The closest thing I can compare all those hurdles to is the series of arduous trials Indiana Jones has to complete in The Last Crusade—except that, instead of finding the Holy Grail on the other side, you get to fly coach. And clearing those obstacles in the mid 2010s as a trans woman who had legally changed her name but couldn’t update the gender marker on her Georgia driver’s license was complicated and exhausting, especially given how frequently I had to do it.
First, I would book a ticket but had to select “male” as my legal gender. I would walk up to the TSA checkpoint with an ID that had a feminine-presenting photo and my name on it, but also an “M,” so I’d hand over a Disability Notification Card as well that explained my “health condition.” After that, I would opt out of the full-body scanner, which meant waiting upwards of 15 minutes for a TSA agent to give me a pat-down. I count myself lucky that I didn’t experience much of the harassment, abuse, and invasive searches so many trans people have gone through, though there were certainly a few uncomfortable encounters.
In those days, I considered it a miracle to see other trans people at the gate for my flight—especially trans women who, due to the effects of our initial puberty, are often more visually noticeable. Whenever it happened, I wanted to rush up to them and celebrate having made it through the hell that was airport security. Of course I didn’t, because the last thing either of us wanted in those moments was even more attention. Still, we were here, in the inner sanctum—a place we weren’t supposed to be. The thrill of it was almost enough to make up for those times I had a too-tight connection in Charlotte.
Travel got easier for me over time, in part due to my physical transition and in part due to political changes. I found out I could change the gender marker on my passport without surgery due to a little-known 2010 policy, which soon made presenting my ID a non-issue. And after I got bottom surgery in 2014, I took a deep breath and walked through a full-body scanner for the first time ever. Pat-downs are now, mercifully, a distant memory. Advocacy from trans travelers has since pressed the TSA to make even more changes, like introducing a gender-neutral algorithm for the full-body scanners in June 2023 (though reports of harassment and false alarms persist).
Even more so, spotting people like me at the airport has gone from being a once-in-a-blue-moon phenomenon to an ordinary and even expected occurrence. Hell, departing from my home airport of SEA-TAC in Seattle, I’ll sometimes find myself sitting next to a trans woman on my flight out, which feels surreal. She’s usually younger than me, and I hope she has had an easier time accessing airline travel than my history reflects, just like I faced fewer challenges than my trans forebears. Most of all, I hope she has fun playing Zelda.
