I hate the TSA and everything, but can't you just look at someone and imagine what they look like naked in much higher resolution than the body scanners provide? People are afraid of being naked, but we all pretty much look the same.
Don't understand your point. Should we say to women: "you have no right to feel violated because the blurry outline of your breasts and vagina looks very similar to the blurry outline of that woman behind you (trust me I've seen a lot of blurry vaginas)"?
as an aside, I have to say I felt pretty uncomfortable seeing a man send my SO through the scanner; we weren't expecting it at our airport and she didn't really know what it was until she was already through. The power dynamic was a big part of this.
Why do you care about the gender of the rent-a-cop that tells you to stand inside an x-ray machine? He doesn't see the images, and even then, what difference does the gender make? There are plenty of people that are sexually attracted to people of the same gender.
I don't like the body scanners, but I could care less if someone sees me naked. The reason we should fight body scanners is because the cost/benefit ratio sucks. It takes too long to move a line of people through these things, so they aren't used on everyone. So all you've done is thwart terrorist groups that only have one member.
There could be no airport security at all and it's unlikely that many more people would die. If we lost one 747 a year, it would be a rounding error compared to the number of people dying in car accidents or from excessive consumption of unhealthy food. So why do we spend any time solving this non-problem? It just doesn't make sense.
I think the point to be made is that not everyone has the same comfort zone as you do. You may not care about strangers seeing you naked, but other people do. Being naked in front of someone can be an intensely vulnerable experience, and the feelings of vulnerability can be compounded by a wide range of factors, including power differentials, the fact that they are strangers, or that those strangers may be letching on your naked body.
For instance, I don't particularly care about being naked in front of people, but when I feel like I'm being objectified/letched on, that makes me uncomfortable, regardless of my state of dress.
Uh. what? I was trying to explain that feeling uncomfortable or violated was a reasonable reaction to a virtual strip search for people who aren't you. What the actual bleepity bleep does not allowing weapons onto planes have to do with the price of peas in Persepolis?
