Originally Posted by GradGirl

...TSA is not at all happy to accomodate passengers who would prefer "flashing" to "groping". In fact, exasperated passengers who flashed screeners have been arrested and expelled from airports. I have asked on three or four occasions to be allowed to lift my shirt in private rather than have a total stranger touch me, and I was refused that option every time.

Being touched by a stranger on a sexual part of my body is much more offensive to me than being viewed. I change clothes in a common dressing room at the gym all the time, but if someone walked up and placed both hands on my chest I'd scream. Many other women on this board and elsewhere have stated that they would find a visual flash to be less offensive than being touched in this area.

Why won't the TSA accomodate this request? Perhaps it's because the courts have already said strip searches at airports and even at borders are illegal without articulable suspicion, and TSA searches can not meet that standard. Now, given that the methods TSA is using are even more intrusive and unacceptable than a strip search would be, I hope the TSA's disgusting methods will be struck down when they are finally challenged in court.