In the U.S. years and years and years ago, the FDA prevented any sexually active gay/bisexual males from donating blood, because HIV was more common in that group of people, and there were much less advanced screening methods for it.
Even after we got way better at detecting it, the ruling stayed in place and was only recently undone. This means a lot of staff sort of still have this stigma of “gay males = unhealthy/bad/unfit for blood donation”, which is still gonna be perpetuated by some, even if the rules no longer discriminate against them directly.
Why would you be discriminated? The staff didn’t make the rules and I’m pretty sure most of them were against LGBTQ discrimination in the first place.
At least in Germany a lot of nurses and health technicians are quite progressive and friendly to humans.
In the U.S. years and years and years ago, the FDA prevented any sexually active gay/bisexual males from donating blood, because HIV was more common in that group of people, and there were much less advanced screening methods for it.
Even after we got way better at detecting it, the ruling stayed in place and was only recently undone. This means a lot of staff sort of still have this stigma of “gay males = unhealthy/bad/unfit for blood donation”, which is still gonna be perpetuated by some, even if the rules no longer discriminate against them directly.
Got it. However I doubt that people at the blood bank would do that, as they’re probably aware of what you mentioned.