I find the airport security guards in the U.S. are careful, even exaggeratedly careful, to not go anywhere near my junk..."
Despite having had a number of incidents, I have to agree. And although there have been some noteworthy exceptions in the news, the current TSA experience is actually a lot better than others I have experienced.
In fact, I once felt really sorry for a TSA agent. He did his duty trying to explain why the body scanner put an alert box on my upper left leg. He was apologetic and explained everything as he did what he had to. He eventually convinced himself that the "thing" was flesh and blood, but couldn't imagine what. He asked if it might be a hernia, and when I explained what it really was, the poor guy looked just devastated. (I posted the rest of the story a while back in this thread.) Think of it from his perspective...
As far as getting your jeans checked, this is hardly limited to TSA and recent times. In the 1980's, this was pretty much a regular event for me when I went to a concert or club (tight jeans were in style). I'm sure they weren't looking for a gun, but more likely were concerned I had a liquor bottle stuffed down there. (I did sometimes sneak in quite a bit of booze, but had realized that the crotch was not the place to do this, because it would be checked.)
I did have one experience at an airport (LAX) where the screener was clearly doing it for his sexual gratification.
However, this was before 9-11 and the TSA. A group of 6 or 8 of us were flying together to a leather-sex sort of weekend event, and were all dressed in clothes that would be suitable when we got there. We were all together in one line. My boyfriend went first, set off the metal detector (most people didn't care too much in those days), and was being "wanded" by a rather large female security officer. I'm waiting to catch her eye before stepping forward. Just as I start to do so, the supervisor, who, as a gay man I can only describe as a flaming queen, comes running over (at least, as well as one can run on tiptoe). He's waving his hands above his head shouting "Wait! Wait! I'll do them!" When he gets there, he tackles the female officer (about double his weight) out of the way, and proceeds to wave me through. Of course, the metal detector goes off again, but he doesn't bother with the wand. He has me step up on a box, and then starts rubbing my knee-high motorcycle boots. He moves on to rubbing my inner thighs, then asks a very important security question: "Sir? What size boots do you wear, Sir?" When I answer 14 wide or 15, he spends quite a bit of time caressing them again, then completes a pat-down that was hard to distinguish from a full-body massage. The others in our group all got the same treatment, except the last guy. He was wearing clothes that looked more like business casual. The screener just turned and walked away as he was coming through. No one would have noticed if he was carrying a nuclear warhead. We all bit our tongues until we were out of earshot before we started the "what's the matter, didn't he think you're sexy?" teasing.
So I have to say my experiences, even the incidents, with TSA have been more professional. They just have a crappy job.