The story of Shadi Petosky makes no sense to me. She’s a transgender woman — a perfectly normal thing to be — who was trying to take a flight — another perfectly normal thing to do. TSA freaked out at an “anomaly”, the fact that someone presenting as a woman happened to have a penis. Apparently, like shoes, there’s a fear that one of those might be loaded with high explosives, although no one has ever stopped me from boarding an airplane because of my dangerous genitals.
She was screened and searched and probed multiple times, and taken aside to one of those featureless little rooms where they stash the suspicious people. She missed her flight, and they seemed downright truculent about helping her get another one. And then there’s the business of telling her to “get back in the machine as a man or it was going to be a problem”, whatever the hell that means.
TSA agent Bramlet told me to get back in the machine as a man or it was going to be a problem.
— Shadi Petosky (@shadipetosky) September 21, 2015
It all seems to have escalated absurdly. They needed two police officers, four TSA agents, and an explosives expert to wrestle with their own ignorance about what genitals are supposed to look like.
There are now 2 police officers, 1 explosives specialist and four TSA agents. They're taking my phone for screening
— Shadi Petosky (@shadipetosky) September 21, 2015
You can follow Shadi Petosky on Twitter if you want to see how it all turns out (it looks like she’s not home yet).
I guess TSA needs to learn that trans bodies are not anomalies.