On Christmas day, a man tried to explode the plane he was on using a bomb in his underwear. His actions were thwarted by a bomb that didn't work properly and other passengers, but perhaps predictably (and disappointingly if you think like me) the TSA dumped a whole pile of arbitrary new flight dos and don'ts on the heads of travelers at this, the peak travel season. These rules included, among other things, a restriction on passenger movement during the last hour of travel over American airspace. For the last hour of travel, passengers are not permitted to use blankets, pillows, laptops, the in-flight televisions, or move about the cabin at all. The only thing passengers are permitted to do for the last hour of travel, it seems, is to sit perfectly upright in their seats with their hands on the arm rests.

I am not afraid of terrorists when I fly. Not even a little bit. Partly because the chances of being killed by a terrorist while in a plane is 1 in 10 million, but mostly because being afraid to fly -- being afraid to carry on the every-day actions of my life -- is how terrorists win, and I'm stubborn enough and proud enough and some might say stupid enough to defy those people who prey on my fear.

You know what I am afraid of, though? A country and a society that responds to 1 in 10 million odds with nonsensical security theatre that restricts my right to fucking pee. Every time we give up a right -- even a tiny, seemingly insignificant one -- the terrorists win. We beg not for real security, but for a pacifier of safety to suck on, and for it we'll give up anything and that terrifies me. It terrifies me, and enrages me, and frankly it offends me.

And now? Two bloggers are being subpoenaed for posting the wackadoo new TSA protocols.

Anyway. Fuck you, TSA.

A few weeks ago Facebook banned Calgary transman Dominic Scaia from Facebook for posting a post-op photo of his bare chest. The photo did not break any of Facebook's Terms of Service that I can tell. It was neither excessively gory nor sexual in any way.


Quote from the original article:

It's unclear what bothered Facebook about Dominic's photos. Section 3.7 of its Terms of Service regulates that content not be "hateful, threatening, pornographic" or contain "nudity or graphic or gratuitous violence." It's clear a male chest falls into none of these categories. Scaia says, "They were from two-and-a-half weeks post-op and included my face. I was holding the camera from above, my chest was bare and I was wearing jeans. None of the photos were in the least bit gory."

Facebook does not moderate photographs individually. They rely on users to report offensive content. The only people who could view Scaia's pictures were friends that he'd added to his account. He'd had the photos up for a week without a problem. The evening before he was banned, Dominic accepted a friend request from a young, flirtatious girl. He thinks she looked through his photos and discovered that the cute boy she'd added was not born physically male, choosing then to report his account.

It's there where things become confusing. It's Facebook's policy to remove photos that are deemed offensive and to send a warning. It is not the company's policy to disable accounts over photos. This does not mean that Facebook has a rule of banning transgender people, it means that one staff moderator made the grossly misinformed choice to ban his account.


Over 6,000 people joined a Facebook group in an attempt to raise awareness about this. A week later, Scaia finally received a reply back from Facebook, saying his photos were in violation of the Terms of Service. His account has been reinstated, but all his post-surgery photos have been removed, and he has been sternly told not to upload photos of "that sort" again, saying: "photos containing nudity or other graphic or sexually suggestive content are not allowed". Local radio show Gaywire has published an open letter to Facebook. Xtra.ca has an article with one of the photos in question here.

Facebook is a major social networking site and a major photo-sharing site that many trans people -- including Scaia -- use for advocacy and sharing personal stories and experiences with other transmen and women, and sharing post-op photos is part of that sharing. This was a transphobic knee-jerk reaction by a company after one transphobic user reported the image. There was no warning; the account was immediately frozen. It took Facebook over a week to respond to questions and un-freeze the account. This is not cool on many levels.