Travel by air, get felt up

[Scooter]

First we were assured over and over again that the images of our naked bodies taken by full body scanners would not be stored or transmitted; of course that turned out to be a lie. Now we learn that anyone who refuses a full body scan will be subjected to a groping of their private parts by security personnel. Perhaps the TSA should start posting job openings in the sex offender wing of prisons, so they can find staff who will really take their new job responsibilities seriously.

Whenever I get selected for a pat down search I put on an obvious "gay" voice, point to the cutest male security guard, and ask if he can do it. Always embarrasses the fuck out of who pulled me aside. Then when he's patting me down I not so subtlely push against his hands so they make a lot more contact than he intended. By the time he gets below my waist his hands are patting air about 3 inches away from my body. I could be carrying an uzi in my pant leg and he wouldn't notice.

[Gob]

My "tea down the nose" moment for the day, many thanks!

Whenever I get selected for a pat down search I put on an obvious "gay" voice, point to the cutest male security guard, and ask if he can do it. Always embarrasses the fuck out of who pulled me aside. Then when he's patting me down I not so subtlely push against his hands so they make a lot more contact than he intended.

You know I am so going to try that! I only hope I can do the role justice

[Sue U]

I could be carrying an uzi in my pant leg

Or are you just be happy to see him?

[Jarlaxle]

Yet ANOTHER reason I simply refuse to fly. I'd rather hitch-hike.

And I am STILL n ot convinced the scanners are SAFE!

[Gob]

I know what you mean Jarl, I saw that movie too!!

[Andrew D]

If this:

... the images of our naked bodies taken by full body scanners [are] stored or transmitted ....

happens, why should we care?

[Jarlaxle]

Because some people would rather not have nude images of themselves--or their children--passed around.

[Guinevere]

If this:

... the images of our naked bodies taken by full body scanners [are] stored or transmitted ....

happens, why should we care?

Because we should have some right to control how and where our images are are utilized.

[Joe Guy]

Or should at least get paid for it...

[rubato]

If this:

... the images of our naked bodies taken by full body scanners [are] stored or transmitted ....

happens, why should we care?

Is there a point in asking if they should care if you have means, no desire, and no intention of persuading them that they ought not to?

yrs,
rubato

[Gob]

I don't think the average traveler need worry about their image being circulated, let's face it folks, 99% of us aren't attractive enough to have a market for the image.

However, the thought of Hatch's image going out there fills me with dread.

Let's look at what we are talking about here.



Thought as an infrequent international flyer I see the need for the utmost security these days, I think these scanners over step the boundaries of normal privacy.

[Jarlaxle]

Not to mention: I am not convinced these X-ray scanners are safe. When carrying my brother, my mother could not get her TEETH X-rayed, which would have put a LEAD APRON between him and the X-ray. Now, a pregnant woman is supposed to go through a FULL-BODY X-ray? How long before someone either sues or goes postal after delivering a child with three heads?

Not to mention, they can harm insulin pumps, pacemakers, implanted defibrillators (can set them off, possibly causing a heart attack!), cochlear implants, and probably many other implanted devices.

[loCAtek]

Scooter:

[Crackpot]

Jarl. Those aren't x-rays if they were they'd penetrate the body.

[Jarlaxle]

I've heard them called "backscatter X-ray machines".

[Scooter]

Someone asked "why should we care" about this? Because more scum like this are going to be attracted to jobs with the TSA because they will get off on forcing kids to get naked pictures of themselves taken and/or viewing them.

I was pulled out of line AGAIN for secondary screening on a flight back from Ottawa last week, by completely bogus means*, and given the choice of the full body scanner or a complete pat down. I INSISTED on the pat down, and kept telling him through it not to be shy and to grope me harder. When he finished he had the nerve to tell me that I "could be charged with sexual harrassment". I laughed in his face and told him (a) he'd best check a law book for the definition of sexual harrassment, and (b) even without knowing the definition, he had a a lot of gall to be accusing me of sexual harrassment after HE had just finished groping MY genitalia.




