- Rosalynne Montoya, a trans model and activist, shared her negative experience at the airport on TikTok.
- Montoya said that bad experiences in airport security are unfortunately common for transgender people.
- Airport security scanners do not count trans bodies.
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Rosalynne Montoya, a Latinx transgender model and activist, shared her unpleasant experience going through airport security with her 481,000 TikTok followers on March 20.
Montoya, who uses the pronouns she and them, said she normally has immense anxiety when passing the security line. Although her gender markers on her ID cards are correct, she usually activates the scanner because of her body.
“Going through the scanner, there is a male and a female scanner at the TSA checkpoint – and, looking at me, I look like a woman and I am a woman,” said Montoya on TikTok.
“But when I go through the scanner, I always have an ‘anomaly’ between my legs that sets off the alarm.”
Montoya told his followers that the TSA agent examined her again without success. After the second time, she told the agent that she was trans and that the agent used the “male” body scanner, which still shot because Montoya has breasts.
“Then she said, ‘OK, well, we have to search you. Do you want a man to do that? ‘ I said no! Absolutely not, ‘said Montoya.
Gender body scans do not take trans bodies into account
Unfortunately, the experience is common for many trans people, as body scanners used for security do not consider people with different genitals, such as trans and intersex individuals. For example, a person with a penis and breasts will trigger the scanner because the breasts are not considered in the male scanner and the penis is not considered in the female scanner.
This can cause distress, anxiety and unnecessary upheavals for many trans people, making the experience of the security checkpoint more stressful.
“For many transgender, non-binary and gender nonconforming people, going through airport security is an exhausting and often humiliating and traumatic ordeal,” Shannon Minter, legal director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, told CNN.
In a follow-up video discussing how the TSA can do better, Montoya said the problem is the systemic transphobia built into the TSA’s security system.
“There is transphobia rooted in all of this nation’s power systems,” Montoya told his followers. “The basic solution is to believe in transgender people when they say who they are.”