I switched over because I had this mistaken belief that this blog would be about walking around Lake Merritt 100 times. But no. So then I just stayed, planning to redo it. Still working on that last part, years in now.

You missed a heck of a storm up in the hills yesterday.

Anyway, thanks for this — you’ve hit the nail on the head with “I have committed no crime, nor given any indication that I am likely to, so a search that renders me in any way naked with my hands held over my head while I hold perfectly still is unjust. It’s not about embarrassment or shame or what a low-level government worker might think about my body. It’s about my rights to my body, and it’s about digging my heels in when I recognize I’m on a slippery slope.”

i’m one of those people who have the luxury of not flying at all. i simply won’t fly while these requirements are in effect. but it’s nice to have the information out there as to who i should inform of that decision so as to be counted. thanks also for that.

Although I’ve heard in-person from many friends who are a) POC and/or b) transgender/not-easily-gendered-by-others about their awful airport experiences long before 9/11, I’ve heard (and read) relatively little about experiences like yours. It’s a damn shame that is has taken the groping of the mainstream (as noted in several really good articles and blogs) to get these stories the attention they’ve deserved all along.

I wish you the best on your future travels, and thanks for sharing your experience.

Because, you see, I was born with cerebral palsy. I use a manual wheelchair and thus *can’t* go through the metal detectors, let alone the new scanners. So, from the time of my first flight at age four, to my most recent in 2008, I am yanked out of line, separated from all of my possessions (not to mention, as a child, my mother and father), and expected to just be fine with my laptop, bag, medications, money, etc just sitting on the belt, fifty or more feet away, out of my sight…. as all of the ablebodied passengers stream through and hopefully don’t pick up my stuff (accidentally or on purpose) or slide anything illicit into my luggage without my knowledge.

I have been harangued about whether I was *sure* I couldn’t stand up and walk through the detectors. At Dulles, I was taken a few hundred feet from the belts and locked in a windowless room for 20 minutes till they found a female check (I was 16 at the time). I have had my bags confiscated for being “abandoned on the belt” when the only reason they were “abandoned” is because I was told I was not allowed to retrieve them until I had been fully patted down (including having my crotch grabbed, my breasts squeezed, and a hand slid under my butt). And, almost every time I dare to fly alone, I am asked where my “handler” is, and why I don’t have one, because god forbid a disabled adult who is independent in every way be so uppity as to board an airplane without an ablebodied caretaker. And, again, this has been my experience since 1984. It’s not new for disabled folks… it’s not even “post 9/11.”

The only airport which has ever treated me with common decency and respect was Denver in 2008. I was allowed to hand my bag to the agent, the agent accompanied my bag through the scanner in full sight of me, put my laptop and liquids back in my bag, returned my bag to me, took me to a low traffic area for the pat down, allowed me to shift my weight so that she could swab my cushion without having to shove a hand under my butt, and then apologized for the inconvenience and asked if I needed any help resituating my bag on the back of my chair. Total time: 3, maybe 5 minutes… and the airport was very busy that day. I think a lot of the rules and regulations are just security theater, but that aside, there’s a right way (Denver) and a humiliating, less-secure way (everywhere else I’ve ever flown through) to do them.