Why Going Through Airport Security Is the Worst

especially if you’re transgender

I hate traveling. I love getting to my destination and adventuring in new cities or rediscovering old cities. I love destination-ing. I just hate the airports and the planes and all of the other people that are inevitably also traveling. When I hear people say “I love traveling,” I think, “Bet you don’t!” Who loves having to remove your shoes, belt, hat, jacket, just to have to get patted down by a grumpy TSA!? Not this guy. Who enjoys waiting in line at the gate with people who have totally forgotten all their manners? Not this guy. Who likes being stuck on a claustrophobic metal tube breathing recycled air for hours? Not this guy. Traveling is the worst. But the destination whether it be home or an escape from home makes it bearable.

Traveling as a trans person can cause an extra layer of anxiety. Especially while going through security. In case you didn’t know this fun fact about airport security; TSA uses a super gender binary system. When you walk up to the beam-me-up-Scotty body scanner, the TSA agent takes a 1–2 second analysis of you and selects a pink or blue box on the screen. (I. SHIT. YOU. NOT.) The pink box indicates to the machine you are female and the blue box indicates to the machine you male. Then, based on that the machine looks for “anomalies” or “alarms” and makes a yellow box on any questionable area. As you might imagine, this can cause some problems for transgender people, gender non-conforming people, and anyone who isn’t a super masculine manly man or super feminine womanly woman.

Sure, you can refuse to use the body scanner machine, wherein they provide a very lengthy and very invasive full body pat down. Which, might not be comfortable or feel safe for a trans person. For me personally, I’d like to get through security as quickly as possible so I can rush to my gate and then inevitably wait forever to board my plane.

In the beginning of my transition, about 10% of the time I’d go through security with no issues. The other 90% a yellow box would appear somewhere on my body. Of the times I was patted down, sometimes an agent would ask me if I preferred a man or woman agent — which was ideal. The other times they’d make a big deal because a male agent would approach me and then at some…

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