Via Kaili Joy Gray

Mark Morford of the San Francisco Chronicle says that whereas we’ve been extraordinarily docile about having both our personal data appropriated by enterprises both private (Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerburg) and public (NSA wiretaps, strong-arming ISPs and phone companies for call data) we’ve finally started to collectively call bullshit when eyes and hands start reaching into our pants.

Nothing, apparently, sets us off more than some unhappy TSA worker — an increasingly unenviable job, you gotta admit — yanking you out of line and giving you the delightful option of getting your entire body X-rayed from ass to nipple, or being groped all over in case you might be carrying something explosive in your pants.

Is that not amazing, by the way? That a solitary “Christmas underwear bomber” has now changed the complexion of the entire country and inconvenienced tens of millions with a single failed attempt? Yes, all this groping is because of one guy, and he’s not even Justin Bieber. How incredible is that? Who says an individual can’t make a difference? Who says the terrorists haven’t already won?

Source: San Francisco Chronicle

I’m still feeling even more gloomy about this — despite long, long standing privacy concerns among progressives, and the fact that “nude” x-ray backscatter and 152 millimeter-wave machines have been around since at least last summer (my family and I went through one in Boston last August) the issue’s sudden “discovery” by conservative bellwether Matt Drudge and its subsequent liftoff in the media has felt a little too coordinated. (Evidently there’s a clause in the authorization bill that begins allowing both privatization and unionization of TSA beginning… oh… sometime this month.)

Still, as apologists say about venal, corrupt, and cynically hypocritical televangelists, “light will shine through any window.” The coordination of criticism really might have risen out of an initiative to privatize TSA* the issues themselves have been both well-known and bitterly criticized for years. If it takes a marketing ploy to finally get the conversation moving then… hey, maybe so. (I don’t think the privatization thing is going to get a lot of traction. Certainly not from the groping story.)

* Remember, it’s not a crime if you’re imprisoned in a shipping container by a private security firm after its employees have drugged and sexually attacked you so how could it possibly be a privacy invasion if a private security firm merely squeezes your genitals till you flinch?

Cartoon “Anxiety” by Randall Munroe of XKCD. Used under a Creative Commons license.

In comments to my previous post about TSA’s spanky new groping policy for those who refuse to pose for their backscattered nude photos Holly of The Pervocracy, who’s so brilliant she should have her own blog (oh wait!), said

The part that really scares me is that it’s fairly clear the pat-down has been made more invasive not so it’s more effective, but so it’ll serve as a deterrent to keep people from opting out. It’s a creepily sexualized retaliation for being disobedient, not an actual security measure in itself.

And in comments Sungold of Kittywampus (who’s been all over this story) added

Yes, Holly is exactly right. If the “enhanced” pat-downs are so essential, why weren’t they implemented in January, right after the Underpants Bomber incident, instead of waiting until now, when many airports have the strip-search scanners? They’re being used to bludgeon people.

This should not be a left-right issue, but so far it’s gotten the most coverage among libertarian and right-wing media. The left is only beginning to stir. In the feminist blogosphere, I don’t know of anyone besides Melissa McEwan and me who have called much attention to it – which is why I’ve been blogging up a storm about it.

...

Those of us who care about bodily autonomy and social justice face a lot of intractable issues. We are not, for instance, going to stop sexual violence. But we can stand up and protest a brand-new government policy that mandates searches that feel to many of their recipients like sexual assault. A policy that is centrally decreed can also be withdrawn in a single stroke. If people refuse to be sheeple, we might have a chance to win here.

Another commenter, Ms. Inconspicuous (who I wish still had a blog) recounts her own recent experience where the prospect of groping was expressly raised as a reason for complying with radiation-based porn.

I just went through the new body scanners a few days ago.

It was absolutely and fundamentally clear that TSA agents were using full pat-downs as an intimidation tactic to dissuade you from trying to opt out of going through the scanners.

“If you refuse to go through the scanners, be aware that you will be subjected to a more thorough full-body search and potentially lenghty delays.”

Ms.I adds, relevantly, that

HOWEVER—were I a survivor of sexual assault and I knew that my body image were being projected to a stranger I would feel absolutely violated and vulnerable. And a thorough pat-down is a good answer? No. It’s not.

