Protect Your Country! Let Us Feel You Up!

It looks like a lot of women are being frisked at airports these days, and it ain’t pretty, reports Newsday.
Rhonda Gaynier was flying home to New York from Florida in mid-October when she was asked to step aside for some additional searching. Apparently, she got more than she expected than a normal screening. In front of other passengers, a security guard used an open hand to touch under her arms, her shoulders, across her bra strap, and between her breasts. “I was almost in tears. I’ve never been so humiliated in my life. It’s one of the worst experiences I’ve had to endure.” said Gaynier.
The frisk was the result of a new government directive that airport screeners carry out more frequently and more thoroughly to search for explosives. The new policy was put into effect by the Transportation Security Administration on Sept. 22, after 90 people were killed in two plane crashes in Russia believed to have been caused by Chechen women who carried explosives on board.
Sommer Gentry, a graduate student who commutes twice a month from her home in Baltimore, said she now takes Amtrak, rather than submit herself to the invasive airport search. Gentry said she has actually had several upsetting encounters with the screeners.
“I will go to great lengths to avoid flying now, because patdowns make me feel dirty and ashamed,” she said. “It just gets worse every time. Now I’m afraid.”
The new TSA rules say screeners can select passengers for patdowns based on “visual observations,” even if they do not set off metal detectors. Other passengers are selected randomly by a computer, which was Gaynier’s case. In addition, other passengers may get marked because of “passenger behavior,” such as frequently buying one-way tickets or paying in cash.
The rules also make sure to note that passengers can ask to be checked in private and by a screener of their same gender (both of Gentry and Gaynier’s patdowns were by women) and that screeners must only use the backs of their hands when touching sensitive places. Oh, okay — that changes everything! Turn your hand and violation is out the door! Sigh.
Gaynier has filed a complaint with the TSA and is exploring taking some legal action. “Post-9/11, we have all come to accept a certain level of inconvenience and intrusion, I will tolerate that.” she says. “But you want to touch my body, you better have a damn good reason, and they don’t.”
But they do! Touching your boobs could save people’s lives! If we are going to “accept a certain level of inconvenience and intrusion,” is this going to have to be a part of it? Should we be questioning the fact that these plane crashes occured in another country, and that two Chechen women may have been responsible — so now various women in this country are subject to searches? Has homeland security become a sexist structure? Should we be surprised?
What do y’all think?