Male blood donors are asked “are you pregnant?”

Unless they've turned it off, and from Prof Turner's response I mentioned upthread, they haven't, the answer is in the software that the staff uses to manage donations and donors.

The sad thing is that some persons who could actually be pregnant get a fit when asked.

This is absolutely ridiculous are they gonna start asking women if they have trouble getting an erection next? This has caused less people to be helped because (rightly) this man didn't answer that absolutely stupid question and now its affected actual people who needed blood. I wanna get off this planet

Low-rent home is funny.

I wouldn't want to be the one asking this question of men.
I'd feel a complete fool and would expect a few strange looks, let alone comments made back at me.

What would it have cost him to tick no?

Lifton would probably have an answer to that in the 8 Criteria for Thought Reform.

Havel and Solzhenitsyn wrote about similar concessions and their harms.

Havel: In an era when metaphysical and existential certainties are in a state of crisis, when people are being uprooted and alienated and are losing their sense of what this world means, this ideology inevitably has a certain hypnotic charm. To wandering humankind it offers an immediately available home: all one has to do is accept it, and suddenly everything becomes clear once more, life takes on new meaning, and all mysteries, unanswered questions, anxiety, and loneliness vanish. Of course, one pays dearly for this low-rent home: the price is abdication of one’ s own reason, conscience, and responsibility, for an essential aspect of this ideology is the consignment of reason and conscience to a higher authority.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4382551-Live-not-by-lies-Solzhenitsyn-no-tambourines-involved?

We've lost a lot by going along with "What would it cost" and not understanding the harm of it later. The ramifications of GRA 2004 are a demonstration of that and it's not as if people didn't recognise it at the time, but they accepted the assurances that their apprehensions would never be realised. Yet, here we are.

In Scotland we have a campaign trying to increase blood donations right now due to limited donations during covid and they are putting people off donating by using this woke bs 🤬
And before the usual posters ask no I won't be donating as they won't take my blood anymore

I understand why people have safety concerns about self-ID, I object to the shift of language to birthing people and the like, I share some of JK Rowling's concerns. But in every case that's because I can see the harm, and I honestly can't see why this one bothers anyone. It's one question on a form, and I can see why it's easier to have the question for everyone. What would it have cost him to tick no? I think it's quite dickish to not donate for that reason.

So, he's 66 years old, presumably not actually Peter Pan, let alone a woman, and they carried on with that palaver?

Maybe this is what it will take. Many sensible ordinary people getting column inches when similar ridiculous crap happens, and yes when I typed people I probably should have typed men!

A blood donor lost and what next??

Prof Turner feasibly had no option other than to say that.

However, Prof Turner has previously supplied a good description of the eProgresa system in use by SNBTS and notes that it includes

Donor demographics (e.g. age, sex, address, telephone numbers, e-mail
etc.)

www.infectedbloodinquiry.org.uk/evidence/witn3530007-written-statement-marc-turner-snbts-07-oct-2021

So, it's plausible that staff would not have to rely upon their own powers of perception.

I wonder if Prof Turner has thought through whether there are people who feel excluded by being compelled to answer questions once they have refused to respond to something they perceive as nonsensical?

Never before have we had an ideology that actively deskills professionals and makes them look so bloody foolish. All those years of training eradicated by needing to pander to an intellectually inadequate, anti science ideology that pretends there are no difference between the sexes.

The sex you are born with never changes ffs. This is a dangerous manipulation of medical terminology. There are differences in sex and it needs to be clear from the get go.

Asking inane questions that are evidently impossible makes them look clueless, unprofessional and incompetent. If they have to pretend that a 60 year old man could be pregnant then how do they think patients will have the confidence to confide difficult symptoms to them. It makes them look like idiots, not trained and competent professionals.

Surely they need to know which sex people are to know the haemoglobin level they should use on the fingerprick test?

Do they not need to know sex anyway?

For example, when I used to give blood I had to wait longer between donations than a man would.
Is this still the case?
I am sure I've also read that there could potentially be an issue if blood from a woman who has ever been pregnant is given to a male recipient.

Or just ‘what’s your sex?’

The article states that the question is asked as "biological sex or sex assigned at birth is not always visually clear to staff." Would it not be simpler to ask the question "What was your sex at birth?"

Just noticed this is Scotland. Not surprisingly.
Does anyone know if the same is happening in England?

Yep, daft.
My mum was asked when she went for her first Covid jab. She's 75. They didn't actually ask my dad so I suppose that's something.

I'd hope the donor in the story can be persuaded to go back though because giving blood is really important despite the nonsense.