A Sample Resolution Against "Bathroom Bills"

We are at a crossroads in the U.S. when it comes to the issue of protecting trans people from discrimination. The federal government has issued guidelines that make it clear that discrimination against trans and gender-nonconforming people is illegal, at least in certain contexts (the person is a student, a medical patient, or a federal employee). Many organizations and localities have enacted further legal protections for trans children and adults.

But the backlash has been potent. We are seeing a rash of so-called "bathroom bills" being introduced in cities and states around the nation, which ban protecting trans people from discrimination based on the false claim that such laws would put women and girls at risk in bathrooms, locker rooms, and the like. If you are reading this, I presume that you already agree that pro-discrimination bills are a great wrong. But what can you do about them?

Well, one thing you can do is to convince an organization you're in that your group should take a stand against the passing of transphobic laws. You can pass a resolution explaining why you oppose discriminatory laws, and send it to stakeholders and decisionmakers in your area.

Drafting an official-sounding resolution can be challenging, though. Therefore, to help folks who want to take this action, I will share here the text of a resolution I recently drafted for an organization of which I am a member. When that organization meets, the members may decide they want to add or subtract something from the language before they vote to pass the resolution. Your group can do that as well. It's always good to tweak sample language to fit your specific situation! But it's a lot easier to tweak already-existing language than come up with a whole resolution from scratch, so I hope this is helpful to people.

Here's the sample resolution:

RESOLUTION OF [INSERT ORGANIZATION NAME]

AFFIRMING THE RIGHT OF TRANS PEOPLE TO BE PROTECTED FROM DISCRIMINATION IN ACCESS TO PUBLIC FACILITIES, EMPLOYMENT, SCHOOLING, AND HEALTH CARE

WHEREAS respect for people of all gender identities and expressions is an important value of [insert organization name]; AND

WHEREAS gender transition as a resolution of the experience of gender dysphoria is affirmed and supported by the American Psychological Association, the American Medical Association, and numerous other professional groups who care for transgender people, AND

WHEREAS a vital part of gender transition and the health and safety of trans people is living in their identified, authentic genders, with those genders being affirmed and respected in the various spaces and institutional settings where those individuals live, work, and go to school, AND

WHEREAS the federal government has issued guidances making it clear that discrimination against trans people violates federal law, TO WIT:

a)    Students at schools receiving federal funds must not face discrimination due to their gender identity or expression, which protection extends to freedom from harassment, bullying, or nonrecognition of their identified genders, and the right to access facilities and activities open to those of their identified genders (“Dear Colleague Letter on Transgender Students,” interpreting Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, issued by the U.S. Departments of Justice and Education); and

b)   These same rights extend to federal employees who are transgender or gender-nonconforming (“Guidance Regarding the Employment of Transgender Individuals in the Federal Workplace,” issued by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, interpreting the 5^th and 14^th Amendments of the U.S. Constitution and the Privacy Act); and

c)    Patients are protected from discrimination on the basis of gender identity or expression in health care under the Affordable Care Act (“Final Rule to Improve Health Equity under the Affordable Care Act,” issued by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services); AND

WHEREAS a transphobic backlash against these civil rights protections is ongoing, taking the form of state and local legal initiatives and a federal lawsuit filed by eleven states and state officials opposing the guidance on the protection of trans and gender-nonconforming students listed as (a) above; AND

WHEREAS these anti-transgender initiatives focus centrally on access to bathrooms and locker rooms, claiming that laws protecting transgender people will enable men and boys to enter bathrooms and locker rooms designated for the use of women and girls, in order to commit voyeuristic harassment or sexual assault; AND

WHEREAS trans people have in fact been using bathrooms that match their identified genders for many decades without any such problem existing; AND

WHEREAS legal protection of gender identity does not in any way render harassment or assault legal, AND

WHEREAS it is in fact trans women who face substantial risk of becoming the victims of violence or persecution in accessing bathrooms; AND

WHEREAS claims of a fantasized risk to “innocents” have a long history in being deployed to justify discrimination and segregation, including claims that racial desegregation would put white women and girls at risk of rape and the transmission of STIs via toilet seats, claims that banning discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation would put children at risk of molestation, and claims that the Equal Rights Amendment banning sex discrimination would make sex-segregated facilities illegal, putting women and girls in danger in the same way now being claimed for legal protections for gender identity and expression; AND

