Coping with groping

by Inez Torres Davis

I am a church lady. I travel for my job. I can’t say I dislike flying, but I don’t I enjoy it, either. I have gotten used to it.

I choose my travel attire based on getting through TSA security screening. My shoes slip off to get through quickly. My rings and dragonfly pin do not sound the detectors at Chicago’s O’Hare but trip them elsewhere, and since this draws attention, I always slip these into my purse. I pack in a way that makes my walk through security quick and uneventful—no bells sound.

Nevertheless, I am “randomly” selected for additional screening an average of once every three flights I take. “Ma’am, could you please step to the side for additional screening?”

Things were bad enough with pat downs, but now the grope has been introduced.

A TSA same-gender worker can now feel up into my crotch area and over my breasts with their palms and fingers, along with my more public parts, searching for a bomb or weapon. Only at the airport have I ever had to assume a position for a body search. I have never broken any laws anywhere that have ever required a frisking or the legally empowered and enforced placing of a stranger’s hands on pretty much any part of my body. This doesn’t seem right.

The grope is happening at the same time full-body scanners are being installed in airports across this nation to the tune of billions of dollars, never mind the fact that bomb-sniffing dogs can do as good a job as these full-body scanners (if not better!!).

If I reject being seen down to my skin by someone sitting in a backroom, presumably alone and presumably with technology incapable of recording images, and presumably without comment, I will immediately be subject to the aforementioned TSA grope.

And I wonder what other liberties will be taken from us and what other invasions of privacy we’ll have to suffer … for our own good, of course!

What do you think of all this? Are you bothered by virtual strip-searching and legally-empowered strangers groping you in uncomfortable places so that you can get on a plane?