I am a trained health and nurse. For six years I worked in a hospital, three of them in an intensive care unit. I have been in constant contact with blood, excrement, disease and have never felt so safe in any other profession.
On the one hand, because I was taught all the safety precautions, but on the other hand, because no one was interested in my sexual activities - neither my boss nor my colleagues. I was not the other one. Until the calls for blood donations came. Then I realized again: I could practice my profession and have been able to do it myself with HIV infection; but I was not allowed to donate blood.
Often I wondered if I should not go to the blood donation anyway. My blood type is 0, I am considered a universal blood donor, actually a blessing for all. But it is forbidden to me because I have sex with men. I would have to lie to do it. What would have happened if I had done it? I do not know, and even if I did, I would not reveal it in this text because it is insignificant: For the society, my blood remains poison.
Now the FDP group wants to change that and set aside the waiting period for men and trans * people because it is "an untenable discrimination without medical necessity" - a request will be submitted to the Bundestag next week.
Almost Equal
Background: In 2017, the guidelines for donating blood had changed. Men who have sexual intercourse with men have been allowed to donate blood for the first time since this innovation - but only if they have not had sex for a year; that was also true for trans people, sex workers and sex workers. The good news: We were no longer permanently excluded, the bad: If we want to help people, we had to live a year abstinent. We were equal - almost.
Almost in this context is a fatal word. Again and again, this modal adverb appears, it's a narrative of rapprochement, one that's always on the verge of feeling like something is going right, and then not completely completing it.
It would have been conceivable even then to accept the directive with a shrug of the shoulders, simply to refrain from physical contact for a year, and finally to be allowed to donate blood - provided that it would be so important to the people at all. Another strategy could have been: you do not want our blood? Then just die!
But what became readable between the lines of this provision was a message that has always accompanied us: our life does not belong, it carries a risk, death always lurks because we are somehow wrong. Since the eighties, we were all the time busy with the paranoia of HIV infection anyway, we were scared because we were potentially in danger, every sexual act always carried a risk, we always had after the orgasm the thought of death to visit us sooner or later. We are still scared!
Short insert: When I write "we" in this text, I also include people who have been excluded for decades: people who were not allowed to donate blood. People who have been disregarded by society, who are still proscribed as outsiders, are not considered "normal", as if normality is a valid category.
2400 new infections in Germany
I know the numbers of new HIV infections in Germany, they are known to me since I am a teenager, I study them every year. For the year 2018, the Robert Koch Institute estimates 2400 new infections in Germany, of which 1600 in the sex between men (2013 there were still 2200 men).
When donating blood, the following questions must be answered in one sheet:
Are you or did you belong to one of the following groups?
- Heterosexual persons with frequently changing partners?
- Men who have or had sex with men?
- Persons offering or offering sexual intercourse for money or other benefits (eg, drugs) ("male and female sex workers")?
- Transsexual persons with sexual risk behavior?
This is followed by a consultation, during which the doctor can ask these questions again explicitly whether they do it is up to them. In Germany, a distinction is made explicitly in the questionnaire between heterosexual men and men who have sex with men.
In some European countries things are different: in Portugal, Italy, Bulgaria, Latvia, Poland and Spain, there is no difference in the questionnaire; In several EU states, including Austria, men who had sex with men are completely excluded. Also the "waiting period" varies, in Germany it is one year, in Canada it is three months, in France it will be four by 2020.
Today, HIV infection can be safely ruled out as early as six weeks after the last risk. At the same time, it remains a matter of trust, because nobody can control whether we tell the truth in the questionnaire at all.
No one hundred percent security
It is all about the safety of the recipient of the blood donation, that is the argument of the Paul Ehrlich Institute, which is responsible for the blood donation specifications together with the German Medical Association: "If a homosexual partnership somebody goes alien, then just within this relatively small People with a high HIV risk have a higher chance of getting infected. " Statistically it may be a valid argument, but just according to the estimates of the Robert Koch Institute also 620 new infections in 2017 of "heterosexual contacts" have been added. They are obviously tacitly accepted.
No one can guarantee 100 per cent safety in donating blood, that's the truth, however painful it will be for some. The sooner we all accept this, the more society can stop shaming some people and others not. The shame accompanies us anyway our whole life, it takes a lot of effort not to spread these, not to let them penetrate our bodies. Some manage to free themselves from shame, others carry their scars (visible and invisible) around for life.
more on the subject
Why do I mention it all? Because it does not work without the numbers, without the fear. And because I do not look at history in a continuity, according to the motto: In the past everything was bad, now everything is better. We may want to believe that, for example, "marriage for all" has dealt with all problems (I do not), but even if we believe so, the ban on donating blood immediately brings us back to reality. And in that our whole society is still based on an ancient, traditional family model: heterosexual, married, with two children, monogamous, permanent employment contract. That should be the norm. The norm exists, it lives, it stays healthy.
