The number of stories I've been hearing about transgender passengers being hassled, harrassed and humiliated at airport securities is snowballing.
Transmen are being asked to take their packers out of their pants and to remove the silicone taping from their chest scars.
Inappropriate questions are being asked in front of other passengers. Pronouns are being misused. Extra searches are being done. Teasing is happening. Trans passengers are being laughed at.
A transwoman friend of mine was going to fly as male because she was terrified of airport security giving her shit and making a scene in public. I had to convince her to travel as herself and she, luckily, didn't have any problems. Trans people should not have to alter their gender presentation just to get on a damn airplane without being publicly humiliated.
Is there an organization out there that would be willing to make some kind of training video for airport security to watch about how to handle transgender passengers? I have this idea and I think it needs to be done, but I don't have the resources or connections to do it. Chicago police has a somewhat decent video (although it is full of errors) about how to treat trans people. Can't the airports have something similar?
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I don't have any recommendations but I just wanted to say I support this idea and hope reform happens.
This issue has been on my mind too -- also at the DMV and such. I just got my learner's permit and could not imagine how difficult, bureaucratically as well as emotionally (if you were subject to harassment), it would be to request a change in gender on your license.
Yeah, I know what you mean about this. On my recent flight from YVR to SLC, a TSA guard told me I was selected for a "random search" (which I strongly suspect was due to the fact that my gender listed on my passport was different from what I present as, even though my picture matches fine). As part of the search, I was given a pat-down, not once, but twice, where the officer stuck her hand down my pants. Both times were in plain view of anyone around us!
For the record, I wasn't even in the States yet - this was at the Vancouver airport. So it's not just America where this sort of thing happens. Vancouver is probably one of the most trans-friendly cities in the world, and it still happened to me there.
Gender presentation doesn't equal sex. Non-trans but non-gender traditional people of both sexes get stick, too, for being 'dykes' or 'fags' etc.
Not even all trans people are traditionally feminine or masculine, actually. Not all trans women dress in heels and skirts.
No-one should be hassled, but at the same time, sometimes you just *are* selected for a random search, and it's not because you've done anything, just because it's random.
Obviously people are harassed at airports for lots of reasons. My grandfather gets "special attention" almost every time because--no joke--he bears a strong resemblance to Saddam Hussein.
Yes, people of all sorts catch hell from airport "authorities" because they don't match the "ideal traveler" paradigm (white, rich, traditionally gendered...) but trans people are uniquely troubled when traveling because we disproportionately have information on our passports that make it not only difficult to travel most places without being subjected to invasive questioning and inspection, but also flatly illegal to travel in some places.
So yes, it's not impossible that I, as a trans woman, am "randomly selected" for "additional processing" pretty much every time I fly--but I'd suggest it's far more likely that the person at check-in was uncomfortable with me than that the RNG hates me.