Airport security and gender...

Canada has a law (PDF document; see page 8) that "An air carrier shall not transport a passenger if [...] the passenger does not appear to be of the gender indicated on the identification he or she presents." This is meant to prevent fraudulent travel; other reasons in that section for denying transport include your picture not matching you or two forms of ID contradicting each other. However... yeah. Bit of a problem.

I don't believe any other Western countries have laws, but if your gender appears different then I expect you may be pulled aside just like if your picture doesn't match you. I hope that if you travel it doesn't cause too many problems. I don't have any experience with this.

 

Generally speaking, (apart from canada), so long as you match your picture, but not necessarily your gender label, you'll be fine. I have all my document changed, though, so its not a problem for me.

 

Here's what I wrote once about my account:

Okay, so I’m lucky in that I pass pretty well to strangers. As long as people don’t look too closely at me and I don’t open my mouth, most people in passing assume I’m male. (Pun intended.) A couple months ago I was travelling to NY for the summer. I got up at three ridiculous thirty in the morning after staying up late to pack.

My family, thank goodness, loves me enough to drive me to the airport that early in the morning. If that’s not love, I dunno what is. We got there at about 5am and parted ways. I tried to act all “yeah, I know what I’m doing I’ll be fine, don’t worry about me,” but as soon as they left, I was all “oh mah goodness where do I go for my boarding pass and security and flight and argghh!”

Somehow, I manged to make it to the security check-point with my pass in hand. There, they checked to make sure my ID and pass match. My ID didn’t look much like me.. it was about three years old. I had long hair and regrettably a hot pink shirt. I tried to remind myself that this is the only time in my life I’ll see Miss Official ID Checker, but any trans* person’ll know that showing someone an old ID is rather uncomfortable. She looked at me, and my ID, and back at me. I guess my face must’ve been similar enough or she hadn’t had coffee yet because she stamped it and sent me on my merry way.

The next part flustered me a bit. I had read the TSA’s policies for transgender travelers, but by the time I was ready to go through the scanner and had already almost forgotten to put my laptop outside of the bag, take my shoes off, and check my pockets I wasn’t really thinking about being transgender. (Over time, it’s become so comfortable to be out in male clothes that I think less and less about it.) At the time, I didn’t know that they had switched out the nude body scanners for less revealing millimeter wave scanners. With the new system, the officials are required to punch a pink or blue button (how cliche) to tell the machine what “stuff” to ignore.

The scanner-checker must’ve pressed the blue button since I appear male. Obviously, as a pre-t pre-surgery guy I have a lack of certain stuff and an unfortunate overabundance of other stuff. When I went through the machine a TSA guy held me up.

“Please stop right here, sir.” He said a quick few words to the person behind the computer screen and turned back to me. ”It’s flagging a region on your chest, I’m going to give you a pat down.” Before could react and say that I’m biologically female, he was doing so. Okay, for any cisfemale I’d imagine having a middle aged guy patting down your chest would probably be at the least awkward and at most grounds for a sexual harassment complaint. But I’m not a woman and I don’t identify with my chest. It didn’t feel awkward to me, besides the fact that a stranger was invading my personal space. He was just doing his job. In a few seconds he was finished: “Thank you, sir, you can go ahead.”

Even though he referred to me as male after the pat down, I have a small chest, but not that small, so I find it hard to believe he didn't notice anything out of the ordinary. But it definitely didn't faze him either. I’d like to imagine he did figure it out and decided to be respectful about it. I guess on the way back I might just opt for a pat down since I’m probably going to get one anyway.

Side note: The only really problem seems to be with the body scanner type things. The metal detectors shouldn't be a problem, just make sure to have all metal off of you to avoid the awkwardness of which gender TSA person will do a pat-down.

 

I'm interested about this as well, since I'll be flying to Quebec next month and have no idea how airport security will react. The gender marker on my passport legally reads as "X" (thanks to Australia's new policy), but I'm curious as to how TSA will react as well as security checkpoints, especially after seeing my passport. At least my photo is new, so I won't have any trouble with security thinking anything is suspicious, unless if they want to question the gender identification.

I'm just crossing my fingers that security in Canada won't give me any trouble.

 

Keep us updated. Sadly, I have heard of many stories where people were pulled aside for not matching the gender on their ID.

 

Did not know Canada did this. We like to think we have some of the best LGBT+ rights.

 

It might not be an LGBT rights issue as much as a struggle to balance privacy and safety, which goes far beyond just LGBT people as a group. It gives a lot of other groups problems too.

 

If you are not flying internationally, at least in the US, you don't need to have a passport as long as you have other photo ID that can identify you. Drivers licenses and Student ID's work, for example. If you are working somewhere that provides photo ID to its employee's, your ID probably won't have your gender on it, just a reasonably up-to-date photo and your name. As long as it looks reasonably official, most TSA officers don't actually look to closely at what is on it. If your face matches your picture, and your name matches the one on the card, you should be fine.

 

Student IDs probably won't work for the TSA. It's gotta be official.

 

I think what you say is true. It also makes it easy for the security folks in that it is less of a judgement call. Either you match or you don't as opposed to how close (or not) do you match...

 

This is only true if you are under the age of 18. Once you turn 18, you need to have an official ID (passport, driver's license, state ID, etc.). You can look at the TSA's list of acceptable IDs here.

I'm not trans* so I don't have any personal experience with this but I did find an article from the Advocate that details Brad Glemser's problem with the TSA during one of his flights.

After looking at the TSA website, I noticed a few interesting lines. They have a page that details their policies regarding trans* travelers.

Here is some info about pat downs

I hope the information I provided about American travel helped

 

Hi, I am actually from Canada and am MtF and I have travelled to the U.S. since I am born there and visit family and friends. I have never had any trouble, when they question my I.D. I just mention that I am a MtF transexual and they feel guilty about it and just rush me through. Although I am pre-op so in technicality I match my I.D. and the picture clearly resembles me as I have gotten my I.D.s done recentely just to be safe. I also carry officail letters from professionals in case they really want to be stingy about it. I hope that helps calm any worries.