Traveling While Trans: Using Item Response Theory to Characterize Trans Experiences with TSA

• In Event: Poster Session 2

Abstract

Airport security involves one of the most common and intrusive identity checks individuals face, and yet there is little research on the experiences of transgender people with TSA. The limited qualitative research in this area points to experiences with humiliation, harassment, excessive pat downs, and even detention during travel among transgender people (Reddy-Best & Olson, 2020). Many of these encounters arise because the advanced imaging technology used in airport scanners requires a TSA agent to designate each person going through security according to the gender binary (man or woman) based on the agent’s own visual impression. That impression is then put into the machine which uses an advanced algorithm to detect ‘anomalies’ (Albert & Smith-Carrington, 2023). Pat downs, and sometimes strip searches, can result. This study uses the U.S. Transgender Survey (2015) data to gain a better understanding of what interactions between Trans individuals and TSA entail and to what extent those experiences differ according to gender identity/presentation and/or race. This study uses item response theory-based analysis to better capture differences in severity of negative experiences among trans folks, particularly when their physical appearance reads as ambiguous. Implications for future research and policies regarding gender-affirming care are considered.

Authors

• Maureen Outlaw, Providence College

• Brent Teasdale, Illinois State University

• Mindy Bradley, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville

• Kim Menard, Penn State Altoona

• Brenda Blackwell, Georgia Southern University