Ok so lets talk blood. Obviously this is an important step forward, however the decisions and recommendations are still seeped in deep institutional homophobia.

A

Context: The ban on gay men giving blood was brought in in 1980 in the face of the AIDS epidemic, where little was known about HIV and testing was patchy at best. This is understandable- however what should have been a temporary measure has remained in status quo for 4 decades 2/
The 'deferral period' of 3 months, brought in in 2011, allowed a straight woman to have unprotected sex with an HIV positive man and give blood the next day while gay men had to remain abstinent for 3 months regardless of the riskiness of their sex. 3/
The obvious problem was that assumptions were being made about the risk of gay men giving blood that showed an ignorance and lack of understanding on the part of policymakers which was rightly criticised and lobbied against 4/
Over the years, LGBT+ lobbying has largely used the image of beautiful white middle class gay men in a long term committed relationship to sell the idea of equality to conservative Britain - 'We're just like you!' we shout as we show people our fascia of respectability. 5/
The problem here is: we're not just like them. Our lobbyists are like them. Our community is driven by white middle class men. Obviously notable exceptions get raised (the indominable Baroness @ruth_hunt stands out) but largely we present as male and pale AND WE'RE NOT 6/
Our community is a vibrant, multicultural, richly identifying place for people of all sexual identities: queer, polyamoury, BDSM, open relationships, monogamy - a place of sexual liberation made even more so by the introduction of PrEP (thank @Greg0wen for that!). 7/
Our community also has a dark undercurrent where issues of societal rejection, familial dispute, the status quo of 'emigrating' to big cities, shame, loneliness, chemsex and addiction all mix as people try to live as themselves as authentically as they can 8/
And here we have the meat of the issue. Once again, decision making is made with married, monogamous relationships in mind. I'm in a long term relationship. And a long term BDSM D/s situation. And I play around, as do my partner and my sub. Where do we fit? 9/
Poly people who are in multiple stable and committed relationships - where do they fit? And what about bisexual people who are in stable same sex relationships who may also play casually (or less casually) with opposite sex partners? 10/
Looks like the thread has been broken by removing 1 point. Link to point 12: https://t.co/zcQPAjADHj

More from Health

this simple, counter narrative fact keeps cropping up all over the world.

hospital and ICU utilization has been and remains low this year.

it's terribly curious that so few of these monitoring tools provide historical baselines.

getting them is like pulling teeth.


we might think of this as an oversight until you see stuff like this:

this woman was arrested for filming and sharing the fact that their are empty hospitals in the UK.

that's full blown soviet. what possible honest purpose does that

this is the action of a police state and a propaganda ministry, not a well intentioned government and a public heath agency.

"we cannot let people see the truth for fear they might base their actions on real facts" is not much of a mantra for just governance.


90% full ICU sounds scary until you realize that 90-100% full is normal in flu season.

staffed ICU beds are expensive to leave empty. it's like flying with 15% of the plane empty. hospitals don't do that.

and all US hospitals are mandated to be able to flex to 120% ICU.

the US is currently at historically low ICU utilization for this time of year.

61% is "you're all going to go out of business" territory as is 66% full hospital use.

can you blame them for mining CARES act money? they'll die without it.

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