Let’s face it. Nobody wants to fly. The seats are always cramped, the circulated air invariably makes you sick, and the TSA is sure to take every excuse to invade privacy. Some of this can be avoided if you drop a couple thousand dollars on first class but flying in general sucks. This was not always the case. At one point, airlines offered great service, security was easy, and the seats didn’t make you wish you were 5’ 4”.

The bombings of 9/11 are known for having changed that. Easy strolls to your seat were replaced with checkpoints where shoes and belts were removed, bags searched, and bodies prodded all to stop the next bomber. Body scanners are important in making this screening more efficient and less intrusive. They remove the need for pat downs allowing lines to move more quickly, but design flaws have led to unintended consequences. Specifically, the scanners need to be set to scan either a male or female body. (It must make a difference somehow. Don’t ask me; I didn’t design it.) The scanners seem to have the same biases humans do about gender, and that causes problems when people don’t identify or present on the binary, or anytime someone’s presentation fails to match their anatomy.

Picture, for example, a transwoman in an airport. Because she presents female, the TSA agent sets the machine to scan a female body. Upon finding anatomy that does not match the female setting, the scanner signals a potential threat. This leads to a pat down that may or may not escalate into more invasive searches. Not ideal, and yet this situation routinely befalls trans individuals, butch lesbians and people who meet any other variety under the gender-nonconforming umbrella. Out of all the reasons to fly, this is the one that affects people unequally. Cramped seats affect those who book them regardless of gender expression, and service is subpar to anyone who doesn’t pay up, but cisgender individuals can at least pass security. Any invasion of privacy that affects cisgender individuals is worse for people of other identities. The TSA’s own policy fails to deal with the issue. It mentions that the machine scans male and female anatomy differently but states that the agent will set the scanner based on “how you present yourself.” That effectively means that people who want a smooth walk through security must present as their biological gender regardless of identity. Even Carina Julig, author of “How Airport Security Makes Travel Traumatic for Butches and Trans Folks, Whether or Not They Pass,” writes that she ditches her normal masculine presentation knowing that it might get her in trouble. For some people, that would not even work.

This type of issue is wrong and should not happen. Airport security has a long track record of treating everyone as a suspect, but the designers of the body scanners are responsible for inadvertently making this worse for gender nonconforming individuals. This does not necessarily reflect on designers’ ethics, but the unintended effects of the particular design of body scanners need to be fixed. If the machines could scan all genders the same way, the problem would be solved, but until then, we’re stuck with male and female settings that leave other identities in the wind.