*I say completely bogus means because the metal detector went off as I passed through even though I knew for a fact that I had on no metal of any kind, not even a zipper because the pants I was wearing happened to have a button fly. This was confirmed when the twit scanned me with that wand thing and it didn't emit a peep. Someone had decided they wanted to subject me to secondary screening and purposely set off the metal detector when I passed through to justify it.

[BoSoxGal]

I'm anxiously awaiting my trip to NY to visit family later this month. I really need the vacation and I haven't seen them in almost two years, so I'm very grateful I'm going - but I'm dreading flying back out of LaGuardia, as I assume I will have to go through this crap in one fashion or another.

[Andrew D]

Is there any evidence that the images which this guy possessed/distributed are images that came his way via airport screening? The linked article conspicuously does not say so.

I stand by my question. The images taken of us by these scanners are, if anything, images of us nude.

They're not images of us engaged in any sort of sexually explicit behavior. (Unless you're masturbating while being screened. In which case you have issues that no amount of security screening can help you resolve.) They are no more "graphic" than any of thousands of paintings of nude people that we -- including the children among us -- can see every day.

So why should we care?

Or, more pointedly, why we should we continue feeding our society's puerile obsession with nudity?

When I walk down the street, anyone can see -- and can, if he or she feels like it, take a picture and put it on YouTube -- that I am a scrawny, pot-bellied, middle-aged man with hair-management issues. If I were bare-ass naked, anyone could see that I am a scrawny, pot-bellied, middle-aged man with a penis, a scrotum, and hair-management issues.

So what? Anyone with even a rudimentary grasp of human anatomy has -- if he or she even bothered to think about it at all, which would in itself suggest the need for professional intervention -- guessed that already.

Our society drives us to think of our nakedness as something we should hide. And it drives us to think that if someone sees us naked -- setting aside the people we have other reasons for wanting to get naked in front of and/or with -- we should somehow be ashamed. (And if you don't believe that, look up "pudenda" and check out its etymology.)

Why?

The whole concern is fundamentally misguided. At bottom, there is no real reason to conceal one's genitals from public view than there is to conceal one's nose or hands or kneecaps.

I would like to see a different kind of public protest about the security screening at airports (and spreading to public transit systems and coming soon to a supermarket near you). I would like to see a whole line of people waiting to board an airplane dressed in nothing but sweatpants and T-shirts simultaneously drop their sweatpants to their ankles and pull their T-shirts up to their shoulders and say, in unison:

"There! I have genitals! I have nipples! And so does everyone else! So can we just get on the damn plane?"

Enough of that, and we might start behaving like adults.

I avoid flying whenever practicable. The whole security thing has gotten completely out of hand -- not because it is invasive, but because it has become so time-consuming.

I live at the eastern edge of the San Francisco Bay Area. If I need to meet a client in Century City -- one of those strangely named enclaves that is actually part of the city of Los Angeles -- I can get to that meeting faster by driving than by flying.

That is madness. The aircraft travels at least five times the rate that my car does, even when I am behaving with a Californian's typical disdain for speed limits. But the door-to-door to travel time is less if I drive than it is if I fly.

The last time I took a trip by air, it was to attend a family function in Washington DC. Driving was impracticable. (I would have preferred to drive, but when I did the navigation and considered the timing, it just wasn't going to work.) So I suffered through the whole process of airborne travel.

If there had been an option whereby I could have stripped naked, thrown my clothes with the rest of my stuff onto the conveyor, and walked through the metal detector so that the TSA could assure itself that I didn't have explosives up my ass, I'd have done it in a heartbeat.

And that would obviate the "need" for tactile screening: A security agent has no reason to to feel for things that you might have concealed next to your genitals, if he or she can plainly see that what is there is your genital assembly and nothing else.

Those of you wouldn't -- those of you desperate to "protect" images of your nude body -- should bear something in mind: You are the reason that the rest of us have to show up hours before our planes leave. You are the reason that the rest of us have to piss away an extra half a day.

The main problem isn't the TSA. Sure, much of the security stuff is unnecessary and ineffective. But if weren't for you, that stuff would take about ten minutes. The other 2-/12 hours or whatever? That's your fault. It's on you.

