When you are traveling, what should you do?

Mara Keisling, NCTE Executive Director

http://transgenderequality.wordpress.com/2011/01/12/when-you-are-traveling-what-should-you-do/

We work hard at NCTE to provide solid, useful advice to the community.  What advice to give isn't always perfectly clear, though.  Over the last few months, we've had several policy areas in which we have tried to convey information but have been unable to give unequivocal advice.  The questions we have received most frequently since just before Thanksgiving have been about the new TSA security protocols and this has been an especially challenging issue for us to unequivocally tell trans people the best way to avoid being demeaned in potentially traumatic ways.  The new TSA procedures, in addition to being ineffective and counter to American privacy standards also present trans people with an array of bad choices, each potentially as disheartening and potentially dangerous as the next.  Let me explain.

It is really important that people refrain from panic and make rational decisions.  The truth is that most trans people are not experiencing significant problems when flying—even when faced with whole body scanners and enhanced pat downs.  But some are not.

And I understand that refraining from panic or anger can be hard when an irrational and ineffective system is set up and forced upon us.