With All The Changes In Washington

With all the changes going on with travel regulations we are starting to face stronger scrutiny by the TSA when trans people travel by air.

Tripping Perspective
Transgender passengers uneasy about TSA shift on pat-downs
Washington Post
By Fredrick Kunkle
March 25, 2017

When the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) announced a recent shift toward a more aggressive and uniform policy on pat-downs at airport checkpoints, transgender people had special reason to be wary.

Transgender passengers have used social media to document humiliating and sometimes hostile experiences at airport checkpoints in recent years. Given the apparent change on transgender policies already signaled by the Trump administration, some LGBT advocates are worried.

“Every time transgender people navigate airport security they risk being demeaned and humiliated. While the Transportation Security Administration has taken steps to better protect the privacy of transgender passengers, there is a long way to go,” David Stacy, government affairs director for the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), said in a written statement. “More invasive pat downs are a dangerous step in the wrong direction.”

But even when we tell them we are trans we still run into problems,

Melville has asked the security officers to set the machine to the male setting and been refused because of her appearance. But when the machine operates on the female setting, it sets off an alarm that requires her to submit to a pat-down. She said she has tried alerting TSA personnel that she’s transgender but is often ignored, despite the TSA’s stated policies. The Advocate magazine wrote last year that the TSA’s policy on using body scanners would likely cause transgender and gender-nonconforming people to be regularly subjected to intrusive examinations.

I have been through security checkpoints twice this month, but in both case once when I went in to the Legislative Office Building (LOB) and the other time was Friday when I went in to the courthouse to do training and I set off the alarms. The first time I set off the metal detector and the officers frisked me down with a hand held detector and the second time something in my pocketbook caused the officer to look into my pocketbook (My guess that it was my remote clicker because of its handle). Both times the officers were respectful. But they were not TSA.

I have a feeling that it is only going to get worst with the Trump administration, I don’t even think they have gotten started changing the TSA regulations.