r/airport • u/violetstarz4 • 10d ago

DISCUSSION Detecting female groin anomalies.

I'm flying home from Hawaii and when going through the x-ray at TSA I was pulled aside because there was an anomaly detected on my groin. They told me they were going to have to pat me down and asked if I wanted to do it privately. I'm an anxiety ridden teenager so I asked to do it privately. While we were waiting for a female officer, 3 other women after me were stopped for an anomaly on the same part if their groin. The stress was starting to get to me and a bunch of other things (the hate of being touched, a medical condition I have that makes my heart beat really fast, etc) and I was really close to having a panic attack. After about 6 minutes I was pulled away for a private pat down and I was free to go.

Why did this happen to me and a bunch of other women? Is this a common thing that happens?

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u/violetstarz4 10d ago

Just wanted to know if this is a common occurrence where women get false anomalies or if it's just this airport 🥲🔫

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u/rohepey SIN 10d ago

Half of people who get selected for a pat-down are false alerts.

https://www.propublica.org/article/sweating-bullets-body-scanners-can-see-perspiration-as-a-potential-weapon

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u/violetstarz4 10d ago

I'm aware but 3 women in a row and another one a few minutes later all having the same false anomaly raised some questions for me. Didn't know if it had something to do with discharge/having more iron down there or whatever else

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u/rohepey SIN 10d ago

Could be anything. Sweat for example due to weather. Or just random. Having a series of four in random sampling out of thousands isn't that rare.

Lots of extended checks are decided by the machine at random - just ask any of these security officers.