Gender-ambiguous people sometimes bring out angry reactions from others, for some reason. (I have a colleague who would be described in that way, and he tells me he gets yelled at, eye-rolling, name-called reactions almost daily.) The TSA situation has to be understood in that light--in the context of the daily hostility that gender-ambiguous people suffer all the time.

What I find unbelievable is that the AIT cannot cope with assessing threats without first assigning a 'body type.' This is bizarre to me, since it's obvious that some females have practically no breast tissue that the 'template' must be expecting, whereas some males are far better endowed in the chest department than many females. Is there a special template for 'man-boobs' for chestier males?

People come in all sizes, shapes, and amplitudes. A machine that cannot cope with the differential 'naughty bits' is so primitive that I cannot believe it could possibly cope with all the other variations in the human shape. Hence my skepticism that it can possibly contribute to meaningful security.

@WillCAD, I don't get the impression from Tristan's post that she is upset solely because the screener asked her whether she was male or female. I get the impression that she is upset at the situation, including the fact that the machine flagged her body as not matching up. She even uses as the closing sentiment of her post that, "it's butch to be yourself, no matter the cost or what some stupid machine thinks of you. Be butch."

Yes, on an intellectual level, a machine is obviously not shaming her or judging her body. But this whole setup is obviously going to trigger emotional reactions because one's body image is so intensely personal and so tied up in who we are and how we present ourselves to people. How could it ever *not* feel as though the machine is judging whether one's body is acceptable?


Thank you for the concern about my ACL repair. It's healing well but I'm still working back to my full strength. Many friends and strangers have been nothing but encouraging and helpful and kind, but then, well, there's always that guy. And maybe I'm overly sensitive also. But really, who are these people who were never taught that it's rude to ask persistent, prying questions about someone's medical condition?

This.

The WTMD detects the presence of metal; so did the (discarded) HHMD. The ETD (ideally) detects the presence of chemicals related to explosives; so did the (discarded) puffers.

But TSA - in their wisdom - decrees that the primary means of screening a passenger's body is based on "body shape detection." And that the detected body shape is compared (visually by the backroom boys, or automatically by a computer) to a "reference body shape", where anything that is different must be "wrong."

This machine also requires the passenger to (1) stand for (2) some period of time with (3) their hands over their heads.

And we asked, here on FT to (self-identified) TSA employees, and on Bloggy Bob's Big Page o' Lies, and in newspaper comment sections:
1. What will TSA do about people who can't stand at all?
2. What will TSA do about people who can't stand for the required period of time?
3. What will TSA do about people who can't raise their arms?
4. What will TSA do about people whose body shape is "non-reference" - not just those whose gender is not apparent, but also those who are extremely tall, extremely short, very obese, people with prostheses or insulin pumps or ostomy bags or a simple sanitary pad?

None of these issues arise with scanning for metal or testing for explosive residue. All of these should have been considered by TSA before introducing the NoS, with very clear answers for passengers and TSA screeners alike as to how to address them (Or, better, decide not to introduce the NoS because these issues cannot be handled appropriately. @:-) )

Instead, TSA tells passengers: "Trust us, we have a Procedure for dealing with that, although we can't tell you what it is; SSI, you know." And they (seem to) tell the screeners: "Just make something up."

We've seen this with the discussion over how medical "opt outs" are handled; there are wildly different experiences from airport to airport. We've seen it with the screening of wheelchair passengers, and people with ostomy bags. This event is just one more example of TSA making it up as they go along. All of this was foreseeable.

I disagree. Choice of methodology should take into account not only the ability to locate what you want but also the lack of extensive false positives, or "alarms" unrelated to security. A method appropriate for the task at hand will not be gender-sensitive, therefore gender differences will never be an issue. WTMD and ETD are unaltered by gender, while full body scans will hassle persons who are different in ways completely unrelated to airport security.

I wonder if one of the reasons for including gender in the required (in-)Secure Flight (iSF) data from all passengers was to eventually avoid this situation in the future. If BPs were coded with iSF data and TDCs (or even WTMD/NoS moat dragons) were equipped with barcode scanners and scanned every BP, they could answer the gender question without asking it.

It's a whole lot of if's that would take a few years to materialize but someone with half a brain might have actually concocted some sort of plan. They're clearly moving in the direction of scanning BPs anyway under the guise of closing the (very real) fake-BP loophole.

I always opt out, so I've never paid attention if there is a male / female button that a TSA employee needs to push. Is this something to do with the Automatic Threat Detection upgrade? If so, this is again setting up the TSA for more failure.

The only issue I recall with what one's gender is at the checkpoint is during an opt-out. TSA employees in this forum have stated that passengers will be groped based on the gender they present themselves as. Okay, fine.

But Tristan in not opting out. She's going through the Nude-O-Scope to (presumably) not have to answer questions about her gender so an assist can be called for a grope. Breast tissue can vary widely regardless of gender, so that shouldn't be an issue.

So it boils down to the fact that since there is a lack of something, namely a penis and testicles, this is something that needs to be resolved to complete the screening process. So just how exactly does the lack of a penis and testicles pose a threat to commercial aviation?

It doesn't.. they push the male button, and occasionally the breast show up as outside the predefined parameters... yes... this does occasionally happen to some men as well.
The opposite issue arrives with pre-op male transvestites, who present and consider themselves as females, only there's something there which isn't- the computer doesn't have social graces.

I've never received an explanation about what to do about a pax who is hermaphrodotic and doesn't identify...

Yes, the ATD ones do.

I wish I could opt out.

Secure Flight requires the data listed on the passengers documents. Gender may not always match what is listed on said documents.

Way down toward the bottom of my "things we need" list is one other person at the CP needing to examine my BP. The TDC is a long way from the MD at most AP's and would require another look close to the scanner. Or, from the "worst idea of the thread category," let's just have separate male and female scanner lines.

Am I not posting in English again? You're simply saying what ive already said.

Again, irrelevant. You're conflating two distinct operational acts into one. It simply doesn't matter what gender a person is to the scanner. The bit where you talk about maybe the software scanning differently for boys or girls is simply laughable.

If gender selection is not needed for the scanners, then why is there a need to select a gender before the scan?

There isn't. The choice is either an operational systems choice or a programming choice. Automated systems could well be set up to weight alarms based on expected norms, but given the range of humanity it'd be an amazingly poor system or programming choice to opt for. I fully expect TSA to have requested exactly that. After all, "that would be so much better.".

Sorry, but there absolutely is. On the machines with ATR, to initiate a scan the clerk must push an option "scan male" or "scan female". This is black and white, not a question of beliefs or interpretations.

This is assuming that your post was "there isn't a need" to mean "it is possible to scan someone without selecting these options using the scanners currently installed". If you meant "the scanners should be able to scan someone without having the option selected (but I am aware that they currently lack this feature for whatever reason)" then ignore this post.