A few days ago new pat-down procedures were announced for travelers using aircraft in the USA.
But we will have a choice: either accept the invasive pat-down or accept showing your tender bits on camera with that new strip-search technology thing.
Either way, your giblets are not your own if you intend to fly.Oh, and before you get any ideas, it'll be dudes groping dudes, and women groping women. No joy jollies for you, unless you're queer.
And that seems kinda not fair, if you ask me. (Wonder if I can claim queerness just so I can get groped by the woman TSA agent? Think that'll fly?)
So what choice do we have, unless we want to drive or take the train to somewhere far, far away?
This is getting to be too, too much if you ask me.
We need to go back to simpler time, to a more straight forward manner of thinking: Back in WWII, we didn't arrest a random amount of Chinese spy suspects so the Japs wouldn't feel picked on, did we? Nope. We went straight for the Japs. We weren't too desensitized to common sense back then.
Did we arrest a sensible number of Polish 'infiltrators' so the Krauts wouldn't think they were being singled out? Nope. We went to the root of the problem, as we should have.
And we won, didn't we?
Let's do that again.
I want to bring back racial/ethnic profiling. If your name is Ali Mohamed Fatwa al-Shabazz, or something stupid like that, you can't fly.
Period.
Too fucking bad.
Take a bus, Raghead!
Ha!
See? I just solved our security problem by half, if not better.
19 comments:
Getting raped by a man isn't pleasant for a straight woman; I oubt getting pat down by a woman is going to do it for lesbians.
They increased the invasiveness of the pat down in order to get EVERYBODY to opt for the body imagers. I read an informative article about it the other day.
As for those body imagers - I just had to go through a new one in Mpls a couple weeks ago - I was pissed about it, but unprepared for how violated they would make me feel. I was so angry I nearly cried. To put it bluntly, they really fucking piss me off, and we just have to STFU and put up with it, which enrages me even more. EFFing TSA.
Obviously, I completely disagree with your racial profiling idea, made in jest or not!
Strangely enough I think I'd rather be patted down by another guy. No chance of embarrassing sudden bulges that way...
what?
Rounding them all up (whoever "them" is at the moment) isn't effective or simpatico with our principles of freedom and liberty. The mass gropings and screenings, however, are another example of heavy-handed government solutions that outweigh the original problem. Go with more sophisticated behavior profiling combined with random checks (which the government won't go for because wouldn't require as many semi-skilled union jobs).
Sure, I may be sweaty and anxious due to my cold medicine, but if I got called out for a closer look I'd understand the reasoning behind it. Assuming everyone is a potential bomber may treat everyone equally, but it is not fair or just.
No worries, though. I'm sure at some point the observant and modest Muslims will sue and the government will cave.
My wife and I were flying this weekend. They have the scanners at SeaTac but we didn't have to go through them. I think she hit the nail on the head: this isn't about safety, this is about a company that made a neat scanner and figured out a way to cash in with a gigantic government contract.
Which is, of course, even worse when you consider how humiliating it is to many of the people being subjected to it.
I'm thinking of getting the 4th Amendment tattooed on my ass.
amanda: i'm thinking more and more seriously toward ideas i previously held in semi-jest. i think when an american las is required to share with a stranger that which should only belong to her man, then we have gone too far.
we have the right to travel. i want to keep it that way. but we dont have a right to compel another to provide it.
and if i had to choose tween inconveniencing people named Ali, and strip seraching somebodies named amanda, all for the privilage of traveling to MN, then i know where i stand.
this is, in sense, a molestation. we shouldnt have to tolerate that.
RW: or so you hope.
NW: you've described what israel has done for yrs.
my way, if we hold our ground, will conscript all those cool muslims to hate upon their uncool brethren. imagine that cultural backlash among the Mosque-American community.
i'd buy the popcorn for that one.
brian: your wife probably has it nailed.
as for your ass: you can sell the advertisng space.
Not to split hairs/thread-jack or anything, because I am definitely anti-body imager, but my body, including individual body parts, does/do not belong to my partner, or to anybody else. Nor does anyone else's body belong to anybody else. That's like, the crux of the Feminist agenda. I decide - me, not my partner - when to share my body with who I want to share my body. And that list will NEVER include the TSA!
Bastards.
:)
The TSA, I mean. Those are the bastards.
I'm sure I've made myself more than clear about that, so I'm gonna head out now.
would you have felt better is i had said :"... that which should only belong her domestic partner"?
i'm not very politically correct here, nor anywhere. i'm of the older school, and prefer to express myself in that way.
what makes your giblets special is who you offer them to. other than that, its just parts. so why you feeling violated?