WHEREAS the end of legal racial segregation and the introduction of protections on the bases of sex and sexual orientation did not lead to the fantasized onslaughts of sexual abuse; and

WHEREAS so-called “bathroom bills” have a vastly greater negative impact on trans people than just limiting their ability to access toilets; TO WIT:

a)    These bills deny the reality of gender identity, often using the nonsense phrase “biological gender,” which conflates physical sex characteristics at birth with gender identity in order to delegitimate gender transition as delusional; and

b)   These bills encourage the general public to treat trans people, particularly trans women, with fear, and to see them as potential child molesters and inclined to sexual assault; and

c)    These bills encourage the general public to engage in gender policing, which is a practice of scrutinizing the appearance and behavior of others, framing trans people as deceptive in their gender presentations, and punishing gender-nonconformity—a practice that impacts cisgender individuals as well as trans people; AND

WHEREAS the goal of a just society should be that all of its members be treated with dignity and respect, rather than mocked, bullied, stigmatized, falsely accused, banned from equal access to facilities, or otherwise marginalized;

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED:

1)   [Insert organization name] reaffirms its longstanding support of the protection of people against discrimination on the basis of gender identity or expression; AND

2)   [Insert organization name] is grateful for the federal guidances which have issued from various agencies, making it clear that discrimination against trans and/or gender-nonconforming people in schooling, federal employment, and health care is against federal law; AND

3)   [Insert organization name] opposes the lawsuit by 11 states and state officials who claim a right to discriminate against transgender students; AND

4)   [Insert organization name] opposes all so-called “bathroom bills,” which institutionalize transphobia , delegitimate gender transition; and encourage public harassment of trans people; AND

5)   [Insert organization name] urges all public bodies considering so-called “bathroom bills” to recognize and acknowledge the reasons for our opposition, as enumerated in the body of this Resolution; AND

6)   [Insert organization name] urges all public entities charged with building and administrating public facilities to make available single-stall, lockable, all-gender restrooms and locker rooms for those who wish greater privacy in using the facilities and/or those who do not identify with a binary gender; AND

7)   [Insert organization name] holds that in any building that has both men’s and women’s multistall facilities and single-stall, any-gender facilities, transgender individuals can never be required to use the non-gendered facilities, as this constitutes segregation, but rather that both trans and cisgender individuals have the choice of using either a multistall facility that matches their gender identity, or a single-stall, all-gender facility; AND

8)   [Insert organization name] urges all whom this Resolution reaches to enact rules and regulations which respect and protect the rights of trans and gender-nonconforming people.

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that this Resolution shall be published on the website of [insert organization name], and that copies of it will be delivered by both email and paper mail to the Governors and Attorneys General of each of the United States and Territories and the Mayor of the District of Columbia. Email copies will also be sent to appropriate administrative agents of the DOJ, HHS, DOE and OPM, and to the heads of major trans/LGBT rights groups, including the National Center for Transgender Equality, the Transgender Law Center, the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, the National Transgender Advocacy Coalition, the Transgender Law and Policy Institute, the Human Rights Campaign, GLAAD (formerly an abbreviation for Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders, now the full name of the organization as the prior name excluded trans advocacy), and the ACLU. Members of [insert organization name] are invited to distribute copies of this Resolution to local school districts, legislators, administrative agents or other authorities they know to be addressing the issue of protection of trans and gender-nonconforming children and adults.

RESOLVED THIS [insert date] DAY OF [insert month], [insert year].

Fifty Years of Segregationist Fury

 

Pat McCrory, Governor of North Carolina, has been voicing a complaint of late. He is extremely annoyed at the "outside influences" that are protesting his signing of HB2, a law banning trans people from using bathrooms that match the genders in which we are lving, and banning local governments from passing protections for LGBT+ people.

The word he keeps using is "Orwellian." He claims that LGBT+ public interest groups are Big Brother, watching everyone and policing their speech for political correctness. Orwellian! He warns that apparently independent groups protesting the new law are actually being coordinated by a powerful entity, the Human Rights Campaign. Orwellian! The HRC and its minions are intimidating ordinary people and quashing dissent while claiming to be protecting freedom. Orwellian!

