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Absolutely it's a violation of my rights to be patted down. I choose that option so that other people may actually see and consider the rights that they're so casually giving up walking through the scanner.

I agree. Wouldn't it be nice if every single person opted out, so they became so overloaded with groping that they had to change their policies?

Wasn't that exactly how it was before? How is that better, or worse?

Not that anyone wants pictures of me... but having someone take nude pictures of me without my permission and spreading them around to whomever they want without my knowledge is more of a violation of my privacy than to have a yahoo briefly invade my physical space in a controlled environment. At least, that's the way I feel about it.

Exposing yourself to regular doses of unnecessary x-rays is probably not a great idea. The human [ed.: backscatter] x-ray machines are mostly phased out already, though. Millimeter wave (the most common scanners now) is non-ionizing radiation and does not have any known association with an increased risk of cancer.