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Assaulted by the Federal Government
A friend of my wife and me was wearing something or other that apparently had some metal in it. Unfortunately, she was passing through TSA at the San Francisco International Airport at the time. A man masquerading as a woman called for a “female assist” to pat her down, and then volunteered to do it himself.
Our friend, beyond being exhausted from intercontinental travel with her husband and two children, was smart enough to worry that she might get in trouble for “misgendering” the person who was feeling her up. So she endured it.
Oddly enough, the Feds–who, no doubt, would not have approved of her questioning the female identity of this gentleman–never paused to get our friend’s pronouns.
So this is where we’ve come to: Fed guys feel up lady citizens at the airport. Or–if you’re one of those science-deniers but are still capable of using a few English words–Fed people who were born with penises feel up lady citizens at the airport.
There was a time when that sort of thing was not supposed to happen (at least not without consent from the ladies).
This is where we’ve come to.
I’m not optimistic about where we’re going next.
Below are some comments from our friend.
Not only did the TSA agent in question take it upon himself to select me for a patdown and to request a “female assist,” but he also volunteered for the job. The reasons for this were likely twofold: to validate his delusions and satisfy his desires. This represents a radical departure from the typical narrative of trans people–and, by extension, trans activists–as the passive recipients of “social change/social justice.” Instead, they are very much the agents (pun intended).
The #1 rule of thumb of predatory behavior: Predators prey on the vulnerable. In my case, I was separated from my husband, who uses a wheelchair and thus goes through a separate airport security process. Just behind me, the same man performed a patdown on a blind woman using a cane–who quite literally could not see what was being done to her body. I have to imagine that younger women, children and teens, and elderly women are also more likely to be targeted for this kind of violation. Moreover, the act of traveling itself renders many of us vulnerable; most travelers are exhausted, uncomfortable, in a rush, and less likely to offer meaningful pushback. What’s more, TSA agents effectively serve as gatekeepers between the public and our access to the world. In some ways, this kind of incident is a microcosm of the global expansion of the trans agenda–as well as its imposition on and infiltration of all aspects of our daily lives.
Fear and uncertainty, especially when weaponized against the family unit, are highly effective tools of manipulation. The ever-changing legal landscape when it comes to trans “rights” and the near-constant invention of new forms of criminalization of perceiving reality can destabilize, well, just about anything.
My husband could only partially see what was happening through the partition between us and quickly looked to me in the alarmed, alert way that most husbands do when they’re wondering if they should step in on their wife’s behalf. I shook my head fervently, indicating I was fine and silently asking him not to intervene. What’s most alarming is that I wasn’t necessarily afraid of conflict, or even of a fine or arrest. I was also afraid for my family–in those few frantic, fevered moments, I was wondering not only if there are laws against “misgendering” in the state but also if our children could be taken from us if we made a scene. I also wondered if my husband could lose his livelihood if someone filmed the exchange.
Published in GeneralJust as sin begets sin, any inch of the trans agenda begets a mile. After I agreed to the patdown, the man performing it issued several further instructions. One was to “spread my legs wider,” after which he touched my private areas. I immediately knew I had made a poor choice, but it all happened so fast and I felt I had no choice at that point, etcetera etcetera–the same rationalizations most of us make when we make one bad decision and then feel like we “must” allow for more. The truth is that we should not, and we cannot without compromising far more.
How many times a day is this happening now? Dozens? Scores? Hundreds?
Twice in a single traveler’s observations in a matter of minutes–that doesn’t portend well.
The 90+% of the population no longer count; every effort is worthwhile if we can avoid “offending” the very small portion of the population who claim some special “minority” status.
The world is being turned upside down in the new dictatorship of the Woke and the “minorities.” Where will it end?
I’ve been in airports lately, and I can imagine how trapped she felt.
The situation is completely intimidating. Those who get high on the power like it that way.
I wouldn’t have known what to do.
I bet you miss Pakistan at moments like this.
And I was so glad to be there during certain portions of the 2010s.
Okay, not a great trade off I’ll grant you. But I would bet folding money that there are no trans people patting passengers down in any airport in South Asia.
This makes me ill reading it. Your poor friend, to have to endure this, and feel powerless to stop it. I feel these cases have to be litigated in some way.
This is a religious lawsuit waiting to happen.
Hold on for Pakistan:
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-offers-500k-grant-english-teachers-pakistan-focus-transgender-youth
In Pakistan, the trans-talkers (Dawn.com, as I recall) talk about the eunuch community as transgender. It’s not exactly what San Francisco has in mind, although . . . it’s not exactly what you all expected from Pakistan.
This is like the people who thought they were changing the world by teaching Afghan girls in Kabul to skateboard.