It's not about feeling bad, and I'm not telling you how to write. I just don't want to be complicit in the body-owning scenario by not clarifying. "That which doesn't belong to anybody."
The body imagers feel like a violation To Me - not to my partner - because my body was examined against my will. And because I have a BIG problem with presumption of guilt. (For example, I avoid stores that make you relinquish your purse when you enter.) I agree that the TSA/flying requires security measures, but I believe that all the crap implemented just after 9/11 is truly the extent of all we can and should do.
And I think that makes my body special is that it belongs to me, and no one else. I'm happy to enjoy the bodies of others who choose to share their body - even if that's currently and for the foreseeable future, just one person.
I tend to get pulled aside because my name is usually a boy's name, and that raises some kind of red flag that I might be traveling under someone else's ticket.
I think it's ironic that if I were to help security out by stripping naked for the metal detectors, I would get arrested for indecent exposure.
It's almost worth it just to see their faces.
jade: you wont need to strip naked. they got scanners that will it for you now. LOL
Personally, I'm enjoying a good laugh at the fact that the fact that the "Rapiscan" is already proving to be an issue among the TSA staff.
More or less, people who work for the TSA because they could not get a better job at McDonald's are unsurprisingly using the tool to ogle people and make fun of their private parts, resulting in at least one assault so far.
A better plan; arm the pilots like Congress said to (the TSA has been trying to kill this via micromanagement for years) and take a hint from the Israelis. Yes, that will mean that young men will get more scrutiny than old ladies, especially those who may be Muslim. It's called "common sense."
By the way, people at El Al have noted that they don't see much use for this technology. We should take a hint.
Brian--be sure to get it tattooed with some kind of ink with metal or something the scanners will pick up ;).
Amanda--warning for Powell's City of Books in Portland: they request you check backpacks/big bags. (Frankly, I always check everything except my small id+phone purse, because I'd rather have my hands free to carry books ;), but ... it's a psychological barrier I used to get bothered by.)
I think the factor that just doesn't get enough play in airplane security is the fact that Americans in general are now pretty aware that sitting back and hoping for the best won't work. Bombs should be sniffed out. Hardware, like a gun or knife, if someone pulls it, there are probably 100ish people who will make it hard for them to "win" in an airplane, because those people recognize that "win" is not an option that can be allowed ...
Seems to me if the TSA is racial profiling, the terrorist would try to pick bombers who would *not* fit the racial profile... in which case racial profiling would have little effect on stopping a bombing.
Looking back at the photo posted... does anyone else wonder how that girl got that gun up there? Every time I see it I think "ouch!"
Jade: Working in hard core porn (or just having XXX sex) would make a woman "flexible" enough for that trick. Might be why her posture is a little arched, though, as it must indeed be uncomfortable(!). At least people smuggling drugs, they are in soft packets : P.
I couldn't figure out why they seem to have taken two different weapon-pictures for the front and back images.
Odious business, altogether.
leave it to kr to know about hard core triple X porn sex.
you oughtta be ashamed of yourself, woman!
seriously, tho...
i think that gun is hidden in her pants not in *her*.
KR, just please leave it to the rest of us NOT to know what kinds of barbarism could leave a woman's privates that abused....
like brutality and barbarism anywhere, our distaste or discomfort does not mean it is responsible to ignore/suppress it.
am I happy I've got this stuff in my head? NO. Do I wish it didn't exist, such that it wasn't even a question whether or not to find out about it? YES.
a good feminist needs to know, in a general way at least, what is going on--not least because for so many years "feminists" were pro-porn as a freedom of expression thing (this has always been a WTF for me, but whatever)
more pertinently, a mother, particularly one associated with a father who has questionable boundaries about computer supervision and media choices for the children they share custody of, needs at least some awareness *before* the crisis hits
it is disgusting, and I am horrified that it exists and particularly that it turns *anyone* on. But, reality is that which does not change, no matter how much you wish it would.
KR; got it. Well said that the porn world is barbarous; I saw a documentary about it about 20 years back, and I would have to assume that what goes on today...well, is even more barbarous to the point of shoving a Glock up a girl's rear end. Ugh.
That said, the pictures are simulations of the Rapist-scan, and the Rapist-scan is intended to "see" only things that are pretty much on the surface. So in this case, the gun is NOT in there.
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