No, Thanks. I Guess I'll Just Never Go Anywhere.

[Trigger warning for sexual assault.]

Flying While Fat already makes me reluctant to do air travel these days, because I am constantly fearful of being required to purchase a second seat that I cannot afford in order to get home.

Flying While A Survivor presents its own set of problems, which got exponentially worse when airports started installing full-body scanners, and then got infinitely worse last month when the TSA instituted "enhanced pat-downs," to which one must submit if one doesn't want to submit to a graphic body scan.

Despite the fact that the TSA asserts passengers will not be patted-down by opposite sex agents, and that the pat-downs are not excuses for agents to grope passengers, nor that the pat-downs are done in full view of other passengers as a deterrent to pressure them into the full-body scanners to avoid being sexually assaulted, this does not seem to be accurate.

This is not something to which I am willing to subject myself, so I guess I won't be going anywhere I need to fly for the foreseeable future. And I'm going to guess I'm not the only survivor of sexual violence, particularly who lives with PTSD, who is fundamentally unwilling to be put through that shit.

Of course, I have the privilege of not having to fly anywhere to keep my job. Lots of people don't have that option. And, as sexual violence disproportionately affects women, this becomes yet another potential employment obstacle for the gender who is already disadvantaged in the workplace. Swell.

I guess I don't need to point out to this crowd the bitter, bitter irony of terrorizing passengers in the name of protecting them from terrorists.

We have seen the enemy and zie is us etc.

[H/T to Shakers Megan and Zen.]