You know what's really Orwellian? Presenting trans people's use of bathrooms that match our gender identities--something we've been doing for decades--as something that didn't exist until a couple of weeks ago when Charlotte passed a civil rights bill protecting LGBT people. (As Orwell wrote, those who control the present control the past.) Presenting trans people using bathrooms that match our genders as a new attack on our "basic bathroom norms" that the state was "forced" to reverse is a move right out of the Ministry of Peace. Presenting the real victims of violence--trans women--as predators endangering cis women is a move right out of the Ministry of Truth.

Pat McCrory and the North Carolina legislature have empowered the entire populace of the state to engage in gender policing trans people's bodies. Big Brother is gender policing you--now that's Orwellian.

On "Male, Female, Transgender" Checkboxes

I've actually been encountering more forms on which I'm asked to identify my sex or gender using checkboxes labeled "male," "female" or "transgender." This is my response in image form:

"Wait. There are more than two religions--what if someone has a different religion, or no religion at all? And 'convert' isn't a religion, it means a person who has gone through a process that welcomes them into one."

Exactly.

Traveling While Trans: The False Promise of Better Treatment

Back in 2012, I wrote a post about the problems I regularly encountered as a trans person when going through TSA security screening at airports.

Since that time, we've been promised, much has changed. The TSA has formally stated that it will not discriminate on the basis of gender identity. Passengers are to be screened based upon their gender presentation. Any pat-downs are to be conducted by TSA agents whose gender matches the passenger's presented gender, no matter what gender marker is listed on the passenger's government ID. The agents on the floor operating the body scanner now just see a body outline icon marked with any areas of "anomaly" on their screen, instead of an actual image of the details of the passenger's anatomy, so privacy should be protected. The TSA has promised that the bad old days of trans people being harassed and humiliated by its agents are in the past, and we have reached the era of enlightenment.

That would be nice. 

Unfortunately, what now happens in practice is another matter altogether. In my own experience, intrusive, frightening, and humiliating screenings continue unabated. To illustrate, I'll relate what happened to me when I flew from Milwaukee to New York a couple of weeks ago. The short version is this: I was detained for almost an hour and subjected to multiple, increasingly-invasive pat-downs, as a result of the equipment used by the TSA, along with the (lack of) training by agents in the TSA's stated trans policies. Eventually, as things escalated, even my daughter was taken aside for intensive screening, though she had set off no alarms--because an agent came to believe that she too was trans, and thus a suspicious traveler.

Let's look at how this could come to  happen.

Today, body scanners are the normative screening method in U.S. airports. In the past, travelers had the right to request a physical pat-down instead of going through the scanner, but the TSA recently decided complying with such a request is at the discretion of the agent. Since simply requesting not to be scanned can be perceived as suspicious, most trans passengers will be body-scanned. So, let's look at an example of the icon image a TSA agent running a body scanner receives:

As you can see, the way the system operates is that the TSA agent pushes a pink-for-girls or blue-for-boys binary gender button when a passenger enters the body scanner. The scanner then looks for "anomalies" under the passenger's clothing--and in the process, engages in technological sex/gender policing. The image above shows what a TSA agent will see when many trans women go through a scanner: an "anomaly" in the groin area. When I go through the scanner, the red and yellow areas of "anomaly" are in my chest area, as I wear a binder. Every time I am scanned, when I look back at the display, I see my chest area outlined in colors of alarm:

The TSA says it does not discriminate on the basis of gender identity, and that travelers will be treated with respect as members of whatever gender they present themselves as. But in fact, the "Automated Target Recognition" software used by body scanners is set up to police both binary sex and cisgender bodily expectations. Bodies that vary from these expectations set off alarms and are treated as potential terrorist threats.

Once a TSA agent sees ares of red and yellow on the screen before them, the passenger must receive additional screening until the possible threat is deemed "cleared." The first step is that a public pat-down is performed right outside the scanner by a TSA agent. (That agent is supposed to be of the same gender as the traveler, but one should note that binary gender is presumed by the TSA, and there is no official TSA policy about how to handle passengers with nonbinary gender identities.) 

If the initial pat-down doesn't "clear" the issue, the passenger is taken to a screening room for a more invasive investigation. This makes the initial pat-down pivotal in determining how unpleasant the process of passing through security will be for a trans traveler.

