TSA detains transgender woman in humiliating ordeal, she tweets entire event

A transgender woman was allegedly delayed by Transportation Security Administration (TSA) workers at the Orlando worldwide Airport Monday over an anatomical “anomaly”.

“For transgender people, flying is fraught with difficulty, often discrimination and very often a lot of fear”, he said. Her tweets are below, but we can’t verify her story at this time. For a transgender woman (scanned as a woman), her penis might appear as such. Then again later, “I don’t want my #1 Google results to be about genitals or a pic of me crying but that ship seems to have sailed”.

In an interview with BuzzFeed News, Shadi Petosky said, “If their standards include flagging transgender people’s genitalia as a security risk, then they really need to update their standards”.

“American Airlines manager is telling me that “in the future ask for a private screening”, she tweeted.

Update: On September 22, TSA spokesman Mike England responded to our request for comment with this statement, “Our officers are trained to properly screen members of the transgender community”. American Airlines suggested that to guarantee her a flight out that day, it would cost almost $1,000.

Petosky expressed her frustration and confusion about the treatment she received by the TSA and police officers on social media.

“Anybody who doesn’t fall into gender stereotypes gets flagged”, she said. But her experience should not stand out as a unique example, but merely the most recent of too many.

“I’m embarrassed about it”, Petosky told the Daily News from a hotel in Miami. She was departing from Chicago Midway airport in November 2013, and while passing through security, the anomaly came up three consecutive times. The scanner picked up an “anomaly” in my crotch area’.

“I thought they would know how to talk to transgender people if this ever happened”, she said. It was about 40 minutes, 2 full body pat downs, fully disassembled luggage. I am in the corner charging my phone. How?

Previous incidents go back to at least 2012, according to a report by Al Jazeera America, which found that “trans people have been required to undergo pat-down searches by officers of the opposite gender, reveal or remove items such as chest binders and prosthetic penises and defend challenges to their gender identities and their right to opt out of body scans, among other problems”.

“I am sure you have some kind of transgender policy”.

“TSA takes all potential civil rights violations very seriously…the evidence shows our officers followed TSA’s strict guidelines”, the statement said.

This is the image the old scanners showed.

Petosky’s tweets are ongoing, and are available here.