Transgender Woman Harassed by TSA

LA Times

A transgender woman said she was detained and harassed at an Orlando, Fla., airport security checkpoint Monday by Transportation Safety Administration agents after a body scanner detected an "anomaly" on her.

Shadi Petosky, who runs a Los Angeles interactive entertainment studio, said she was trying to fly out of Orlando International Airport but was stopped after entering the scanner.

In her tweets about the situation, Petosky said that TSA agents calibrated the scanner for a woman, and the machine flagged an anomaly -- "my penis."

This transgender woman is still packing meat and the machine picked up some meat that shouldn't be on a woman. The TSA goons held her for 40 minutes and made her miss her flight. Could there have been an easy solution?

At one point, she said, an agent told her to "get back in the machine as a man or it was going to be a problem."

I suppose these machines look for a normal penis shape for male travelers. I wonder how bad it is for micro-weenie or bbc havers. I guess I am just perplexed at the whole situation. Can a transgender man load up some explosive in a condom and it fly as being authentic manhood? Couple eggs full also and you might make a boom? I'm not sure what to think, but i do believe we can do better than this.

Full Disclosure: I do not not trust the Government run TSA nor do I believe they make us safer. I believe they make a mockery out of security.
How can anyone travel to an airport and feel safe or secure? We have TSA and Baggageboys stealing and TSA misses 95% of Weapons

a reply to: harvestdog

Nothing against the transgendered community? But I don't see how it was any more traumatic than the sexual pat downs of grandma's and children that have been victims of the TSA pat downs and searches.

no one could put explosives in a condom because explosives no matter where they are will be picked up by the body scanner. think before you post

a reply to: DOCHOLIDAZE1

I also think the tsa is a waste of money, but at the same time how could one know 95 percent of weapons are not detected? If weapons are not detected how could they be counted towards the total of weapons brought through tsa security?

With all due respect to this woman I can see how they were confused. To say she was harassed for being transgender is just ridiculous. It was nothing more than a misunderstanding. I'm really sick of people in the LGBT community trying so hard to make everything a civil rights issue.

a reply to: harvestdog

Welcome to equality. Everyone is harassed by the TSA and everyone is effectively molested by those degenerate pieces of voyeuristic crap. This is the new normal. Don't expect any support to change it to create a special group immune from having to experience the same treatment as normal people do. I think there'd be a lot of crossover support if these affected individuals used this as a springboard to join the "Ban the TSA entirely" movement, however.

The machine needs calibrating for either a man or woman. It was set to woman so alerted an 'unidentified item', his penis. I cant see the problem there. If he/she had identified him/herself as a man it would have been ok, I cant blame the TSA for this. The man/woman probably didn't know the machine needed calibrating this way. I cant see what the problem is here. Just a misunderstanding by all parties.

Shame he/she missed his/her plane but a lesson has been learned by all sides.

In future the TSA need to ask ' do you have a penis or not', will they get offended by that also?

a reply to: DOCHOLIDAZE1

Acting TSA director reassigned after screeners failed tests to detect explosives, weapons

That's a CNN link. If you don't feel like reading, they have it on video there. It was a undercover operation by Depeartment of Homeland Security. They smuggled explosives and other weapons in secret. The TSA or their tools missed the mark 95% of the time.

a reply to: cj6

What's your thoughts on these body scanners? Are they good enough to get a nice thorough examination from or are they so rudimentary that they just tell TSA: man has dong, place a sticky note and move along?

originally posted by: seeker1963
a reply to: harvestdog

Nothing against the transgendered community? But I don't see how it was any more traumatic t

han the sexual pat downs of grandma's and children that have been victims of the TSA pat downs and searches.

No one said it was (??)

But being told to "go into the machine as a man" is really not on.

originally posted by: cj6
With all due respect to this woman I can see how they were confused. To say she was harassed for being transgender is just ridiculous. It was nothing more than a misunderstanding. I'm really sick of people in the LGBT community trying so hard to make everything a civil rights issue.

guess you missed this part:

"At one point, she said, an agent told her to "get back in the machine as a man or it was going to be a problem."

How about if it was this said to a gay guy:

At one point, she said, an agent told her to "get back in the machine as a STRAIGHT man or it was going to be a problem."

yeah...didnt think so.

a reply to: burdman30ott6

I'm thinking none of this is going to reverse itself. The TSA has been doing this for so long, that the normal American can rarely remember way back to before it's inception. I have one hell of a time trying to figure out where to start, on why I think movements will be co-opted or shutdown.

There can only be so much reprieve, before a powder keg blows. I pray peacefully these wrongs are righted, but I see chaos at hand.

What are your thoughts on these body scanners they are employing? Are they so bad that it is a machine only determining normal features/ non-normal based solely on sex? Can a man stick himself into a Brat and put the rest in min-red potatoes and not get an alert? Seems to me they can.

a reply to: harvestdog

My thoughts are Americans should refuse to fly until the TSA goes away. When the airlines demand the feds reverse trend, the feds will reverse trends. Sadly that's not going to happen because the majority of America is nor cowardly sheep, easily manipulated and commandeered over.

The TSA harasses everyone (especially people that don't fit the profile of what they're supposed to be looking for); get rid of them, or get the hell over it.
Being transsexual doesn't excuse someone from the same annoyances the rest of us have to deal with (as it shouldn't).

a reply to: harvestdog

i didnt read it was because it WAS a cnn link

Seriously?

Commit or don't announce.

I am....not quite...

I am...sort of.....

One either is, or isn't, simple.

I think if someone is transgender, especially in the case of MTF, there should be a place to put if you are pre-op. I know plenty of MTF people do not go in for operations based on many factors. If an agent saw someone had a tick by their name that they were pre-op, it would be known that something might be off on the scanner. It would omit all talk of harassment and likely could isolate actual cases based on knowing the agent running the machine was informed beforehand.

a reply to: Chimney

TSA workers are paid from our tax dollars. 0.3% of America is believed to be transgendered. I'm gonna go ahead and say that it is not a judicious use of tax dollars to hire someone to sit around twiddling their thumbs waiting to check 1 out of every 333 passengers just to protect that extremely discrete minority's sensibilities. Roughly 5% of Americans are agoraphobic... where's our special treatment, area to wait that isn't a sardine can line, check that doesn't require allowing a stranger to lay their hands upon us in an unwanted manner, etc? That's 1 out of every 20 Americans...

The most accomodating solution here is obviously elimination of the TSA and their intrusive, unbeneficial intrusiveness. If there's some special medical condition that requires a passenger be molested before they feel safe on a flight, they can stand off to the side and fondle themselves before they board. Better that than violating all of us who don't want the intrusion.

a reply to: burdman30ott6

I don't mean a separate person because they already ask for your ID at the start of the screening, or at least at KCI and Portland. They had to check my ticket and photo ID before heading into the screening room and before anyone entered the scanner. All there needs to be is a symbol or something on the ticket that the person is pre-op mtf.

a reply to: BlackboxInquiry

Either I misunderstood your post.... or..... You made the only, single, solitary best reply there could ever be to the OP.