The factor that determines what will happen to trans travelers after we are marked as "anomalous" by body scanners is largely a matter of the training and attitude of the TSA agent called over for the public pat-down that follows. If that agent understands that the alarm has been set off by our trans anatomy, and that the TSA is supposed to treat trans bodies with respect, we get a quick pat-down and are cleared to move on. The trans passenger will experience a brief flash of adrenaline when their body sets off an alarm, and anxiety as their body is publicly palpated in an area likely to be one they do not wish scrutinized, but the interval of apprehension is brief, and travel is not disrupted.

The problem is, many TSA agents have little understanding of trans people or our bodies, although they supposedly should have received appropriate training. They view our "anomalous" body scan results as suspicious, as weird, and as marking a potentially serious threat. So when their physical inspection confirms there is indeed Something There where the scanner image shows glaring red and yellow, they send us off for further, more intrusive screening.

In my personal experience, my chances of being detained for additional screening after the brief public pat-down are about 2 in 3 when flying out of my home airport in Milwaukee, but significantly lower when flying out of airports in large coastal American cities. My body and my binding practices are the same when flying away and flying home, so it's clear that local culture plays a substantial role in trans experiences with TSA screening. Levels of trans awareness and transphobia vary. And this impacts not only whether we will face additional screening, but what that screening will be like.

(This is not to say that TSA agents in large coastal cities are trans-aware paragons. When my wife was flying out of San Francisco in 2014, the TSA agents did grant that since her response to the question "are you presenting as male or female" was that she a trans woman, the TSA agent who patted her down should also be a woman. But that agent spent an inordinate amount of time patting and feeling over her chest with an expression of confused suspicion. Finally, she asked my spouse what she had in there. My wife responded, "Erm, those are my breasts." The response of the agent? "How can you have breasts if you aren't wearing a bra?" My spouse stared at the agent for a bit, openmouthed, before replying, "You're a woman--you tell me." The TSA agents conferred for a while, before deciding that while they were uncomfortable my wife's clearly trans body, the mounds on her chest were indeed breasts, and going braless does not constitute a terrorist threat. So they allowed her to proceed. But it was hardly a smooth encounter that left my wife feeling respected or validated.)

In December 2015, while flying from Milwaukee to New York with my daughter, my body scan results showed my "anomalous" chest highlighted in red and yellow as usual, and the operator of the scanner called a TSA agent over to give me a pat-down. When patting me down, the agent palpated my binder, and asked me what I was wearing under my shirt, following standard TSA procedure. I stated that it was a chest binder. This is the critical juncture--perhaps a third of the time, in Milwaukee, the agent will ask no more questions, simply complete patting down my body, and send me on my way. But more often, I'll be interrogated as to why I wear the binder, as was the case this time. My initial reply is always the simple statement that I wear it to compress my chest, but the agent usually finds this reply incomprehensible, and asks why I would need to do that. Once I explain that I do so because I am a trans man, I'm inevitably separated from my belongings and my travel companion and taken to a small room with two TSA agents for additional screening.

In 2012 I wrote about the highly uncomfortable experiences I have when I am locked in a screening room with two or more TSA agents for inspection at the Milwaukee airport. Since then, I have been assured that the agents have received additional training. They are supposed to be aware that the TSA considers a chest binder to be a prosthetic device, and that trans passengers should not be asked to display or remove prostheses such as binders, breast forms, or packers. I have been told that agents would no longer make me open or remove my shirt when being subjected to the additional screening procedure.

But that's just not true. Every time I am taken into the screening room for additional scrutiny, in every city where this has happened, I am asked to open, lift, or remove my shirt so that my binder can be inspected and swabbed for explosives. And every single time this happens, I get to watch the agents' faces go from puzzled confusion to uncomfortable or disgusted recognition that I have breasts under there, and that they are covered with chest hair. This never changes.

How the screening proceeds from there, however, does vary. Sometimes it is very tense. Last year, a TSA agent at a New York airport ordered me to remove my binder so it could be sent through the x-ray machine. I had to insist that a supervisor be called to confirm that I could not be required to remove my binder, and at one point during this confrontation there were four big men in the tiny room with me, which is an intimidating situation. 

At least during my most recent screening, nobody asked me to take the binder off--I was only directed to untuck and lift my shirt so that the agent could reach under the shirt and swab the binder for hazardous substances. Still, things went far from smoothly, because for some reason, when tested, the swab that the agent used to swipe over my binder and clothing set off an alarm as positive for some unspecified "substance".

