Yeah. Those people who decided that instead of more bomb-sniffing dogs, we needed exorbitant and useless machines that see under our clothes, but don’t detect metal, or anything in the folds of human flesh–nor anything in a body cavity. In other words, machines that don’t show us skeletal, but rather naked, and won’t even slow down any terrorist for more than five minutes.
Here’s the attitude, from somoeone who once worked for the TSA:
I have screened you, your carry on luggage, your checked luggage and even cargo you may have sent someplace. I have seen tons and trust me a naked image of you is not a problem.
When I worked in the checkpoint and screened passengers and their carry-on luggage, not only could I see what you had in your carry-on bag, I could see you. I could connect the image on the screen with the passenger. If that didn’t humiliate you then this tiny little naked image shouldn’t either. The TSA officer who is looking at the image will never see you and you won’t see them. But that vibrator in your carry-on luggage that looks like it would satisfy an elephant, yeah I see that and I see you standing right in front of me. But sure be offended by the naked x-ray image a person in another room is seeing, don’t worry about the vibrator at all or the other weird and crazy crap in your bag.
I have seen the way parents treat their kids and kids treat their parents in the airport and security checkpoint. A good deal of you should be embarrassed and humiliated by that. I have seen 12 year old girls dressed like Tijuana whores with mommy right next to them dressed the same way. I have seen husbands and wives get into fist fights over who is carrying a bag. I have seen grown men and women throw hissy fits like a two year old child because they were asked to remove their shoes. This is the stuff you should be ashamed of and worried about TSA officers seeing. This is what should make you feel humiliated because trust me, we may be professionals but when you come through the checkpoint with crazy stuff in your bag or acting like an idiot, we are going to talk about you after you leave. Oh hell yes we are. It is going to become the highlight of the conversation at TSA officer gatherings.
Yeah–that guy at The Pleasure Chest saw my vibrator, too–but I didn’t take my clothes off for him. And the people at the supermarket who sell me tampons and panty liners? They haven’t seen me naked, either.
The fact that you people are allowed to rifle through the underwear comparments in our luggage was supposed to be a necessary evil–not a justification for contempt for the fying public, or an excuse for further indignities.
What the hell is wrong with people?
More from Jeffrey Goldberg.
UPDATE: And Fausta remarks “I should have worn a burka.” My point regarding the burka isn’t that religious people don’t have a special need for human dignity, but that we all have a need for human dignity. This applies to nuns and sisters as much as it does for Muslim women in burkas.
Remember: by the time someone is at the airport with a bomb built into his or her undergarments, it is too late.
(h/t American Digest)
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{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
….Boottathhead!
Great point that the people who sell us all sorts of personal things have not seen us naked. That includes the women at Victoria’s Secret, who have sold me a whole top drawer full of nice things, but have yet to see me in them (but see me buying them).
What ever happened to modesty? Not the “Nourish the flower of your authentic womanhood” modesty that makes me think, “Gag me with a butcher knife”, but the idea that some things are just not for public consumption – like images of us naked? That there is nothing wrong with people who are squeamish about that? That the normal, not disordered, reaction to this intrusiveness is to fight back?
I know someone who worked at (possibly still does) as a TSA employee. Knowing the calibre of people that they hire frightened me. They do joke about things like passenger’s vibrators and other personal items in bags. Heard it first hand.
I have had an extended pat down myself. They do count on people putting up with it to just get the whole thing over.
Insist on your traveling companion, if you have one, being with you during it.
Saw that there is now a Senate hearing scheduled. Think anything will come of it? Nah, me either.