Debra Pickett

And instead of exploring the complicated psychological underpinnings of a cultural moment that pushes Americans to forget Ben Franklin's wise words that those who give up liberty for security deserve neither, Noonan decided to play the sex card. (Or is it the gender card? I'm never sure.)

The problem with those airport searches, she asserts, is not that they're intrusive. Not even that they're ineffective.

No. The trouble, she says, is that they're unladylike.

Sing Tom Jones song here

Having been born in the '70s, I've never actually heard the term "lady" used unironically. But Noonan, the author of fine, beautiful phrases like "kinder, gentler nation" and "thousand points of light," is not an ironist. She's 100 percent serious about this.

She describes her "pat down," which was conducted by a female security officer, like this: "I experienced the search not only as an invasion of privacy, which it was, but as a denial or lowering of that delicate thing, dignity. The dignity of a woman, of a lady, of a person with a right not to be manhandled or to be, or to feel, molested."

By this logic, conducting "wand" searches on men, or, say, on women who smoke, chew gum, avoid lipstick, wear jeans or appear on the Jerry Springer show, is absolutely fine. There's only a problem when you search the delicate and sensitive among us.

What standard, exactly, was the TSA supposed to use to determine that Noonan was a lady and therefore not subject to the usual indignities? Should a white-gloved grandmother be stationed at each checkpoint to make the call? Or is this a jury-of-your-peers sort of thing?

Noonan doesn't say.

She offers up some dictionary definitions of what it is to be a lady -- having "high standards of proper behavior" is the key -- but slides over the way that expectations of "ladylike," and its younger sister "good girl," behavior have been used to marginalize and demonize women who want to do things like, um, work in the White House or write on the opinion page of a major newspaper.

Penalty for unladylike conduct

I've been mildly ticked off about Noonan's column since I first read it, but my sputtering annoyance didn't come into full focus until I heard about what 20-year-old Adrian Missbrenner, acquitted of rape charges this week, said about his experience.

"I think everyone did something wrong that night, including her," he said of the evening three and a half years ago when he and two friends videotaped themselves having sex with an obviously intoxicated 16-year-old girl.

The young woman involved -- drinking and hanging out with Missbrenner and his buddies -- clearly must not have been a lady. And if she's not a lady, if she's doing something wrong, she deserves what she gets.

That's the logical extension of Noonan's idea that only "ladies" should be treated respectfully. It makes all the rest of us fair game: instead of being invested with the rights to privacy and decent treatment just because we're human beings, we have to earn those rights based on some fuzzy standard of correct social behavior.

It's coy and cute for Noonan to claim that her delicate sensibilities are offended by something as banal as being frisked in an airport. But there's a reason the whole "oh, help, I'm a lady, I might swoon" thing has fallen out of fashion.

I'll open door for myself, thanks

Most of us don't have much expectation of special treatment these days. We open our own doors. We don't faint when we hear profanity. We even, on occasion, go out for drinks and cigars.

Maybe this means we've lost something: a little of that special dignity that Noonan holds so dear.

But we'd like to think we've gained something, too: the right to be treated like people, rather than ladies.