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From today's New York Times:

Women Fliers Complain About Treatment by Male Security Guards
By JOE SHARKEY

ANN ZAKOWSKI is still peeved about the way she was treated at an airport more than a month ago.

"I mean, if they really thought I had some dynamite strapped to my chest, poking me there with a stick is probably not a really good idea, right?" she asked.

Ms. Zakowski, who lives in the New York suburbs, was angry because, she said, a male security guard rudely patted her down and poked her in the chest with an electronic metal-detecting wand after she had been pulled aside randomly for a body search at the Westchester County Airport while leaving for a flight to St. Louis via Chicago.

She was one of dozens of readers, writing about their own experiences, who replied to a recent column about brusque and unnecessarily impolite treatment that some travelers are complaining about when they are searched by security guards at airports.

But she and a few other female travelers made a point that hadn't occurred to me in my focus on loutish behavior by some airport guards. At security checkpoints, she said, female travelers are routinely frisked, patted down and "wanded" by male guards. That doesn't even happen in prisons, Ms. Zakowski pointed out.

The concerns are very basic, she explained. Women don't like being manhandled, even in the name of safety.

"How many women do you think are reluctant to travel because of that?" Ms. Zakowski asked in a recent telephone interview. "It used to be the norm that when you walked through one of those gates and it beeped if you had some metal on you, maybe you had on an underwire bra, they would bring a woman over to check you. That was always the norm. Now, all of a sudden it isn't. Somewhere, somebody decided that it's O.K. for men to search the women, and you have no choice? How did that happen?"

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At crowded, often chaotic airport security gates, the imperative is to move people through as efficiently as possible. Given the emergency conditions, not many people want to make a scene.

While most guards behave professionally, the opportunity for busy hands is obvious, and Ms. Zakowski thinks it's time to ask some questions about what's going on. "If you talk about it, you're a prude," she said. "You're overreacting. You're a nut case or whatever."

She added: "When I objected and asked for a female to complete the search, the guy just laughed at me. So tell me, what do you do if you tell him to take his hands off you, and he doesn't? What's the position of a woman traveler, whether she's a business traveler or someone on a pleasure trip? What if you have to go through one of these security checks and some guy approaches you and you don't like the way he touches you?"

According to the F.A.A., women who ask for a female guard to search them are supposed to get one. "If a woman requests that she be screened by a woman, she is," said Paul Takemoto, a spokesman. "There is always a male and female present" among the guards at checkpoints, he said.

Evelyn Hannon, who is the editor of Journeywoman Online, an Internet travel site that features news, tips and networking links for female travelers, (www.journeywoman.com), said, "It's a woman's right, if someone needs to pat you down, to say I would like a woman to do it."

"Things happen so quickly at the airport that if someone is going to do it in an improper way, there's probably no time for recourse," Ms. Hannon said. "You're just embarrassed and you're forced to move on your way." But she added: "If someone makes a fuss, though, they'll back off real fast, as far as I'm concerned. I sure know they would with me, if someone wants to put their hands on me and I think it's not right."

However, even having a female guard doesn't automatically address the issue of unnecessary embarrassment at checkpoints, said a woman from Virginia who travels about once a week on business. By e-mail, she reported this recent encounter with a female airport guard:

"She proceeds to pat me down through my suit jacket and sweater and asks loudly if the seam she feels on my right breast is a seam from my bra. By now, I'm next to irate as she puts on this show of thoroughly patting me down. I don't say anything to her other than, `Yes, that is a seam to my bra.' I don't make a scene. To what end? The National Guard can take me to a back room and have me strip-searched."

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Now that the new security legislation is in place, federal authorities are preparing to assume responsibility for employing and training airport guards, a job that right now remains in the hands of undertrained and often poorly supervised workers for private security companies. It's a good opportunity to lay down some firm, professional ground rules on how to deal with the innocent public, as well as how to keep terrorists out of the air-transportation system.

A basic appreciation of personal legal rights is not inconsistent with tough, effective airport safety, security experts say. But first, it's necessary to recognize the potential that emergency conditions provide for abuse, and to plan appropriately to head it off with strict training and supervision.

Since Sept. 11, "security personnel have been handed extraordinary power to frisk, search, check identities and conduct searches that would be problematic in the hands of saints," said J. D. Tuccille, the editor in chief of Civil Liberties, an online magazine sponsored by the Web portal About.com.

"This creates a lot of new powers in the hands of some people," he continued. "And at some point, some percentage of them are going to misuse that power."