Blood tests:
People giving blood can now self identify as a the gender they like, instead of stating their actual sex.
This poster on reddit gets it spot on:
I went to donate blood the other day and I read the "LGBT" section in the screening pamphlet. It informed me that "trans people will be considered by their self-identified gender." Meaning that a homosexual MtF who has high-risk anal sex with men all the time will be risked into the "straight woman" group and allowed to donate blood.
Now, one of the basic tenets of public health is that you're supposed to take identity/subjectivity out of the equation when doing this type of screening. This is because in the 80s during the AIDS epidemic they used to screen men by asking "are you gay/homosexual?" and the men would say "NO! I am totally straight." But when asked "Do you have sex with other men?" they would say "Oh, occasionally, maybe 1-2x a month." So lesson learned: focus on the behavior, not the self-perception.
Or maybe lesson NOT learned, because now we've slid back enormously. I used to be pretty unsympathetic to gay men who were outraged that they couldn't donate blood. I was like "you're not being discriminated against, you're just in a risk group along with other people, it's not a human right to donate blood" etc. NOW however, I am totally incensed! Transwomen have a higher HIV prevalence than gay men. This is just plain ol' discrimination against gay men at this point. Now it comes off as if the FDA were saying "you're considered high risk not because you're a male who has risky sex with other males, but because you insist that you're gay!" So it's the gay identity that has cooties according to the FDA. Not, you know, a risky type of sex that involves tearing delicate membranes with partners from a group that switch in between giving/receiving (thus spreading disease way more effectively).
That post gives sources as:
The FDA revised guidance states, “In the context of the donor history questionnaire, FDA recommends that male or female gender be taken to be self-identified and self-reported." There is no deferral associated with being transgender, and eligibility will be based upon the criteria associated with the gender the donor has reported
and
Findings from a systematic review (Herbst et al.) of 29 published studies showed that 28% of transgender women had HIV infection (4 studies), while 12% of transgender women self-reported having HIV (18 studies). This discrepancy suggests many transgender women living with HIV don’t know their HIV status.
Reddit thread on this here: www.reddit.com/r/GenderCritical/comments/604hzr/donating_blood_gay_men_are_now_considered/