Male blood donors are asked “are you pregnant?”

[Inamuddle36]

A repeat blood donor (125 pints over 50 years) refused to proceed recently when he was required to answer the question “are you pregnant?):

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.

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

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?"

Or just ‘what’s your sex?’

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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?

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??

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.

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

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.

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.

Low-rent home is funny.

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

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

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 issue though I suppose is that whilst there are loads of instances you can ridicule, the alternative is putting it on frontline workers to make decisions about who passes? I have to say I think sulking off from future blood donation over being asked this question doesn't seem so different from eg some high profile TW claiming that 'pussy hats' are transphobic.

The cost would eventually roll on into more of the same. Like being polite and nodding along to TWAW because we all knew it was just one of those polite lies we all tell.

See where that got us? It got us here. To a time and place that the NHS, Blood Service and all sorts of biological science based organisations asks questions like "Dear Mr. 66 year old man, could you confirm you are not pregnant?" and then refuse his donation when he refused to give such a ludicrous question credence.

See, the paper based question is one thing. Staff reaction is another level of utter insanity altogether.

Our society is truly ill.

I can't be bothered to get exercised about this particular question, which would be equally silly to any 66 year old. Eighty year old women having medical treatment get asked whether they might be pregnant all the time, and they don't throw their toys out of the pram. You just tick "no", whether that's because you're old, or a child, or celibate, or lesbian or male, or whatever.

But if they don't have a box for "Sex AAB" (or however they want to put it) the it raises the question of how they decide what the appropriate haemoglobin cut-off is, and what the appropriate donation frequency is. Do non-binary people all get given the female parameters to be on the safe side? Do transmen get put on the male donation frequency pathway?

But if they don't have a box for "Sex AAB"

eProgresa software has this information and that is the one that SNBTS uses to manage donors and donations.

99.999999% sure this isn’t happening in Wales. (The medical director of the WBS knows the difference between men and women. ;))

Female blood can never be used in male patients. It can have fatal consequences. So they do ask and have to know the biological sex, however the individual presents. No assumptions are made by staff.

I don't really understand about refusing to donate as a result of being asked a question. I did ask once when donating blood why the questionnaire was asking about gender not sex and asked the nurse about it. He told me about women only being called to donate three times a year as opposed to four and not being invited to donate platelets. I didn't really want to ask anymore about it as the nurse was so uncomfortable and clearly just wanted to say it was about making donors feel at ease. However, he did confirm that sex difference was important in blood donation.

It left me with more questions than answers to be honest, I hope a transman who is still menstruating wouldn't be called on more than three times a year to donate. I hope a transwoman who wanted to donate platelets wouldn't be denied the opportunity to do so. Maybe there's a chance for more in-depth discussion with the nurse when you're doing the finger prick etc before donating?