That's when the atmosphere got a lot more serious. Another agent was called. All my carry-on belongings had to be removed from my backpack and medical equipment bag and swabbed for "substances". I had to have a more intensive triple pat-down of my entire body, including my "sensitive areas" (TSA-speak for groin, buttocks and chest). Multiple parts of my body were swabbed, including all of the outside surfaces of my binder, which I had to reveal in its entirety by lifting my shirt. And when this round of swabs was analyzed, two of them again tested as positive for suspicious substances (apparently two different substances, though the agents wouldn't tell me what they might be). 

At this point, supervisors were called, as well as an agency office in Madison. My ID was confiscated, and my name, address, license number and phone number taken for entry into some database. There were now three men in the room with me, and a supervising woman standing outside the door. I was given a very intensive pat-down. When conversation turned once again to my binder and how to "clear" it, I had to remind the agents that as a prosthetic device, I could not be asked to remove it. So an agent proceeded to wedge his hands under the binder and grope my chest--to disprove, I suppose, his hypothesis that my bound breasts might somehow be bombs--a deeply uncomfortable experience, physically and psychologically.

At this point I was worried that I wouldn't be allowed to board my plane at all. I really, really wanted to know what the agents thought my binder was contaminated with.

Here's the thing I didn't know at the time, that my daughter, waiting nearby, told me afterwards: it was obvious that something was wrong with the equipment that analyzes the screening swabs. It was oversensitive or faulty. The device was setting off an alarm to report detecting suspicious substances every time a swab was inserted for every person being tested, including a little old lady in a wheelchair. The agents outside the screening room in which I were detained were complaining to one another about the equipment, and asking that it be recalibrated or replaced, as the next day was a busy one for holiday travel, and they were worried that the machine was going to cause a disaster in delays as it gave off false alarm after false alarm.

This situation in which I found myself reveals transphobia in action, because the alarms that were being taken very seriously in my case were not being taken seriously at all in the case of the other travelers my daughter observed setting off swab alarms. The agents must have felt that a bunch of middle-aged or older white cisgender travelers posed no real risk, and those travelers were quickly sent on their way. But I and my binder were treated as a credible threat. This is how privilege and marginalization work, along so many dimensions of identity: by determining what is deemed innocuous and what is considered suspicious.  When I first entered the screening area, I was treated with friendly professional camaraderie, enjoying white male privilege--not pulled aside, for example, for the "random" additional screening that so often amounts to the screening of brown people at the Milwaukee airport. But once my trans status was revealed, the friendly TSA treatment I was experiencing quickly switched to intensive surveillance. Thus, alarms that were not taken seriously in the case of other passengers were treated with stony suspicion in my case.

Now, when I am detained for additional security screening, I always try to keep things light. I stay calm and make friendly conversation, in an attempt to present myself as nonthreatening, and as a human being making human connections. This time, two of the four agents who wound up inspecting and questioning me maintained an unsmiling stare despite my efforts to be friendly, but two responded by adopting a casual, chatting tone. Unfortunately, that proved as hurtful as it was helpful.

I think it was helpful, in that although I was detained for over three quarters of an hour, eventually I was released and allowed to board my plane, despite setting off TSA alarms several times. But it was hurtful in that it led to a further delay and additional screening--of my daughter.

So here's how that transpired. During the screening, I had chatted with one of the agents about my travel plans--visiting relatives with my daughter--so the agents in the room with me knew that my travel companion was my college-aged child. But after my 45-minute screening was finished and I was just waiting for paperwork to be completed so I could be released, the door was opened, and the woman who was the supervisor, who was standing outside it, began chatting with me. She wanted me to know it would be a few more minutes until the paperwork was finished, and inquired about when my flight departed. I replied that I still had sufficient time to make my plane, as my wife and I had learned, both being transgender, that we needed to budget extra time for frequent additional screening. 

The supervisor told me that that was very wise, and complained how so many people who ought to know better don't budget the full two hours one is supposed to set aside to go through ticketing and security, and then get upset when they miss their planes. She then asked me a few questions about what I meant exactly when I stated that my spouse and I were transgender. I explained that I was assigned female at birth, while my wife was assigned male, but we had both legally gender transitioned. She responded in a manner both friendly and uncomfortable, saying,"I get you, even if lots of people are against that. You have to be yourself, even if people don't understand it. You're very lucky that you found a wife who understands." (She also asked me, "How did they give you that beard?," so I explained testosterone therapy.) 

