob of plastique explosive? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5-aUkC6z1A
Here's an example backscatter image
It seems like it already distinguishes between flesh and not-flesh, so I would think that a penis-shaped lump of plastic explosive would show up as clearly different from a penis.
And if the scanner can't tell the difference between flesh and plastic explosive...it seems like it'd be possible to smuggle a lot of explosives on board just by posing as an obese person.
My experiences with men, and especially the type that like to blow things up and also in scenarios where molding objects out of clay/putty is the activity, makes me inclined to believe that there have been at least a handful of phalic explosives made.
The article seems to imply that the scanner ignores or allows more mass to exist in the pelvic region for men and on the chest for women, so the implication here is that adding to the size of your existing member might not red flag on the back scatter device, so long as you present male and they scan you as a male.