!?!?!?!?!?! "Gel-filled bra is new terrorist device"

[bobbieinok]

http://feministing.com/archives/005692.html#c51382

September 12, 2006
Gel-filled bra is new terrorist device.
This is disturbing. In light of increased security to get on airplanes one woman, a breast cancer survivor, was told she could not fly with her gel filled bra on.

Humiliated cancer survivor Jean Hand claims a travel company told her she could not fly wearing her fake breast – because it posed a security risk.
Mrs Hand was close to cancelling a flight to Majorca after she was told by First Choice holidays that her gel-filled breast would need to be checked in with baggage.

The matter was resolved by airport officials, but the 57-yearold was left feeling 'horrified and humiliated'.

'The thought of having to go for hours looking like a lopsided freak filled me with horror,' she said.


As we have discussed before, these security measures are very uncomfortable and offensive for people with disabilities.

I mean at a certain point, enough is enough. Perhaps instead of being so focused on increased security (like asking people with prosthetic limbs and gel bras to take them off) we can start to look at what is causing all of this *terror*. Oh wait, then we have to figure out how the US and Britain are implicated. Well that would be a crappy hero story. *sigh*

[Bozita]

1. Does Katherine Harris (R-FL) know about this?

[mike_c]

2. solution: don't fly....

Vote with your feet, and airlines will stop treating passengers like criminals.

[LeftyMom]

4. Easy to say, hard to do

Many people have to fly for work, or because there's no other way to get to where they're going in the time they can get off of work.

[mike_c]

8. if TSA made all passengers fly in full body restraints...

...with ball gags and explosive butt plugs, hardly anyone would fly (and those that did, at least willingly, well, you probably wouldn't want to sit beside them). The point is that there IS a threshold beyond which people will stop flying, not matter how inconvenient alternative means of travel might be. If we control where that threshold is, we can exert some pressure on the airlines to stop this nonsense. If we can't or won't we're powerless.

I used to fly all the time-- several times annually-- both for business and pleasure. In the last four years I've flown once, and I don't intend to repeat it anytime soon. I do have the luxury of deciding whether to travel to meetings or not, and I'm happy to travel for fun to places I can drive (including 2000 mile trips that last several days), or to not travel at all if that makes more sense. If more people do that, the airlines will face more pressure to change.

[Virginian]

6. It isn't the airlines.

These people are government employees with security clearances.

The airlines were paying minimum wage and were also hiring illegal aliens to keep other aliens from illegally flying. You know, taking jobs that Americans don't want to do... Now that it pays better...

[mike_c]

12. ultimately, it is the airlines...

...because they go along with this stuff. When enough airlines collapse because passengers tire of being treated like cattle with criminal intent, the gov't will stop trying to impose a secutity state at airports-- unless the collapse of a civilian travel industry is one of the government's objectives.

[purduejake]

10. THESE ARE NOT AIRLINE RESTRICTIONS...

Do you realize how much the airlines HATE these restrictions? Why would airlines want to have people standing in line blowing flights and connections and see 33% increase in bags to handle?

[longship]

11. Okay, smarty. Just how does one travel these days without flying.

Amtrak? Like the trains go everywhere.
Auto? Like people have all the time to drive.

And how about those business people whose livelihood depends solely on their ability to get to their destinations *on-time*. Do you suppose that there may be some disabled people among them? How about some breast cancer survivors?

Like most people have a choice? No. For most people, flying is the only choice.

[mike_c]

14. everyone has choices-- we simply choose not to make difficult ones....

If air travel becomes difficult enough, or insulting enough, people WILL find a way to make other choices. What you're telling me is that it isn't bad enough yet to drive you to alternatives. It HAS driven me to seriously curtail my flying-- I make other travel arrangements, or I don't travel-- one of the ways I've dealt with the issue is by dramatically reducing my professional travel. I did fly this summer, for the first time since 2002. It wasn't as bad as in the first year after 2001, but it still wasn't very pleasant.

[longship]

17. I, too, have curtailed my travel.

But if I have a week off and I want to visit the east coast, I can't do it. If I want to travel to my place in MI, it's too long of a journey to hop into the car and drive--that would take four days--one way.

I am mostly in agreement with you, but your characterization that there are always options for people ignores the fact that other modes of transportation are *not* an option for many people, like the business crowd. What I do *not* understand is why these people aren't screaming their heads off about this crap.

Now, with this gel bra rubbish, I would expect that American Cancer Society and some of the women's health organizations to chime in on how ridiculous this whole thing is. Why aren't they?

[badgerpup]

3. Oh for crying out loud...

Pick holes in things, make it look like they're doing something but for gods' sake,
DON'T address any REAL issues (like uninspected cargo, maybe?), because that might mean work.

Harassing people is MUCH more fun and visible...it APPEARS that something is being done without actually having to do it.
Shit.

:banghead: :nuke: :grr:

[tyedyeto]

5. Any female, no matter if they have ever had breast cancer,...........

should be contacting the TSA and telling them what the fuck is going on!!!!

I have not been diagnosed with breast cancer, much less had one or both removed. But if I did, I can't imagine the indignity of having these people paw all over your body and ask you to remove undergarments that help one to 'look normal'. What the fuxck is up with that???????

[Kutjara]

7. This bullshit has to stop.

Airlines and airports have always been the employers of choice for petty people with superiority complexes. They just love the uniforms and the control they have over other people's lives. It's closest they can get to the thrills that concentration camp guards used to get.

The 'War on Terror' has elevated airport staff from pathetic annoyance to dangerous intrusion. Nowhere in the West do ordinary citizens have fewer rights or more curtailed liberties. Nowhere else can the word of a flunky be sufficient to deny people their contractual and human rights. Citizens are herded, searched, questioned, denied passage, deprived of their possessions and humiliated, without recourse to any legal remedy.

It's about time the Little Mussolinis who rule their little Airport Empires were made to understand that they are not the final court of appeal in all matters. These guys, and their employers, need to be dragged into court and sued for every penny in their pockets, as many times as is necessary to remind them that they operate under the same laws as the rest of us.

[az chela]

9. This is beyond insulting!!!!

Our government knows the real truth about 9/11 and the facts do not support any terrorists from another country.
They need to stop the bullshit and admit to the american public what really happened but they would go to prison if they did so that wont happen.
What a mess bush and his thugs have made of a once great country!!!!
Give us another Bill Clinton before it is too late.

[Matariki]

13. One question

How can they TELL if someone is wearing a gel bra?

[wakeme2008]

16. They cann't

:grr: Dumb TA see next post :)

[wakeme2008]

15. BS -- This is NOT TSA or the Airline but an asshole Travel Agent

NOBODY WOULD HAVE KNOWN she had a gel filled bra on... She asked an asshole TA and they gave a DUMB answer. :grr:

Gel filled bras do not have metal in them to set off metal detectors....

[ZENmud]

18. " Sobriety test: the Department of HomeSec..."

They don't even know which way ORANGE to YELLOW or YELLOW to ORANGE go...

See this blog essay:
"Sobriety test: the Department of HomeSec..."

http://crystelzenmud.blogspot.com/2006_09_01_crystelzenmud_archive.html

"I guess it's too much to ask the good Americans at Homeland Security to keep their simplest War FOR Terror concepts clearly indicated..."

ZENmud