Curious after Egypt airport experience

[WhyCantIFigureThisOut]

Just returned from a trip to Egypt and the airport experience on the return was definitely interesting!

Besides other instances at the airport, at security (liquids check, bag scanners), men & women are split. Men have the pick of 4 lanes to move through, while women have just 1 lane*. The split is because as is their culture, female staff cannot do a body pat down on a male, and vice versa. The 'enforcing' of the men/women split was very strict - at one point a 3yr old boy wasn't allowed to wait in the queue with his mother and was asked to go through the male line alone.

Now - arguably, this is their culture and forewarned is forearmed etc. But... if one is trans, which line would one go in? Would beliefs trump culture and foreign security protocol?

(*And yes, let's not get into the annoyance of only 1 line for women- we had to queue for nearly an hour 😂😂)

Yes don't want to derail the thread but as someone who used to regularly travel into and out of a middle Eastern country, I can't believe that part. My younger brother did eventually start having to go through separately but definitely not before the age of 8 or so. May have been older as memory is hazy but it definitely wasn't younger than that.

I knew a man who thought it would be funny to wear drag in Dubai for a stag celebration.

Got arrested. The crime? Being a man dressed in woman’s clothes.

I agree, I don’t believe this OP at all. The Middle East is generally very respectful of mothers and their bond with young children, much more so than UK.

My son, not 3 years old but very much young minded had to be split from me, the staff didn't care that it distressed him. It is a very segregated place. The metro has carriages just for women. Some official buildings have male/female waiting rooms.

Spot on. I’ve lived in another part of the Middle East for a lifetime and I’ve also lived in Cairo. You’re spot on about the age of 8 being around the age when boys would be considered old enough to join the male line. I did want want to say so but I just thought nope, I can’t be bothered as this thread is a bit off.

Yes. It’s a crime in public. And not just in Dubai.

But what he does in his own house is his business only.

Great to see such interesting discussions on here.

The 3yr old bring split from his mum - unfortunately this did happen. It would have been good to see common sense prevail here but no.

I've travelled a lot and had pat downs from male staff - of course never intimate searches. I've travelled through places like Dubai, Marrakech and Tunis and haven't seen men and women split so yes, I guess it was just a new thing for me to see. I could totally see why they do it, and don't have any issue with that. For me though, it just made me think that we get so caught up in gender/sex politics and beliefs, but sometimes other things are at play - like foreign security protocols.

Strange that you find being patted down by same sex as strange, seeing as that how it's done everywhere I've ever been.

Also many airports send males through one scanner and females through another, just for convenience in who is going to pat down if the need arises. Manchester airport has done this many times.

The fact that there were more lines for males is presumably because there are both more male travellers and also because there are proportionately fewer female staff to do the pat downs.

I think that outside of English speaking western countries and a few others, most places hardly ever think about trans people and certainly won't be making any modifications to how they organise security at airports for them. Individuals tend to realise that if they can't manage the way things are then it's on them to speak up and see if they can find a compromise if possible, not expect everyone else to re arrange everything .

Strange that you find being patted down by same sex as strange, seeing as that how it's done everywhere I've ever been

I didn't find that strange in the slightest 😂

I think that outside of English speaking western countries and a few others, most places hardly ever think about trans people and certainly won't be making any modifications to how they organise security at airports for them. Individuals tend to realise that if they can't manage the way things are then it's on them to speak up and see if they can find a compromise if possible, not expect everyone else to re arrange everything .

Yes, I agree with this - it's the English speaking western countries that can be hyper aware of things

They simply remove their womanface as it is inconvenient (and possibly dangerous).

This is something all women can do surely?

I go to Lord's a lot and females always get patted down by female staff

What are you not sure about?
I assure you they have separate queues.
I assure you the ladies’ queue was unstaffed.

On a separate note, Iran and KSA are both Muslim but that is possibly the only thing they have in common. Social attitudes are very different, partly as a result of Wahhabism but partly because of historical cultural differences. I know that Tehran is one of the world’s plastic surgery capitals but ‘Trans the gay away’ does not operate at the same level in Saudi. Cross dressing is an outrage but homosexuality is rife before (maybe after?) marriage.

This thread is odd. Where have there been patdowns with people of the opposite sex?

I went through Manchester airport last week - T3. We all went through the same scanner but at each scanner there was a male and female employee. A woman went through before me and the alarm went off so the female employee patted her down. It went off when I went through, the male employee asked me to remove my watch and bracelets then sent me back - it went off again so he asked me to wait for the female to pat me down. As usual, it was my bra wires!!!

To those that think this thread is odd, yes, the 3 year old being segregated is odd. And pat downs have, in my experience, always been same sex.

But, in some countries, the segregation is so strong that men and women don’t queue together, put their belongings through the x ray machine together, line up together to go through metal detector, and then get separate pat downs if required.

They queues for everything are separate. By a good 10+ meters. And then the women’s queue leads to a separate room so they are out of sight of the men if they need to remove face covers for a visual ID check, and, of course, a possible pat down.

Is this a recent thing at Egypt airport? Never had segregation when I've been through there

Hurghada airport

I was last in Egypt in 2019. I got off a ship in Rashid and was driven to the airport in Alex, to fly on to Cairo, they didn't care what anyone had. In Cairo, I went for the flight to Heathrow and loads of locals had 2 litre bottles of water, which they were allowed to keep.

All the non Egyptians had tiny tubes of toothpaste, hand cream etc confiscated.

Depends if the transperson is considered gay? Male genitals and attracted to women= heterosexual

not all trans women are attracted to women ! There are those that define themselves as gay/queer/ bi or heterosexual. It’s still irrelevant because any country that persecutes it’s own population on the basis of being different sexually is not the best place for a tourist with differences to travel to and it’s well known that Egypt is not a place to travel to without risks if you are LGBTQ.

I travel a lot and cannot recall being patted down by a man. I'm pretty sure women always pat down women.