Trans youth on Pakistan could do with help, but I’m not sure this Band-Aid is going to do anything but get some of the Malala Yousufzai’d.
Why is it not the declared policy of every aspirant to public office to abolish this security theatre? Are there so many addicted to this placebo safety, and so few outraged by the sheer human waste, that it is not worth it? Woe to us all.
The strategy seems, for some time, to so multiply the outrages that you spend energy on one and let the others go, thus cementing them. And then they bring out more and any you successfully fought before are buried amongst the new set and are adopted. And so it goes on and on.
And that’s all it is now, just theater.
I always check my baggage rather than use the carryon option so I won’t get held up by the TSA. That means I have time to watch what’s going on. I noticed the last two trips I made out of Logan and Raleigh-Durham that the TSA isn’t checking the carryon bags the way they used to. People had to have had a few nail clippers and tubes of toothpaste in their carryon bags, but the bags just went through. And the bags are really stuffed because people are trying to avoid the baggage checking fees and save time.
Twenty years ago when this screening started in earnest, the TSA would open every bag and routinely throw out the items on their do-not-bring lists.
The good news is that the TSA just rushed people through the lines. I think I saw only one person out of the long lines I was in be pulled aside for a “patdown.”
The good news is the bad news. Before we treated you like cattle because we thought you needed the protection that resulted. Now we treat you like cattle because….you are cattle to us. It’s just that the gate is a little wider to let you pass through a little more quickly. Makes our day easier.
What really gets to me about the whole process is that the TSA inspections are at the opening to the boarding gates part of the airport, home also to a million restaurants and retail shops.
So, let me get this straight: You make me empty my pockets and take my shoes off a full hour before my flight and then I can go buy whatever the heck I want and take it on the plane with me?
There are all kinds of sharp objects I could get if I wanted to between the TSA inspection and the plane I will be boarding. And I have lots of time to do it.
What a complete joke.
It’s so typical of government. They add; they never subtract.
I suspect we’ll still be wearing the pandemic masks in some settings in the year 2050.
I have a strong suspicion that the employees of these stores do not meet the security standards that the TSA show is supposed to offer.
Expect more of this. The Navy is using a drag queen influencer to help reach recruitment goals.
Maybe the “trans” boys in Pakistan are just tired of being raped by adult males? But I’m sure the help they need is not what they are going to get.
Just wait until a trans pats down a woman in a Hijab . . .
Amen!
There was a period of time when my wife was a pilot armed with a TSA issued handgun but couldn’t have a corkscrew in her carry on bag.
I once spent about 20 minutes at the Portland, ME airport while two TSA agents inspected this multi-tool (with no knife blade on it).
A few weeks ago I had to go through the lines in Detroit and El Paso and was patted down both times. But it was brief and perfunctory. In each case the agent was almost apologetic, told me just what he was going to pat and asked if it was OK. What would have happened if I had said NOT OK, I don’t know, but he didn’t go anywhere that bothered me.
We check our baggage, too, but part of that is because my main item is a suitcase that contains a bicycle that is packed to be just barely under the size and weight limits for regular, checked baggage. This time none of the agents opened the case to look at it. (One time they left a note inside saying they had opened it.) As far as I know nobody had pasted a label on my forehead saying, “Give this guy a pat-down. He’s the one with the bicycle in a case with a broken latch.”
You’d be the only MacGyver available to fix the plane when it was having midair mechanical problems.
When we took my mother-in-laws cremains to California in March, the agents swabbed several spots in the container. I thought to myself, “Virginia, you are getting one last pat down by TSA. “
In 2003 I was on an USAF transport flying from the east coast to the middle east. Iraqi Freedom was about to start.
After the plane was in the air a crew chief came by and collected all knives and multi-tools. He explained, over and over, that US law now required all air passengers be relieved of blades. I think every one of the GIs on that plane had a multi-tool.
An hour later he came by again and gave back all our knives and multi-tools. He explained that we had left US airspace and and the laws/rules about our blades no longer applied.
I was sitting next to my unit’s equipment pallet that contained a couple of cases of M-16s. Apparently that wasn’t a problem.
When they found mine in my briefcase the 40 ish male inspector called over his 25 ish female supervisor and they spent about 10 minutes unfolding parts of the tool and turning their heads like a dog looking at a watch. Then she told him to measure it unfolded and then she decided that it was OK. Before that it had gone through the carry on X-ray machine dozens of times at different airports and no one had ever asked about it.
The people demand it.
The point of a placebo is that people think it works.
The hell we did. Our cretinous media muffins demanded it.
If the people didn’t want it, they’d demand it’s removal.
If removing it was popular, politicians would campaign on that.
You can shake your fist at the government and the media, but really you need to convince the people.
(This is the people who believed that invading Afghanistan would make the world safer, or that Iraq had WMDs.)