Today I arrived early for a flight from SAT and thought that I'd spend some time observing the checkpoint. SAT had four security lines open, two WTMD, and two BKSX.

The backscatter lines were the most interesting because of the differences between the male and female experiences. I observed a few dozen screenings of each gender. The differences were striking.

No males received a full secondary screening. Two females got the full secondary -- hair, breasts, groin, legs, etc.

Only a few males had one part of their body screened by a TSO after the backscatter. Every single female had her hair touched by the female TSO's gloved hand, and only two females did not also have at least one other part of their body inspected. The most popular areas for inspection were wrists (jewelry), breasts, and waistbands.

The female TSO did not change her gloves the entire time I was observing her. The gloves that were dragged over clothes and put down waistbands were the same ones that subsequently touched skin and hair. Of course, no new gloves were at the location where the touching was taking place. New gloves were only located where the full secondaries took place.

In short, the usual case for males had them walking into the machine, assuming the surrender pose, walking out, standing a moment, and going on their merry way, irradiated, dumb, and happy.

The usual case for women was irradiation with increased invasiveness with delay, and touching with dirty gloves.

Hopefully, no one should be surprised at this. Women are targeted by the TSA. Full stop.

Reason 8,437 that a TSA screening is not "just like at the doctor!" = dirty gloves.

I assume this was at terminal A which houses most of the airlines?

Admirable training by someone we know at SAT.

I'm not surprised. I had some ugly SAT experiences last year, starting with being ordered to remove my lightweight top even though I was only wearing a bra underneath. (I didn't comply)

OP, did you happen to notice if there were any glass holding pens at SAT?

I did not see any glass holding pens. Additionally, self-directed opt-out was easy. Women walking through the WTMD were not touched.

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That is completely disgusting. I'll put it bluntly: Most people wipe their butts right up to where their waistbands will be. When are the responsible (?) health authorities going to wake up & address this?

Say what, pumpkin?

I'm sure there will be some excuse from SAT..


As far as the glove changing, I found that to be very disgusting. In addition to bathroom visits, a person may have lice. Suppose the lice spread to the gloves, and are then transmitted on to the next person... :vomit:

Terminal A doesn't have the fish bowl things, but it does have a room maybe eight by eight that is completely done in frosted glass that I think is where they do their more intimate groping.

Based on this observation and many others, I can comfortably state that the TSA has killed more people by transmitting disease than prevented terrorist deaths. They are a public heath hazard which costs millions!

I prefer "cupcake."

This is great! In the absence of TSA-supplied statistics, it is good to get some observations that confirm what I think some of us have already suspected: women, elderly and perhaps children are getting 'selected' in disproportionate numbers for the NoS and at least at some checkpoints, men are more likely to get away with a cursory grope than women are.

Interesting, too, because there have been reports of a shortage of women friskers - so much so, that TSA is now pulling women off baggage duty (and coincidentally, away from a potential avenue for job advancement). Maybe the answer to the 'shortage' of female friskers is to select an equal number of males for the NoS in the first place.

Why doesn't TSA submit 'helpful hints' to explain what women do differently from men that somehow results in more of them being intimately frisked?

I think it's harder to find male TSA who are willing to grope men, not because the male TSA have any more morals than the female TSA, but because of the "will I turn gay" irrational fear factor.

I agree. I think male TSOs are more averse to same-sex gropes than female TSOs are, and I think a predominantly male command structure just exacerbates the situation.

Furthermore, a lot of men seem to enjoy 'woman on woman action'. There's a great youtube clip of Jennifer Lopez getting the grope. Standing within arms' length of her while she is getting groped are two overweight male slob TSOs watching. I don't know why the female groper didn't stop what she was doing, confront them and ask them if they had nothing better to do. I just don't think we're quite as likely to see two women TSOs standing around watching a male TSO frisk a male passenger.

We see increased attention to women justified by references to Chechen women bombers, but we don't see a corresponding attention to the male package because of the underpants bomber.

What's particularly unsettling about the clearly non-ramdom processes going on here is that there is no guarantee that a pax will get a same-gender frisker. And that applies to all ages, children as well!
How long before a checkpoint starts seeing disproportionate numbers of children/preteens who need further investigation?