“I am being held by the TSA in Orlando because of an ‘anomaly’ (my penis),” was the first of one woman’s many tweets published Monday afternoon. What followed was gruesome detail about how her experience being profiled, humiliated, and forced to miss her flight by airport security, all because she is transgender. For transgender people, those particle body scanners that passengers must now pass through are problematic, because TSA personnel push a button indicating whether — based on their visual perception — the passenger is male or female. Another agent views the scan to look for any “anomalies,” appearances that shouldn’t be on the scan. For a transgender woman (scanned as a woman), her penis might appear as such. For a transgender man (scanned as a man), it could be chest-binding that he’s wearing to reduce the appearance of his breasts. These individuals are immediately treated as suspicious, particularly if the anomaly continues to appear in additional scans — which of course it would. The individual might then be detained for questioning, subjected to a pat-down, or held for additional questioning.
Regardless of how you feel about individuals who identify as transgender, the starting point for any discussion should be that they’re people who deserve to be treated with dignity and respect. Other than their sexual identity, which is no one’s business but their own, transgender individuals are no different from you or me. They have jobs, families, responsibilities, and bills to pay. They have hopes, dreams, and aspirations. Their genitalia and how the define themselves is their concern and theirs alone. We heterosexuals take it as a matter of course that our sexuality and lifestyle choice(s) are private…yet so many refuse to extend the same courtesy and consideration to those who differ from us only in deeply personal and private ways.
This is why it’s so sad and disturbing that so many people and institutions still can’t manage to deal with the idea that transgender individuals are people like anyone else. The story of Shadi Petosky, a transgender woman detained by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) in the Orlando Airport is neither new nor unusual, but it should concern and disturb anyone with a sense of decency.
Because her “anomaly” was identified when she went through the body scanner in Orlando, Petosky was detained, eventually missing her flight and incurring significant cost, aggravation, and degradation. Poor treatment at the hands of TSA personnel is sadly all too common for transgender individuals- 11% of whom report being “denied equal treatment” and 17% of whom reported being harrassed and/or disrespected. The fact that some individuals and institutions still can’t be bothered to treat ALL Americans with a modicum of dignity and respect reflects poorly on us all.
Surely we’ve progressed as a society to the point where ALL Americans have a right to expect equal and respectful treatment at our nation’s airports?
In May of 2014, Al Jazeera America published an exposé about the many complaints filed by transgender passengers. The story noted that TSA screening officers “receive sensitivity training, though it does not generally include content specific to transgender passengers.” The National Center for Transgender Equality even offered to provide trans-specific training, “but was rebuffed.”
In the wake of Petosky’s widely shared tweets, many transgender people have begun sharing their stories on the #TravelingWhileTrans hashtag. The thread is peppered with stories of people being confronted by security when their appearances do not match their legal documents.
We now live in a world in which sexuality is increasingly no longer seen as an either/or proposition. More and more, sexuality is being defined on a spectrum- gay, straight, bi, transgender, or somewhere in between, we all fall somewhere on the spectrum. You don’t have to understand it- I’m not altogether certain I do- but that doesn’t matter. The sexual identity claimed by another is their concern and theirs alone. It’s neither your responsibility nor right to judge someone for being the person they choose to be. It IS your responsibility and obligation to ensure that ALL Americans are treated with dignity and respect.
There’s no lack of dividing lines in our society. We excel at finding ways to pigeonhole people, often with an eye towards justify treating them as “less than.” Regardless of your personal feelings, the truth is that if one person isn’t free, NONE of us are free.
Whatever happened to teaching- and practicing- the Golden Rule??