But it’s by an agent of the same gender! (Baffling how even TSA security measures assume that all sexual assault and abuse takes place between people of opposite genders… and that no one could possibly feel threatened or assaulted by a person of the same gender. Gimme a freakin’ break.)

And I’ll just close with what I said over at BoingBoing after finding the relevant image for my previous post. It’s also why, incidentally, I chose the… intrusive XKCD comic to illustrate this post.

What’s sickening, of course, is it’s not about perversion — they’re probably as humiliated to do it as we are to receive it. What’s sickening is that they do it anyway. Same thing and maybe worse when they do it to little kids.

I’m pretty confident that pretty much every last floor member of the TSA would really rather not be fondling passenger penises and vulvas, with or without rubber gloves, and with or without consent. In fact I’m pretty confident that for all the snarking and invective we’re leveling at them the very, very last thing any of them wants if for passengers to get the idea that either TSA or the passengers should find the procedures either sexually abusive or erotic. Which is why the XKCD notion of a culture hacker calculatedly selling Viagra to prospective passengers is excellent resistance.

Do I think people really should take Viagra and present their clothed erections to TSA staffers? No, absolutely not. (Because just as one can’t assume passengers are free of triggerable sexual trauma you can’t make those assumptions about all TSA staff either.) Instead what’s effective is the accusation of sexualized conduct.

Nor am I suggesting all this because a) I’m a sex blogger or b) because I’d prefer less security theater (shoes, underpants) and more actual, less-intrusive security. Instead I’m suggesting it because…

Y’know? Just because TSA doesn’t want adults or children to associate blue-gloved hands in their groins as sexual… And just as TSA doesn’t want adults or children to associate backscatter imaging as voyeurism or as adult and child pornography… and just as TSA agents themselves would probably rather think of anything else on earth besides sex when they’re manipulating the folds of a small child’s testicles or vulva or hefting a pregnant woman’s full breasts, the fact of the matter is they have no fucking say over how the recipient is going to interpret that. M’Kay?

Photo via Flickr user —Tico—. Copyright Scott Huettel, Duke University Photography Jim Wallace.

Funny thing about that Susan Fiske bikini/screwdriver brain-scan story. I’ve looked at maybe a dozen news sites that reference Fiske’s research. If they’re illustrated at all so far they’ve been illustrated with photos of scantily clad women. Because, you know, everybody knows about fMRI technology so we wouldn’t need illustrations of that. But I’ve included one here just in case. :-)

[Note: I’m on winter break with family in the wilds of British Columbia, and while there’s wireless internet here it appears to be connected to the rest of the internet via tin cans and string. Or maybe just dial-up. I’ll still be posting but possibly on a lighter schedule than usual till the weekend. —fl]

Debauchette says

Since I’m pressed for time and since American Apparel’s sexy sexed-up ads are a revived topic of conversation here and elsewhere, I’m going to leave you with my favorite AA ad, which can be found on the back of S Magazine

Read the quote, and see the no-safer-for-work-than-many-glamour-ads ad itself here.

The AA ad, if you’re not inclined to visit the link, shows a Photoshop-skinny woman in only a pair of gray men’s “y-front” underwear lying between the legs of an equally slender but hairy-legged man. She’s looking up at the camera while, it looks like, pulling aside his pair of gray men’s “y-front” underwear before giving him a lick.

I’m inclined to agree with Debauchette that one walks into a bit of a trap for objecting to this specific ad, because unless one objects to the whole principle of glamour/fashion ads, one’s argument must be that the implied sexualization of commodities isn’t supposed to be so overt.

It’s prudish libertine maxim that using sex to sell anything is problematic on multiple levels ranging from basic insecurity about one’s own products to perpetuating karl-marx-style alienation of sex away from its-self-for-itself and towards sex a medium of exchange.

If you’re not willing to condemn all such ads then you’re sort of obliged to admit that’s a good one.

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We’ll leave for another day everything else one could unpack from such an ad for not-even-white-whitie-tightie men’s briefs!

Update: In case anyone wonders my pale endorsement of AAs ads are not an endorsement of the owner’s, um, evidently disgraceful workplace conduct, nor of his discreditable defenses. The closest to that I’d come would be to say that he appears to practice what his industry preaches.