Judith Levine, Writing of The American Prospect explores largely overlooked gender issues the recent TSA look-vs-touch dilemma and, by implication, the recent initiative to insist on the intrusive groping option over the intrusive voyeurism option TSA prefers.  She says that...

As a woman, I'm used to being looked at; I'm socialized to it, even turned on by it. In fact, now that I'm over 50, I admit to a certain nostalgia for the sucking noises that accompanied my every stroll down the sidewalks of New York, lo these many years ago. The advances of feminism and queer liberation notwithstanding, the feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey is still right: The gaze is masculine, the object of the gaze, feminine.

The body-scanning machine makes me slightly squeamish, but the thought of a stranger's hand exploring my nonconsenting vagina evokes downright revulsion, drawing up associations of creepy uncles, subway perverts, and worse. The perpetrator of sexual violence is almost always a man, and his victim is almost always a woman -- or a man perceived to be "womanly."

Source: The American Prospect

And of course now that she mentions it of course it makes sense.  You don't have to appreciate the way gender is constructed to appreciate that it's constructed that way.  Levine brings that particular point home just a bit further down in her post.

Watch the now-famous "Don't touch my junk" video, and you will witness a man outraged at the violation not just of his privacy but, more passionately, of his masculinity. After all, masculinity implies sexual privacy -- the privilege of moving through life unmolested. Or unnoticed. The most powerful, and to men, mostly invisible, sexual privilege of masculinity is the ability to remain unaware of oneself as a body. When the body is simply a vehicle in which to be a person, having that body seen or touched can be a neutral experience. It's far more likely that men can submit to the screenings, whether by machine or by hand, with ease.

(CoughTwo Rules of Desire #2cough)

Men might occasionally lament that it's inconceivable that they might be physically desired, but that in no way diminishes the intolerability of such a prospect. As Levine says, if, like most men, you have no conception of such corporeal scrutiny it won't occur to you that others might notice and possibly deeply envy the luxury of that oblivion.

One last point Levine makes is that very often, especially with men, the outrage expressed isn't about what happens to them. Instead it's projected outrage that such treatment might befall those who are deemed "weaker." Often it's the weakness of women and children that fuel the outrage even though a) on average women and children are just as tough and resilient as men and b) on average men are no tougher nor more resilient than women or children. (It's not that others might not in fact need support, it's that when we're privileged we sometimes project our insecurity on others. Which is a nifty way to preserve our sense of self-esteem without confronting the fact that we actually tend to want, need, and/or possibly deserve the same treatment we demand for others.)

It's a good post.  I stand by my earlier posts on the subject of TSA screening but since I began my own first post on the kerfuffle by deprecating my own discomfort it would have helped me if I'd read this first.