I wonder how many other airports this occurs at. The majority of people have been conditioned to accept this as normal or are afraid to speak up. I always opt out of the scanner. Can you see which gender the screener selects while in the scanner?
This seems like a good way to smuggle things through the body scanner. A female passenger could place something down the front of her pants and the screener, who is in on the plan, hits the male gender button. Since the scanner is expecting something in that area, there is no alarm. They could probably do the same thing with a male passenger as long as they didn't put too much down the pants.