* TSA, TSA, TSA. What a big fucking disaster. Just when we think it’s really bad, it somehow gets worse. A few days ago I posted Two Tales of TSA Sexual Assault on Techyum, where two individual sane and travel-savvy women blogged about getting the new pat-down and walked away sexually traumatized. One was a rape survivor, and today Newsweek called in some sexual trauma survivor experts and had them weigh in on the new searches and sexual trauma — results: really really bad. Meanwhile, dotBen posted the surprisingly sexually graphic (and hilarious) NMA News video which interprets the news item in the only thing in this mess that might bring a smile to our faces. (techyum.com, newsweek.com)
* G4’s Attack of the Show has been doing a video series on sexual fetishes. Just thought I’d point that out. They have asked me to come on the show and talk about fetishes for future episodes, but the fetishes sound very contrived-fringey-esoteric and their pitch feels like I should be excited to do this for free. WTF indeed. (g4tv.com)
* I love Bish! This superb UK site on sex advice for young ones just released their leaflets on Sex and Relationships and An Educational Guide to Porn — the best thing I’ve ever seen to address young people’s questions about porn. Check them out. (bishtraining.com)
* Speaking of young people and sex — Salon ran this fantastic article The Smart Dutch Take on Teen Sex, which examines what the country with the lowest teen pregnancy rate (and lowest teen STD/STI rate) is doing differently than the rest of us. Hint: they pretty much do the opposite. (salon.com)
* Porn in a can… Porn on tap… Two girls, one cup… This is way, way better. Porn in a cup is a ten-shot cup of espresso made with fancy artisanal coffee, now being served by The Pulp & The Bean cafe in New York. I do love New York so much. (nydailynews.com)
* Beyonce’s new perfume commercial has been restricted in the UK. Exciting? Not really. Sexy? Kinda, yeah. You can watch it here. (yesbitch.net)
Video: excerpt from Radley Metzger’s fabulous 1969 film Camille 2000. I want to go to this party!
@AnthonyA:
No. One of the most basic rights to privacy we have in any culture or any country is a right to basic modesty (i.e. to cover ourselves in clothing). It’s a right we grant even the most heinous of prisoners, and denial of that right is considered torture by international governing bodies. The fact that the person seeing you (whom you don’t know, and can never meet) *supposedly* doesn’t have any sexual feelings toward you doesn’t mitigate this right to privacy.
What’s even worse is that it’s an invasion of privacy that’s been shown not to work. Tests have demonstrated that these machines can fail to spot people concealing packages similar to the underwear bomber’s. By your logic, should the next step be required clothing removal to get on a plane? Maybe make you walk by a one-way mirror fully naked? I mean, *supposedly* the guy on the other side isn’t taking any sexual satisfaction from this; so that makes it okay, right?
Furthermore, there’ s the health aspect of it as well. When the pilots’ union issues a statement advising all pilots to avoid this kind of screening, that should be a warning indicator. Some commenters are quick to bring up the levels of radiation (“1/1000th of the levels of a cel-phone’s radiation”); but what they don’t bring up is that it’s a different kind of radiation. It’s an untested system that was rushed to market in an overtly aggressive display of security kabuki theater.
To me, this argument comes down to this. Assume for a moment we go back to pre-9/11 levels of security, and 1 in every 1,000,000 flights becomes the target of a terrorist attack (a very generous estimate; given how many flights there are a day, the odds should be much higher). Now, I will grant you this: being blown up in a plane is much worse than being sexually molested. But if the odds of dying in a plane crash are one in a million, but the odds of being molested come down to a coin-toss… I’m gonna have to place my bet on being blown up, thank you very much. I feel that the greater cumulative evil perpetrated by exposing children and rape/ abuse victims to this kind of treatment, just for the opportunity to travel, exceeds that of allowing terrorists to occasionally blow something up.
Yes, the TSA pat down can be a bit ‘too personal’ for some people. And yes, an individual officer might take it too far, so that it could be considered assault.
So walk through the scanner already! The person who views the scans doesn’t care what you look like, and won’t remember one minute later, when the next person walks through.
I try to be as caring as the next person, but I have to call this one just a lot of whining by a tiny minority. About as meaningful as those who refuse to fly because they are scared of heights.