By now, you are probably all aware of the unjust ban the FDA places on blood donated from men who have sex with men. While this has been eased the tiniest bit to accomodate gay/bi men who have been celibate for a year, it seems they also extend the policy to heterosexual transwomen. Because, you know, transwomen are actually gay men? Dominic Holden, writing for BuzzFeed,
exposes how this ban plays out in blood donation centers across the US. At CSL Plasma, for example, no transwoman is allowed to donate blood at all. Two transwomen have filed discrimination lawsuits against CSL Plasma regarding this policy.
I see several major issues with this whole debacle. The first is that transwomen are not gay men (and even if they were, the ban on gay men donating is ridiculous since you can test blood for HIV and since straight people can get HIV too). The second is that I have no idea how a blood donation center is supposed to determine whether someone is a transwoman. There are plenty of trans* people who easily pass as their identified gender. So really, this becomes a ban on transwomen who can't pass. It also becomes inconsistent across clinics. To this end, Mandi Camille Hauwert, a transwoman living in Sonoma County, CA, was able to donate blood with no problem when a mobile van came to her place of work. After she was told that her blood had been used to save a life, she decided to donate again. She went to a clinic run by the same blood bank where they somehow realized she was transgender and told her that she would not be able to donate. "It made me feel like some kind of a freak," she says. "Why is my blood any more of a risk than any other woman's? They had no answer, other than to tell me that gay men are banned from donating."
My third issue with this is that not all transwomen are heterosexual. To assume that all MTF transpeople are interested in dating men is absurd and heterocentric. Plenty of transwomen identify as bi or lesbian, and although we include the LGB in the same acronym as the T, the reality is that they actually are very different concepts. This seems to elude certain blood banks, such as CSL Plasma. We'll be watching this lawsuit, and the FDA, to see if any changes come about as a result.