The supervisor then walked off, saying that they should have me released soon, but that now they would need to "screen my travel companion and her carry on items." And she got another woman TSA agent, and took my daughter off to the "female" screening room.

I was puzzled by this, as was my kid, since she had been sitting nearby ever since I was detained after being scanned while she was not. She had been waiting for most of an hour without anyone implying she needed additional screening. But she complied, went off to be isolated in the screening room, watched while all her things were taken out of her backpack and examined, and submitted to a full-body pat-down. The supervisor chatted with her while doing this in a friendly manner, but was very thorough and intensive in the screening she was conducting. Then, at some point, the agent said something to my daughter about what "your husband explained." My kid cut in to yelp, "Ack, that's not my husband, that's my DAD!" And suddenly the whole atmosphere changed, and the agent told my daughter she was free to go after three quick seconds of additional halfhearted patting.

It was immediately obvious that my daughter, who had set off no alarms and been considered no threat for 45 minutes, had suddenly transformed into a security risk in the mind of the TSA when an agent came to believe she was my transgender wife rather than my cisgender daughter. When this was revealed as a misunderstanding, the perception of my daughter as posing some sort of threat immediately evaporated. The TSA's formal policy that passengers will be treated equally, regardless of gender identity, is belied by actions like this.

A few months ago, Shadi Petosky, a trans woman and television comedy producer, had an experience similar to mine with the TSA. A body scanner registered an "anomaly" in the area of her groin, she was patted down and questioned about what that anomaly was, and when she responded that she was a trans woman and that it was part of her anatomy, she was taken aside for additional screening. A swab of her clothing for some reason set off an alarm for some potentially explosive substance. She was interrogated, treated with trans ignorance, subjected to stares and sniggers, and detained for a substantial period of time. Since she didn't set aside the recommended two hours white cis people almost never set aside for screening, she missed her plane. She found the experience of her trans body being treated as a dangerous "anomaly" humiliating--and she live-tweeted what was happening to her until her phone was taken away.

Petosky's case got a fair bit of media attention due to her experience being live-tweeted and shared. Afterwards, the TSA declared that they had listened carefully to Petosky's complaints, and all would now be well, as the TSA was releasing a new policy. That policy was that the TSA would replace the word "anomaly" with "alarm".

In fact, I know that this promised change in terminology has not actually been implemented at the level of practice. During my last TSA encounter, I referred to the body scanner's response to my bound chest as "an alarm," and was told by the supervisor that I was using terminology incorrectly: the swab setting off the analyzer was "an alarm," while the body scanner had reacted to "an anomaly."

But I really don't care about whether the TSA calls my body "anomalous" or "alarming." Under either term, trans bodies are treated as security threats. The supposed new TSA policy of saying "alarm" instead of "anomaly" does nothing more than put a gloss of sensitivity over an actual practice that frames trans bodies as strange, wrong, and dangerous. 

Binary sex and gender policing are foundational to how body scanners are currently set up to function. Each passenger must be designated blue-for-boy or pink-for-girl in order to start the scan, and men are not "allowed" to have breasts, nor women to have a penis, according to the scanner's software. As long as that is how body scans are conducted, trans bodies will inevitably be policed as security threats.

The TSA may claim that trans people will be treated just like cis people by its agents, but its nondiscrimination policy conflicts with the actual practices of its agents and the functioning of the body scanners they deploy.

For these reasons, things have not gotten better for those of us who are traveling while trans. The only thing that has really changed, in my experience, is that the TSA now presents itself as enlightened, and is congratulated for that--including by some LGBTI  organizations.

In a way, it's this that is for me the most frustrating and hurtful part of the whole situation. Trans people continue to be treated as wrongly and dangerously embodied. We continue to be pulled aside, isolated, groped, and our bodies stared at by TSA agents whose expressions often flash to that of a person smelling garbage. But we're told that everything's come up roses for us and we should dance for joy because we now live in the promised land of equality.

Better to just tell it like it is. The TSA's actual policy is that people with bodies that do not conform to binary, cisgender expectations can be treated as freakish security threats. If you have a body like that, budget an hour more of time at the airport than your friends with conforming bodies set aside, or you may miss your plane.

That's the real policy under which I operate whenever I fly.