Why has air travel become such a nightmare? Because of you.

At a minimum, there should be an option for the adults among us. We should not have to waste our time standing in lugubriously moving lines because children are getting in our way. There should be a line for us, so that we can move on through and spend the next couple of hours getting some work done or texting our friends and family or reading the newspaper or snoozing or whatever.

There should be separate flights for us. Booking should be simple: "Would you like a ticket on the flight that leaves at 4:00? Boarding starts at 3:00. Place your clothing and other belongings on the conveyor belt. After passing through the detector, put your clothes back on, gather your other belongings, and proceed to your seat."

"Oh, you don't want to be seen naked? OK, we have a flight for you, too. Boarding starts at 3:00. The aircraft is scheduled for takeoff at 6:30."

But no. Instead, all of us have to wait forever to accommodate the "Oh, God no! Someone will discover that my daughter has labia!" crowd.

Grow up.

[Joe Guy]

Nice rant, Andrew D, but the complaint is that most people don't believe that a bunch of airport security guards should be required (allowed) to see them naked in order to let them take an airplane flight.

You should advocate the 'nudist express lane' at airports.

It just might catch on.

[Andrew D]

Nice rant, Andrew D, but the complaint is that most people don't believe that a bunch of airport security guards should be required (allowed) to see them naked in order to let them take an airplane flight.

"Most people"? Well, yeah. Most people would rather not go through any more screening then we used to back in the day when if you were late for your flight, you could get hurried through the metal detector and then run down the ramp and pound on the airplane's door. (I've done it; that was in the late 1990s.)

But that is not going to happen in the foreseeable future. You want to make it happen? More power to you. And good luck with that.

Getting back to the world as it is rather than the world as we might like it to be, one way or another, your naked body is going to be subject to scrutiny. It might be an image on a screen. It might be someone's hand(s) on your genitals. At some point, it might become routine for it to be both.

But none of that is necessary for someone who just stands naked before those doing the screening. No one has to worry about images on the internet, because you are not being scanned by a gizmo that creates a storable and reproducible image. The only people who are going to see you are the ones who are right there looking at you.

No one has to worry about being touched, because unless the security people looking at you see something suspicious -- and I'm not sure what that might be, but there probably is something -- there will be no reason for anyone to touch you.

(Personally, I find the idea of a stranger's touching my genitals through my clothing considerably more invasive than a stranger's seeing my naked genitals. But maybe that's just me.)

There are only two things to worry about: (1) being seen naked and (2) seeing someone else naked. To adults, both of those should amount to nothing.

There are some parents who are -- what's the right word? terrified? mortified? scandalized? -- by the prospect that their child(ren) might see an adult naked. But we can accommodate that species of juvenility easily enough: We can put up a screen. Those of us who have no problem with being seen naked and no problem with seeing others naked will be on one side, and those whose blood pressure rises to dangerous levels at the thought of their precious little innocent's seeing an adult naked (nevermind that (s)he has probably long since figured out how to find X-rated pictures via the computer at the public library) will be on the other.

There is also the "problem" of the circulation on the internet of an image of naked child's image. When my goddaughter was a child, technology is not what it is today, so that prospect was not an at-the-forefront-of-one's-awareness concern. But I like to think -- and, having been very much involved in her upbringing, I believe myself correct in thinking -- that had such a thing happened, her response would have been something like:

"Oh, yeah. I hadn't really noticed, but now that you mention it, that is a picture of me naked. Why would anyone bother to put that on the internet?"

(And we should remember how recent a concern prepubescent children's being seen naked really is. When I was a kid, it was common for little children to run around naked at public campgrounds and the like. No one -- well, almost no one -- thought anything of it. And I don't think that those children were attacked by pedophiles any more often than the if-someone-you-don't-know-so-much-as-smiles-at-you-run-away-screaming children of today are.)

The bottom line remains simple: Why should a complete stranger's seeing your labia or penis, or your seeing a complete stranger's labia or penis, matter any more than does a complete stranger's seeing your nose, or your seeing a complete stranger's nose?

Is there any answer other than a social construct built around shame associated with genitals? If so, I have yet to see it.