I travelled a lot when I was pregnant with my daughters. During one of those trips, the TSA agent “helping me” watched me load my carry-on bag onto the conveyor belt and then joked, eyeing my 6 months pregnant belly, “Whatchya got under there? Could be anything, huh?”

Recently, a different TSA agent checked my ID and called me “sweetie,” which is not, in fact, my name. I growled at her, “Don’t call me ‘sweetie.’ I am not your child.” (In Indiana this is more or less the social equivalent of pulling a gun, so New Yorkers who are reading this will have to recalibrate their civility meters.)

And lately the TSA has been getting a lot of press coverage for loudspeaker announcements cautioning travelers that they can be arrested for making inappropriate remarks or jokes concerning safety.

So what’s the problem here? The problem is asymmetry. TSA agents clearly think it’s okay to joke with passengers and to treat them with an astonishing sense of familiarity.

And yet we are not permitted to respond in kind. Indeed, we are threatened with incarceration if we do.

In his classic paper “On Joking Relationships” the anthropologist A. R. Radcliffe-Brown discussed the way that a joking relationship can serve the same purpose as a very formal relationship—by helping to define the permissible boundaries of relationships that might otherwise be vastly unequal and even hostile.

The joking relationship is a peculiar combination of friendliness and antagonism. The behaviour is such that in any other social context it would express and arouse hostility; but it is not meant seriously and must not be taken seriously. There is a pretence of hostility and a real friendliness. To put it in another way, the relationship is one of permitted disrespect.

But this peculiar combination of friendliness and antagonism only works if it exists on both sides. It can be asymmetrical. We all know you can’t joke with The Boss the same way he can joke with you. But you both have to be able to joke.

And when the TSA persists in joking with us while insisting that if we joke with them we do so on pain of imprisonment, that’s not permitted disrespect. That’s not a joking relationship. That’s antagonism wearing the face of friendliness.

And it’s not funny.