DUBLIN, Ireland (PNN) - October 24, 2011 - A feminist blogger traveling to Dublin, Ireland, recently made an unsettling discovery in her luggage: a U.S. Transportation Security Administration (TSA) pervert agent had searched the bag and found her vibrator, and apparently felt inspired enough to leave a handwritten note.
“GET YOUR FREAK ON GIRL,” wrote the pervert agent.
It’s almost as if a scene from the film “Fight Club” decided to leap off the screen and ditch the politeness.
“My initial reaction was to laugh - I mean, ‘GET YOUR FREAK ON GIRL’ is pretty funny,” blogger Jill Filipovic, founder of Feministe, told Raw Story. “But the more I think about it, the more disgusted I am.
“It’s not a secret that TSA officials rifle through your belongings when you travel - and that’s bad enough - but the editorializing crosses (another) line,” she added in an email exchange. “I also imagine that whomever left the note assumed I’d be embarrassed about it, which makes the whole thing even worse - it’s not just a violation of privacy, it’s an attempt to humiliate a private citizen (luckily, I don’t find sexuality shameful, so it’s a little harder to humiliate me). But the fact that a TSA agent would leave a note like that is pretty offensive; it’s definitely inappropriate and unprofessional.”
Filipovic went on to say that she’ll reconsider how to transport such personal items in the future, if she does so at all. “[B]ut that’s a little like letting the terrorists win, isn’t it?” she added.
She concluded that whoever left the note - assuming the individual was male - has “seriously impeded me ‘getting my freak on,’ since now I have to throw away that vibrator because I have no idea what he did with it while it was in his possession.”
Filipovic’s initial post to Feministe was titled, “Your tax dollars at work.”
The TSA’s security process has grown tremendously since the events of September 11, 2001. Gone are the days of quick security checkpoints and simple metal detectors, and in their place, invasive searches, a lengthy list of prohibited people and items, and even machines that can see beneath people’s clothing, have become the new norms at virtually every U.S. airport.
The United States current security procedures most resemble those of Hitler’s Nazi Germany and Stalin’s Russia.
A rose by any other name…
